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

Yanjun Wang: Thank you, Jiong. In terms of the Brazil market, we managed to make significant gain in efficiency in our operations and also partly as a result of our scaling that there’s efficiency gain from — naturally from scale. The drivers behind the fast reduction in order loss per order, similar to our other Asian markets, coming from both top line growth as well as cost improvement, in particular, logistics costs that we are very focused operationally on reducing for our users. So that we can serve more under addressed segment’s profitability and sustainably down the road. This will be our focus in the near term. And while we don’t give any projection or guidance breakeven time, we also do think our market in Brazil can also grow profitably over the long run, will be another significant opportunity that we should be able to capture.

And another thing is, as we shared before, the reason we are very focused on cost structure, in particular, logistics, is because we are trying to expand the profitable TAM for the market as a whole by addressing sellers and buyers who are underserved or unaddressed by existing players and having a better structure, having more target focus on the mass market allow us to be a differentiated player in the market, capturing a significant share of the pie in our view. Now in terms of the take rate. So we do believe there is still room for expansion on take rate. And just like our view about every market, we’ll do it in a measured paced way and with strong communication to our sellers and as our platform grows and as we — as sellers grow with us and invest more on our platform, while at same time growing their business.

The overall take rate in the Brazil market, as you probably know, obviously materially higher than many other markets. And there are, of course, more services being provided to the Brazilian sellers and buyers in view of some of the infrastructure differences in the market. Therefore, we believe this is a strong market, and we do focus on growing that market.

Operator: The next question comes from Varun Ahuja from Crédit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Varun Ahuja: Congrats on turning profitable. I’ve got a few questions. First, on the gaming side. If you look at your revenues right now, adjusted for the bookings, it’s just 6% above pre-pandemic level. And if you look at the user base is around 20%. So how should we think like most of the benefits from the pandemic seems to have waned out by the fourth quarter. Do you see more stabilization now on the gaming side? Or are you seeing there’s still more headwind in front of that? Second, sticking to gaming side, if you can give some color on the team strength on the R&D side? How many people are there on R&D side split between new game development and versus on Free Fire? And thirdly, again, on the gaming, any update on the right of first refusal that you have with Tencent coming in this year?

Lastly, on e-commerce, if you give some color, qualitative or some numbers on HQ cost quarter-on-quarter? Because we have been historically giving some commentary on the HQ cost for the e-commerce, while this quarter, there’s isn’t much commentary, so I just want to see how that cost has trended during this quarter? thank you.