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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good morning and good evening. Welcome to the Sea Limited First Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note, this event is being recorded. I’d now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Min Ju Song. Please go ahead.
MS
Min Ju Song
Analyst
Thank you, and hello, everyone, and welcome to Sea's 2022 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. I'm Min Ju Song from Sea's Group Chief Corporate Officer's Office. Before we continue, I would like to remind you that, we may make forward-looking statements, which are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, and may not be realized in the future for various reasons as stated in our press release. Also, this call includes a discussion of certain non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA, and net loss, excluding share-based compensation. We believe these measures can enhance our investors understanding of the actual cash flows of our major businesses, when used as a complement to our GAAP disclosures. For a discussion of the use of non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliation with the closest GAAP measures, please refer to the section on non-GAAP financial measures in our press release. I have with me Sea's, Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer, Forrest Li; Group Chief Financial Officer, Tony Hou; and Group Chief Corporate Officer, Yanjun Wang. Our management will share strategy and business updates, operating highlights, and financial performance for the first quarter of 2022. This will be followed by a Q&A session in which we welcome any questions you have. With that, let me turn the call over to Forrest.
FL
Forrest Li
Analyst
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. I'm pleased to share that we have made a strong start to 2022. We recorded solid results across our business in the first quarter of 2022, despite challenging comparisons to the same period last year, during heightened COVID-related restrictions. As a result, we are well on track to achieve our previously shared projections of profitability in our Asia markets, while continuing to scale our businesses and capture market share globally. During the first quarter, our group GAAP revenue grew 64% year-on-year to reach $2.9 billion, and we generated gross profit of $1.2 billion, an increase of 81% year-on-year. Shopee and SeaMoney continues to enjoy operating leverage and efficiency gains as they scale and strengthen their market leadership positions. In particular, Shopee's adjusted EBITDA loss per order before allocation of HQ costs in Southeast Asia and Taiwan improved by more than 70% year-on-year to $0.04. This shows that Shopee is well on track to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA before allocation of HQ costs in the region. In addition, we currently expect Shopee to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA even after allocation of HQ cost by the end of next year for this region. At the same time, Shopee enjoyed very strong growth even against the tough comparisons last year. Its gross orders grew more than 70% year-on-year and the gas marketplace revenue increased by more than 75% year-on-year, further extending Shopee's market leadership both in terms of transaction volume and commercialization capability. SeaMoney's adjusted EBITDA loss also narrowed both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year, while GAAP revenue grew close to 350% compared to last year. Quarterly active users grew more than 78% year-on-year. This is also a strong indication of SeaMoney being on track to achieve positive cash flow as we previously projected, while at…
TH
Tony Hou
Analyst
Thank you, Forrest and thanks to everyone for joining the call. We have included detailed financial schedules together with corresponding management analysis in today's press release and Forrest has discussed some of our financial highlights. So I will focus my comments on the other relevant metrics. For Sea overall, total GAAP revenue increased 64% year-on-year to $2.9 billion. This was mainly driven by the growing adoption of products and services across our e-commerce and digital financial services businesses, as we continue to leverage the synergies across our various platforms. On e-commerce, our first quarter GAAP revenue of $1.5 billion included GAAP marketplace revenue of $1.3 billion, up 75% year-on-year and GAAP product revenue of $0.3 billion, up 27% year-on-year. E-commerce adjusted EBITDA loss was $743 million as we continued to deepen e-commerce penetration in our core markets and also gain positive traction in newer markets. Digital entertainment bookings were $0.8 billion compared to $1.1 billion for the first quarter of 2021. GAAP revenue was up 45% year-on-year to $1.1 billion. The increase in GAAP revenue was primarily due to recognition of accumulated deferred revenue from previous quarters. Digital entertainment adjusted EBITDA was $431 million compared to $717 million for the first quarter of 2021. Digital Financial Services GAAP revenue was $236 million, an increase of 360% year-on-year from $51 million in the first quarter of 2021. The growth was primarily due to the growing adoption of our financial products and services. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $125 million as we continued our efforts to drive mobile wallet adoption. Returning to our consolidated numbers. We recognized a net non-operating loss of $6 million in the first quarter of 2022 compared to a net non-operating loss of $23 million in the first quarter of 2021. We had a net income tax expense of $82 million in the first quarter of 2022, which was primarily due to corporate income tax and withholding tax recognized in our digital entertainment business. As a result, net loss excluding share-based compensation was $445 million in the first quarter of 2022, as compared to $320 million for the same period in 2021. The net cash used in investing activities amounted to $1.1 billion for the first quarter of 2022. This was primarily attributable to an increase in loans and receivables of $s10 million to support the growth of digital financial service businesses as well as net placement of $333 million into time deposits and liquid investment products for better cash yield management. At the end of the first quarter of 2022, we had around $8.8 billion of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments on our balance sheet. With that, let me turn the call to Min Ju.
MS
Min Ju Song
Analyst
Thank you, Forrest and Tony. We are now ready to open the call for questions. The question will be addressed by Forrest, Tony and Andrew, Operator?
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Alicia Yap from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
AY
Alicia Yap
Analyst
Thank you. Good evening, management. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two questions. The first one is in light of the various cities under the lockdown condition in China, can management share any impact from the lockdown in China for your cross-border business? Is that one of the reasons that caused you to widen your e-commerce guidance? Besides that any other macro conditions that prompt you to become a bit more cautious for your Shopee business? The second question is on your gaming business. Management mentioned on the prepared remarks there is some improvement in the user engagement in Free Fire, can you share which countries that you're actually seeing the improvement in user trend? Do you think the user trends metrics could further improve or you think this is more or less to stabilizing the user metrics? Any updates on new games in the pipeline that you can share? Thank you.
YW
Yanjun Wang
Analyst
Thank you, Alicia. Regarding the first question on CB, so far we haven't seen major impact and cross-border is also not a very significant part of our business. Our business is primarily local-to-local. And the reason to broaden the guidance range for Shopee, as we shared in the earnings, that we see macro trends such as increasing inflation, increasing some disruptions in the supply chain and also rising interest rates across various markets and the world, I think we want to be prudent in looking at it. But also as shared, we still think the original guidance is achievable for us. However, given the uncertainties, we do want to be able to manage the situation closely and also track the market dynamics more closely as we progress. So while there are challenges, we also see some bright spots in particular in our region, for example, most of our markets so far has emerged relatively resilient out of COVID and inflation in many of the markets are still relatively in check and also some of our markets are net exporters of commodities and/or have been benefited from the shift in global supply chain in terms of investment -- foreign direct investment in manufacturing, et cetera. So relatively speaking, we think there are -- while there are challenges and uncertainties, there are also opportunities in the region that we could look to capture. Again, I think the key is just like when we entered COVID there are huge uncertainties and challenges. But in the end, we emerged as a much bigger and stronger business, much more diversified and close to approaching long-term profitable growth in our key markets. So all these helped us a lot in managing and navigating the new challenges and uncertainties that might face us. And as a business,…
OP
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Pang Vitt from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
PV
Pang Vitt
Analyst
Thank you very much for the opportunity. Two questions for me here. Can we go back to the guidance again, maybe can you also walk us through the rationale behind it in terms of like, is it largely due to lowering down the GMV assumptions or these also have taken into account like lowering down the segment assumption as well? And does mean with this new guidance what is the implied GMV growth expectation that you can think of? And what should we think of the sequential quarterly trend going forward as well? That's, question number one. And secondly, in terms of, cash burn and unit economy has improved likely in first quarter. We see healthy improvement of take rate as well. Can you walk us through the steps that you have taken to achieve this? Is it mainly due to the higher take rate or lower subsidies? And how should we think about balancing between growth and profitability especially in ASEAN with the macro uncertainty in mind? I also have a better understanding, on how your headquarter costs will trend going forward after that's already rising quite significantly in the quarter. Thank you.
YW
Yanjun Wang
Analyst
Thank you, Pang. In terms of the Shopee guidance, I think, as I shared just now we're not necessarily lowering it. We are widening the range. We still think the original guidance is potentially achievable for us. But given the economic trends, we want to be cautious and also as we face uncertainties, we do want to preserve our maximum flexibility in managing our business in line with underlying market dynamics. That could be basically a combination of all things in terms of underlying volume growth and commercialization. We don't specifically guide on GMV and take rate. But overall, if you look at overall GAAP revenue trends, even at the wider range still growing at more than 70% year-on-year, which is I believe quite high compared to global industry peers and appears in our markets. So, again I think this is something that we are getting in abundance of caution. And regarding, the unit economics improvement, I think this is both in terms of better commercialization as well as efficiency gains on the cost side as we scale and further strengthen our market leadership. As we shared, just now in terms of our thinking about unit economics, we think the best way to maximize long-term profitability, scale and defensibility and the overall value of our ecosystem to our communities and our stakeholders including our shareholders, is by growing the order volume and order density. And through that, we're able to achieve better unit economics over time with scale. And of course during the process, we focused very much on the efficiency of our investments by effectively capturing users through various social entertainment, tools and marketplaces assortments, better services, et cetera effectively convert them, retain them and improve the frequency purchase frequency over time, so that we can maximize the return…
OP
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Piyush Choudhary from HSBC Singapore. Please go ahead.
PC
Piyush Choudhary
Analyst
Hi. Good evening to the management and thanks for the opportunity. Two questions. Firstly, in the gaming business, can you talk about progress to expand your portfolio of self-developed games? And we noted that your game developer team has -- in-house game development team has expanded to more than 2000. Could you tell how many developers are engaged on Free Fire and Free Fire MAX? And second question for Shopee. Can you talk a little bit about this improvement on EBITDA loss per order quarter-on-quarter. Is Company consciously kind of weeding out non-profitable orders or reducing investment in new market, or this is kind of more a scale effect? And housekeeping on Brazil number of orders and ULC revenue. Thank you.
YW
Yanjun Wang
Analyst
Yes. So, regarding the self-development pipeline, as we shared before, we always have different types of games at different stages of testing. Some are being tested anonymously in various markets not under the Garena name to avoid the halo effect of the Garena blend to give us better data, and some at earlier closed beta testing stage within a small circle of selected users and some at earlier -- even earlier stage of being still within the in-house testing stage. So at any point of time, we do have things being tested. And as we grow the self-development pipeline, as usual we don't announce the game until we formally launched publicly in the market under the Garena name. But however, this has been a focus of the development team. And I think we have about half of our team focused on new games at different stages, while the rest is still continue to focus on putting more content and also game modes and UGC tools into Free Fire and Free Fire MAX. Again, this is a highly dynamic process. We can -- and any time we might adjust the team setup and allocation of human and other resources, depending on the demands and needs of our game content pipeline as well as our user community. In terms of the EBITDA last quarter, we're not -- this is not driven by cutting loss-making so-called loss-making orders. If you look at our basket size has been relatively stable quarter-on-quarter. And our -- in terms of composition of categories have been relatively stable as well. And overall, it's been very balanced growth across all categories of consumption and across different types of orders. Now we do see increasing orders coming from the mall side, which is also a positive sign, as we have more brands global including some of the global brands we mentioned like Kiehl's Kate Spade joining our platform, but at the same time and contributing more to our GMV. But at the same time, I think the bigger picture is that as the largest marketplace in our region and I think overall composition of the categories generally reflect the broadest communities we are serving. And this is also not driven by market exits primarily either as those are very nascent stage the market that we exited anyway didn't contribute too significantly to the cost side either.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question...
YW
Yanjun Wang
Analyst
In terms of Brazil, we look -- we did provide our EBITDA loss per order as well. And as we understand the market, also very focused on understanding how the efficiency gain is progressing in Brazil. In terms of overall growth, it remains to be very robust. We -- our order growth continued to be a very high triple-digit close to 200% year-on-year. So it's continued to be very high gross rate. And at the same time, we're also very pleased to share that not only we're the number one in downloads and total time spent. Most recently, we are also ranked number one in monthly active user for March and April by data.ai. And that shows that we are fast closing and increasingly becoming a market leader in terms of user base and also in terms of orders in a market that we entered just two years ago, while continuing to enjoy efficiency gain in the market.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from John Choi from Daiwa. Please go ahead.
JC
John Choi
Analyst
Well, good evening. Thank you for taking my question. I have two questions. First of all, on your digital finance services a very strong growth. Can management provide some color? I mean, you did say that, Indonesia you guys have 30% of the active users use multiple products. So, in terms of profitability, or let's say user engagement any economics? Can you kind of share how Indonesia stands out and how this could be extrapolated to other markets? The second question is on Shopee, I think you just mentioned, Brazil has seen very strong growth like close to 200%. But if you look into like actual user engagement on the categories, or the actual products that the consumers are purchasing, how does this compare to our Southeast Asia or Taiwan? I mean, where do you think you guys have to invest more in Brazil or Latin America? Thank you.
YW
Yanjun Wang
Analyst
Thank you, John. In Indonesia, yes, you're right that, our SeaMoney business has grown well, and we also offered the most comprehensive suite of products in the market, which is also the largest market in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. And so we saw a very strong traction, and strong synergies with our Shopee ecosystem in growing the business both in scale, commercialization, and also as we shared before we believe it will be a cash flow – will contribute positive cash flow to the group business in the short to medium term. And in other markets, we are also rolling out increasing number of SeaMoney products, including continue to strengthen our market leadership on the e-wallet side, and the leveraging that offer more products across credit to both the consumers and our SME merchants, and also the insurance product – Intertek products, and potentially down the road wealth management products, of course in collaboration with financial institutions, and our digital banking products also being rolled out not only in Indonesia. But as we shared before, we have obtained also a license more recently in Singapore, the Philippines and now in Malaysia. So we will be also looking to serve the large base of communities in various countries. So we do believe, there is a very significant opportunity to be captured. And our ability to leverage, our large consumer Internet ecosystem, our understanding, deep understanding of the user base, and our easy access to them, and the ability to serve them with technologies, who are underserved because of the limitation of physical infrastructure, and other reasons. So this is a significant and highly profitable opportunity that we are looking at, and we'll continue to manage the growth of the SeaMoney business, across various regions over time. And in terms of our…
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from Jiong Shao from Barclays. Please go ahead.
JS
Jiong Shao
Analyst
Good evening. Thank you very much for taking my questions. My first question is a follow-up question on your guidance and your outlook for your Shopee business. Your GMV growth slow down a bit in December quarter in the March quarter largely because of the tough comp last year. I was wondering just for your current outlook is Q2, sort of, the potentially the bottom in terms of the year-over-year growth for your GMV and then we start to see recovery in Q3 or the bottom is going to be some time later this year? Related to that previously you talked about take rate may be up a bit less than 200 basis points this year. Sorry, if I missed you reiterated that earlier. But if you haven't I was wondering if you have any thoughts about that? My second question is on competition. I was wondering given some of the news reports about TikTok monetizing e-commerce in Southeast Asia and Tokopedia went public, Indonesia raised a few billion dollars. Are you seeing any changes in the competitive landscape in Southeast Asia plus Taiwan? If you haven't could you highlight some of the competitive moat you think you have so to keep you in a leading position if not expand your lead over some of your competitors? Thank you.
YW
Yanjun Wang
Analyst
Thank you, Jiong. Regarding the GMV growth rate, we don't provide guidance on that. But as you correctly pointed out, Q1 and Q2 last year were at the height of COVID lockdowns in all regions and it also translated into some of the highest growth rates during that time last year. So we are facing a tougher comp in the first half of the year. And on the other hand, we don't provide specific guidance on the numbers on GMV or the take rate. In terms of our competitive landscape, I think, we always take competition very seriously. And -- but at the same time, I think, we came from -- for each of our businesses in particular e-commerce we came from underdog position vis-à-vis very well-established income brands who also much better funded than we were and we rose to the strong market leadership and become multiple times their size over time in our region and at the same time improving our efficiency and now approaching profitability. So I think eventually it is about our ability to serve our own users and merchants including our merchants and consumers well and leave no large segment of our communities and consumption categories that could have been served by us on served. And this is -- we don't see that as a zero sum game. We see it as a marathon whereby our success is dependent on our ability to execute continue to pace ourselves well and run well and be ahead of the pack. So this is our consistent approach on competition.
OP
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Next question comes from Sheng Wang Ga [ph] from CICC. Please go ahead.
UA
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. With regards to take rates. We've noted that take rates for commission and marketplaces have actually increased in April and May. Is it a reflection of our strength in each country given that take rates were increasing varying levels down to our Southeast Asia markets? That's my first question. And the second one is with regards to buy now pay later. When do we think we'll be able to replicate the success of buy now pay later in our countries -- in countries operations like Philippines and even Brazil?
YW
Yanjun Wang
Analyst
Thank you, Sheng. Regarding the take rate I think, this again, we've been gradually raising take rate consistently. I think we started introducing take rate across various types of merchants and categories of goods many years ago and we're pioneers in fact in many of the markets introducing a take rate and gradually increasing -- we've been gradually increasing the take rate over time across multiple types of streams of revenue. And as we shared in earnings for the most recent quarter, the increase also largely came from the high margin take rates in terms of transaction based fees as well as advertisement. A lot of that is actually optional for our merchants. This involving opt-in programs that merchants can choose to pay us a high take rate for more and better services and/or better deals for their consumers. So eventually, this is as the merchants, basically investing in their own business on our marketplace to grow their business. And as a result, we benefit from that. So I think eventually, this is because our ability to deliver better results, more sales volume and attract more users to other merchants. Their businesses are growing fast. And as a result they are also willing to and happy to invest more in the platform that allow them their business to grow even better and faster on our platform. In terms of the buy now pay later, so we will -- we have been introduced in the buy now pay later programs across various markets. And I might also introduce it in Brazil, that as demanded by our users, we will be also collaborating with other financial institutions to help grow the program. But we will continue to remain very prudent and to manage a highly sustainable -- in terms of the sustainable long-term growth of the program, we think it helps the growth of e-commerce business. And -- but at the same time, we are also cautious about extending credit to only white-listed consumers with whom we can have sufficient data and we continue to focus on improving our underwriting capabilities across the board. So this has been something that we focus on in various markets.
OP
Operator
Operator
Due to time constraints, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Min Ju Song for any closing remarks.
MS
Min Ju Song
Analyst
Thank you again, for joining the call today. We look forward to speaking to all of you again next quarter. Thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.