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

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Yanjun Wang: Thank you, Varun. In terms of gaming, I think it’s still too early to tell the trends. Obviously, COVID is such an unprecedented event. Nobody has any data on it. And also reopening together with inflation that had double headwinds from people’s discretionary consumption power also further compounding the effects that we are seeing. And therefore, it’s premature for us to project where the game trend is going to event. But we have seen mobile games with long shelf life have seen also revival and when they have the right content and release at the right time are well received by users. So that can be achieved, of course, with a lot of creativity and efforts, and that’s what we are focused on. We won’t be able to give guidance on any short-term trends at this point yet.

In terms of R&D and relationship with Tencent. Our R&D, while at the same time, we have been focusing on concentrating our resources and shared earlier and the divesting projects and deprioritizing, non, less pharmacy initiatives. At the same time, we are moving people towards more focus on the core projects and more promising ones down the road. Therefore, there are shifts in the staffing. But overall, we maintain a very strong R&D team. In terms of relationship with Tencent, also, there has not been any change in the relationship. On the HQ cost trends, also trended downwards in terms of the efficiency gain we had in managing HQ costs. So there’s Q-on-Q improvements on that as well.

Operator: The next question comes from Ranjan Sharma from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Ranjan Sharma: Good evening, and thank you for taking question. Two questions from my side. Firstly, on the cost side and adjusted EBITDA, have there been any severance costs accounted for in this period? And with the cost optimization initiatives that you have done, how should we think of R&D and G&A costs in 2023 versus 2022? Secondly, on the fintech side, the loan book is down from third quarter to fourth quarter, considering your comments around macro headwinds and — which cloud’s outlook, how should we think of the loan book growth going forward? Thank you.

Yanjun Wang: Thank you, Ranjan. Now in terms of severance, the impact has not been very significant. And I think, it’s comparable to the previous quarter, and we don’t seem it to be material. So there was no separate disclosure. We don’t think it will also have any material impact on our 2023 financials. In terms of R&D and G&A costs in this year, we continue to focus on efficiency improvements and tightening and also make sure that our costs are efficient relative to the size of our platform and our businesses. In terms of the loan book growth, as we — as I mentioned before, for the credit business and the SeaMoney business as a whole, we don’t expect to be — at least at this stage that we’re not going to invest significantly to drive rapid growth and land grabbing.

We’re more focused on building a solid business with strong underwriting and a strong user base serves them well and also diversify our offerings and also diversify our funding sources over time to build a sustainable long-term — sustainable business with long-term growth. So that’s something that, given the current macro uncertainty and synergistic play with Shopee, we do not think that the growth is a KPI for our team in terms of the loan book, more — our KPI is more in terms of quality of the loan book and profitability of the business.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Min Ju Song for any closing remarks.

Min Ju Song: Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining today’s call. We very much look forward to speaking to all of you again next quarter. Thank you.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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