Sea Limited (NYSE:SE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Yanjun Wang: Thank you, Thomas. In terms of game pipeline, now as you’re familiar with us, we don’t discuss games that have not been publicly launched. And previously we mentioned that we have some games such as is being tested and might get released this year. And then also, there are always games in the pipeline we are focused on. But also more importantly, the key focus in the near term, still on the core games and in particular, Free Fire that we want to turn into a strong evergreen franchise. Although we continue to see some weakening in user trends in comparison to the significant growth it achieved during the COVID times, we do believe that there is a core defensible user base we can achieve, and it is a long-lasting franchise.

So there are a lot of things the team are currently doing and focusing on with the best talent and some of the top creative people we have to deliver better user experience, more accessible game package, more efficient downloading and also in terms of the content that is more suitable for our users and more interesting to them, even despite their many years of experience of playing this game. So we think that still the focus in the immediate future. At the same time, we continue to form our core competency across some of the core genres that we have strong experience in and continue to observe any opportunities that my advice in the market and pick up new skills and new trends along the way. So while game is from a financial perspective, we saw some weak trends immediately.

We are — from an organizational perspective as a whole team, we are very focused on game in the long run because it is the closest to the younger generations, and we already have a very strong and big platform. Free Fire, despite its recent weakening, it’s still one of the largest mobile game in the world and with very large user base and highly active spending a lot of time daily with us. And we can do a lot of things with them and engage them much better and also deliver new and more content to them down the road. So this is something that we are very much focused on and will not give up on. In terms of headcount management, we had some headcount exercises, as we shared before, these are in relation to the operational changes we made, such as market exits, project closures, deprioritizing of initiatives, et cetera.

We didn’t have any particular target of a X percentage to cut for a wide number of teams. That’s not how we do headcount exercises. So I think we also believe that with the successful completion of the major changes that we undertook in the past few months, we believe under the current environment, absent any major shifts in our external conditions, that our major changes are completed, and we do not foresee major changes — more major changes in this year and in the foreseeable future.

Operator: Our next question comes from Jiong Shao from Barclays. Pease go ahead.

Jiong Shao: Thank you, very much for taking my question. I have two as well. The first is about Brazil. Will you be able to talk about the growth year-over-year or quarter-over-quarter for Brazil? And also, you cut the loss pretty drastically, which is great from like two bucks a year ago to now less than $0.50. Could you talk about the drivers behind that? And do you have any expectation for breakeven in Brazil? My second question is about take rate. Again, my calculation shows the take rate is now above 10%. And you have made a progress in take rate every single quarter over the last few years. I was wondering, do you have a target like for continued improvement for take rate this year? Thank you, very much.