Sea shares surge 508% as its e-commerce platform Shopee posts strong growth

During the epidemic, consumers in Southeast Asian countries were forced to stay at home due to quarantine restrictions, replacing offline consumption with online shopping and spending more time on online games.

In addition, more retail business is shifting to online sales models and the trend of cashless payments is accelerating. This change has brought strong revenue growth to e-commerce leaders such as Amazon .

Amid the craze, shares of e-commerce and fintech Sea Limited are up 508% from their 2020 lows.

Many investors are wondering whether Sea ’s stock price will continue to soar in 2021, but first, it’s helpful to review what Sea has accomplished over the past few years .

Sea has been a huge success since its initial public offering at $15 per share in 2017. Sea's online shopping platform Shopee , launched in 2015, has become an e-commerce giant in the region .

During the period of winning market leadership , Sea’s full-year adjusted revenue grew more than fivefold from $554 million in 2017 to $2.9 billion in 2019.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic enabled Sea to once again achieve quarterly growth. Driven by a surge in gaming and e-commerce revenues, Sea's third-quarter revenue nearly doubled year-on-year to $1.2 billion.

As more shopping shifted online , Sea’s e-commerce business revenue grew 173% to a record $619 million, thanks largely to a more than doubling of gross merchandise volume .

In addition to strong e-commerce growth , Sea also sees momentum in its fintech business.

Data shows that its total payment volume in the third quarter exceeded US$2.1 billion, and 17.8 million users used Sea's mobile wallet service. It can be seen that Sea has made a breakthrough. At that time, Sea also obtained a digital banking license in Singapore, making it a leading regional financial services company.

Sea’s 500% rally in 2020 means its market value now far exceeds that of DBS Group Holdings, Southeast Asia’s largest bank by assets.

Southeast Asia’s internet economy — e-commerce , online gaming and digital financial services — is expected to triple in value to $300 billion by 2025 , according to research by Google, Temasek and Bain & Co. Analysts see Sea also set to see huge growth by 2021 .

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Shopee Platform

Sea