Singapore’s Sea tops quarterly revenue estimates as Shopee fuels e-commerce growth

Aug 11 (Reuters) – Singapore’s Sea Ltd beat estimates for quarterly revenue on Tuesday, powered by growth at its e-commerce business led by Shopee and rising demand for its financial services.

U.S.-listed shares of the company were up 7.6% in premarket trading.

• Shopee has grown into Southeast Asia’s leading e-commerce platform through a combination of aggressive discounting, gamified shopping features and a broad logistics network.

• The company has also increasingly integrated AI into product recommendations, seller tools and customer service operations.

• Sea reported revenue of $7.79 billion in the quarter ended June 30, above analysts’ average estimate of $7.06 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.

• The e-commerce unit, its largest segment, saw quarterly revenue jump 48.9% from a year earlier to $4.93 billion.

• Sea’s digital financial products arm reported a 58.9% rise in revenue to $1.40 billion. The segment includes the Monee app, which offers services including payment processing, digital wallets and credit.

• Shopee’s gross merchandise value, a metric measuring the total amount of sales on e-commerce platforms, rose 28.4% from a year earlier to $38.3 billion in the quarter.

(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Ananda)