Will Garena be able to subsidi_老虎社区_美港股上老虎

2021-06-02

Will Garena be able to subsidise the finance/commerce long enough for them to turn profitable?

Analyzing Sea Limited's Relentless Growth

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I provide a high-level ov","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>This article focuses on the growth engine that enables Sea Group. I provide a high-level overview and dive deeper into each operating segment.</li>\n <li>The company has a significant advantage through segments that cross-pollinate each other with cash. Garena is currently funding the growth of Shopee and SeaMoney. This is a key moat contributor.</li>\n <li>Shopee continues to be the key top-line driver with substantial Gross Merchandise Value growth forecasted in Southeast Asia. Consequently, increasing take rates will likely lead to even higher revenue growth.</li>\n <li>Looking at overall online spending, the six largest Southeast Asian countries are forecasted to grow from $100B GMV in 2020 to $300B GMV in 2025. Sea stands to benefit across the board.</li>\n <li>At an FY2023 EV/S of ~8.3x, Sea Group is fairly priced for an investment. It is a long-term conviction \"buy and hold\" for me.</li>\n</ul>\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e27123526e3031d4a551f336a9189f19\" tg-width=\"1536\" tg-height=\"1025\">Photo by Wachiwit/iStock Editorial via Getty Images\nSea Group (NYSE:SE) is still running in hyper-growth mode (&gt;100% YoY last quarter and on a last-twelve-month basis).\nIt's been over a year since I first wrote about Sea on Seeking Alpha. The company's rise has been staggering and the business has continued to surpass most expectations, with the stock returning over 300% in the last 12 months. I'd like to use this article as an opportunity to dive into what makes such growth at a ~$120B market cap possible and put forward my opinion on why the company is positioned to win more in the coming years. While a lot of alpha has been captured in the past, I still expect substantial broad index outperformance going forward over the long term. I'm long SE.\nRecap\nHere's a quick recap of what the company constitutes. Sea Group is a Singapore-based consumer internet company that has three major divisions: Digital Entertainment, E-Commerce, and Digital Financial Services. In layman's terms, think of it as a smaller and younger version of Tencent (OTCPK:TCEHY) with a Southeast Asia focus.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bd938ae2a667d8bf6c2c8b8094ff94ab\" tg-width=\"600\" tg-height=\"320\">Source: Author, Logos from Sea Group Media Resources\nGarena\nTheir Digital Entertainment arm known as \"Garena\" began as a third party game licensor and operator for popular online games (mostly by Tencent) for the South East Asia region. It consequently grew into an independent mobile game developer, and they now operate one of the most widely played mobile games on the planet, Free Fire, which has about 650 million quarterly active users worldwide. Free Fire is a battle-royale style multiplayer game, optimized to run smoothly on mobile phones with lower computing power specifications.The game generates revenue primarily from in-app purchases. It also features social media aspects, and more recently, an e-sports ecosystem built around it to host global tournaments streamed across the world. The cohesive gaming, social media, and entertainment aspects have led it to be highly engaging and relatively sticky with low churn as far as mobile games go.\nShopee\nShopee is the leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia + Taiwan, spanning about 7 countries with a population of over 600 million people. They also have a large presence in Latin America, including Mexico and Brazil (add another 300 million population). The app facilitated ~$12.6B in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) last quarter. Almost all the markets it operates in features rising middle classes, rapid digital consumerization, and strong GDP growth rates. These geographies have also been historically underpenetrated on the digital front, and are currently experiencing consumer internet adoption at a higher rate than their developed country counterparts. The pandemic catalyzed the seemingly inevitable trend of e-commerce adoption.\nSeaMoney\nThis is Sea Group's \"Digital Financial Services\" (Fintech) arm. SeaMoney includes a digital wallet, payments processing, credit offerings, and other financial services. The segment had over 26 million quarterly paying users with over $3.4B in total payment volume facilitated last quarter. It is Sea Group's youngest division but arguably presents the largest opportunity for the company given that most of the Southeast Asian population has historically been underbanked. Theoretically, investments, loans, credit, debit, and insurance are all potential pieces that can weave together under a unified consumer financial services ecosystem.\nTo summarize, Sea Group is a consumer internet titan with an ecosystem of high growth business divisions that are in total, likely touching over a billion people worldwide. On an LTM basis, the company's combined revenue grew 113.7% YoY. Sea is serving emerging markets that are experiencing internet adoption at accelerated rates, and is ballooning into a Tencent-like internet beast (consequently, they're Tencent-backed as well). A key factor in an investment consideration, is, of course, growth going forward. In the next few sections, I attempt to deconstruct growth using readily available-reported metrics and alternative data to make inferences on prospects.\nGroup Growth Through Cross-Pollination\nBig growth requires cash. Chasing an underpenetrated e-commerce opportunity spanning 100s of millions of consumers requires a lot of cash. Sea has executed well in raising capital and putting it to work for growth, often playing its cards close to the chest pre-2020. The secret sauce for effective cash utilization, however, lies in the company's three-headed ecosystem structure. Shopee's growth would not be possible without the preceding success of Garena. And it's fair to say that SeaMoney's odds of success are substantially better because of Shopee's proliferation. The following diagram explains this.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6629de9aa49e0ca3375f92306d80c289\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"338\">Source: Author, Logos from Sea Group Media Resources\nA popular concept in venture capital is the \"Valley of Death\". A freshly funded startup enterprise tends to burn cash to invest in product development, overhead, sales, etc. It continues to burn cash until it finds product-market fit, and revenues eventually grow large enough to make the system work and turn the company cash flow generative. Businesses are vulnerable from a financial standpoint during the cash burn and have to beat the clock as their limited cash pours out rapidly until sales balance out expenditure. Many seed-stage startups just die due to this. Since venture capital proliferated in the last two decades and access to private funding has supplied enormous cash ammunition to growth businesses post product-market fit, the burn phase has extended to the public markets as well. If a public company's strategy doesn't work, it tends to downsize, get mildly profitable at modest growth rates, and turn into an acquisition target. Alternatively, it may collect in the vast land of unfulfilled public tech stocks. That's the anatomy of a modern tech company in a nutshell.\nExpanding upon this concept, Sea Group isn't one company. It's a lot like three companies. As of 2021, Garena is well out of the cash flow valley of death, Shopee is burning big cash but is seemingly at a trough, and SeaMoney is just getting started. Proceeds from mature segments like Garena are used to pollinate growth in segments that have lower market penetration and longer growth runways (like Shopee &amp; SeaMoney).In totality, Sea Group is an ecosystem that continues to evolve with the next big company still embedded within, still in the making, all the time.What's impressive is that Shopee's market potential is larger than Garena's, and SeaMoney has an even larger theoretical market though any success might be early to call. The access to cash makes Sea Group's growth outright suffocating for competitors because individual non-ecosystems simply cannot compete on pricing, marketing budgets, and moderate economies of scale in the case of e-commerce. That's not to take away from Sea's excellent product and sales execution anyway. The following sections break down the three sub-companies and draw inferences from their growth metrics.\nGarena (Digital Entertainment)\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/18d10df5e5cd40c3f8cdb6fa3565fb1e\" tg-width=\"510\" tg-height=\"264\">Source: Author,Data from Company Filings\nThe charts above pertain to the Digital Entertainment segment, with the marked lines displaying YoY (Year-over-Year), and QoQ (Quarter-over-Quarter) percentage growth. Gross Bookings are the key top-line metric as they represent revenues that are yet to be recognized on the GAAP front. Due to the nature of in-app purchases and other payments made on apps like Free Fire etc., there's a fairly substantial difference between the two. Previously reported as Adjusted Revenues, Gross Bookings have held strong and have recently recorded 10% QoQ growth for the first quarter even though the pandemic has been easing off with a reopening trend. Q1-Q3 2020 saw rapid growth, while the last few quarters have tapered down to levels that are seemingly more muted. This should be expected to continue.\nIt is worth mentioning how Free Fire has stuck around instead of temporarily leading top mobile gaming charts like most other games. In the gaming world, you have temporarily viral games, and then you have games that have a dedicated following across millions of users that evolve and provide engagement over sustained periods of time. The latter includes Call of Duty, PUBG, League of Legends, and Fortnite to name a few. Ultimately, the revenues of these games are predictable and sticky enough. It appears as though Free Fire has joined this group.\nThe way Free Fire was built from the ground up is relatively contrarian. It's optimized to work on cheaper Android-powered smartphones instead of consoles and dedicated devices that are often seen as staple purchases for many gamers in developed countries. Getting a Switch, Xbox, or PC for most people in emerging markets is a serious expense. With Free Fire, you can get away with what you already have in India, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia. All you need is a smartphone and you're getting bang for your buck gaming and entertainment. This aspect has made it a perfect emerging market game.While most of the industry was focused on higher ticket experiences, Garena's contrarian outlook on making a game specifically for ignored categories of mobile players has helped it succeed.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a46c2a9d96ac17e0ad6c91fe7eb13f24\" tg-width=\"508\" tg-height=\"265\">\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/21c5e5ecd14f6544b380b4c99aa42150\" tg-width=\"508\" tg-height=\"265\">Source: Author, Data from Company Filings\nDespite going after large populations of price-sensitive emerging market gamers, we see a surprising number of users actually paying for in-app purchases every quarter. QPU growth has outpaced QAU growth, with a larger proportion of the overall user mix trending towards paying users over time (11.4%, 12.0%, and 12.3% respectively for the last three quarters). This is key for the division's bookings and revenues. About a year ago, I expressed concern regarding the over-reliance on Free Fire as a sustainable cash source. I questioned whether it was truly here to stay and won't be replaced by the next hot game. This concern was abated when I learned that the e-sports events were amassing millions of viewers, the game continued to evolve with seasons and geography-specific features, and the social media angle that resulted in network effects across players.It's impressive enough for a game to go to #1, but to stay in the top charts for 2-years running requires some excellent execution.\nHere's a table of Play Store rankings for the \"Games: Action\" category. I've included the Play Store since the majority of emerging market users are on Android as opposed to iOS.\n<table>\n <tbody>\n <tr>\n <td>India</td>\n <td>Indonesia</td>\n <td>Pakistan</td>\n <td>Brazil</td>\n <td>Nigeria</td>\n <td>Bangladesh</td>\n <td>Mexico</td>\n <td>Philippines</td>\n <td>Vietnam</td>\n <td>Thailand</td>\n </tr>\n <tr>\n <td>Downloads: Gaming</td>\n <td>10</td>\n <td>17</td>\n <td>18</td>\n <td>8</td>\n <td>7</td>\n <td>3</td>\n <td>11</td>\n <td>135</td>\n <td>11</td>\n <td>10</td>\n </tr>\n <tr>\n <td>Downloads: Gaming Action</td>\n <td>2</td>\n <td>4</td>\n <td>3</td>\n <td>2</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>3</td>\n <td>27</td>\n <td>2</td>\n <td>2</td>\n </tr>\n <tr>\n <td>Grossing: Gaming</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>2</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>8</td>\n <td>2</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>20</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n </tr>\n <tr>\n <td>Grossing: Gaming Action</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>2</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>2</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>4</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n </tr>\n </tbody>\n</table>\nSource: App Annie, As of 28th May 2021\nThe above charts are compiled from some of the most populated emerging market countries I could find, along with my free App Annie account. While new downloads might have reduced over the last two quarters from the pandemic boost last year, the numbers are still impressive and Free Fire remains the top-grossing game amongst most of the geographies above. Importantly, it is the consistency of these rankings over time.\nGoing by the growth metrics, long-term engagement is likely to be sustained, but there should be a sequential slowdown in new user adds and incremental gross bookings in the coming months.This is consistent with what the management expects and reasonable given the reopening and saturation of the game across the global market. On the bright side, Digital Entertainment recorded an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 64% last quarter that should scale proportionately with gross bookings. After building out the game, there isn't too much in terms of costs to take away from the bottom line. Large sales and marketing expenditure isn't quite needed now that the game has global network effects. It's really about back-end, maintenance, and continued development work to keep evolving the already successful game and ecosystem.\nShopee (E-Commerce)\nThe following two charts present gross orders and gross merchandise value (GMV) for the e-commerce division.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/cb09b8563ac1df1a5d8e7458b30c3054\" tg-width=\"512\" tg-height=\"264\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/628c3b271ee17e9c430045d0f686f75c\" tg-width=\"512\" tg-height=\"264\">Source: Author, Data from Company Filings\nThe trends are similar across both charts. Q2 2020 saw acceleration due to the pandemic, Q4 2020 saw a seasonal high, and Q1 2021 saw QoQ deceleration going out of the holiday season across most geographies. As Gross Orders have outpaced GMV, we can conclude that more people are ordering cheaper items on the platform on average. If we consider seasonality, the 5-6% QoQ growth in Q1 2021 isn't particularly concerning and we'll likely see a sequential pickup in the next quarter. It's fair to expect the reopening trend to put some downward pressure on growth but the long term feasibility of the platform has likely cemented itself for consumers. The convenience and product pricing on e-commerce is simply hard to compete with for brick &amp; mortar, and we're not going back to pre-pandemic levels of online retail again. The following earnings release excerpt provides some colour on e-commerce GAAP Revenue.\n<blockquote>\n GAAP revenue was US$922.3 million, up 250.4% year-on-year.\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n GAAP revenue included US$715.9 million of GAAP marketplace revenue, up 285.0% year-on-year, and US$206.4 million of GAAP product revenue, up 167.1% year-on-year.\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n Source:Q1 2021 Earnings Press Release\n</blockquote>\nComparing the above information to the GMV chart, we can infer thatSales have substantially outpaced GMV growth. This indicates a very deliberate move by the company to increase their take rates in dominant geographies.Take rates are a function of the GMV and represent the proportion of the total GMV that makes it to revenues. As the standard consumer internet company goes, you expand and acquire customers at all costs, then you increase prices and get profitable after capturing a market and habituating consumers to your platform. Overall, the actions have also decreased Adjusted EBITDA losses substantially and that allows Sea to play the balancing cash flow act on demand.\n<blockquote>\n Both in Southeast Asia and in Taiwan, Shopee ranked first in the Shopping category by average monthly active users and total time spent in-app on Android for the first quarter of 2021, according to App Annie.\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n In Indonesia, where Shopee further accelerated its year-on-year growth in gross orders, it continued to rank first by average monthly active users and total time spent in app on Android in the Shopping category for the first quarter of 2021, according to App Annie.\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n Source:Q1 2021 Earnings Press Release\n</blockquote>\nFrom a high-level view, Southeast Asia &amp; Taiwan seem pretty much covered. However, within this region, Indonesia still presents the fiercest battleground for Shopee as it competes against the SoftBank-backed Tokopedia. The following charts show monthly website visits for both companies.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/49440f62634a1c3ccc9ebfdd0c7a33ba\" tg-width=\"481\" tg-height=\"289\">Source:Southeast Asia Map of eCommerce, iPrice Group\nMonthly web visits from the iPrice Group show that Tokopedia saw more traffic (not necessarily sales) during the last quarter while it was behind during the last few. However, on mobile (App Store &amp; Android), Shopee is the undisputed leader in the Shopping category. This is reassuring since mobile e-commerce has been outpacing total e-commerce as a category in almost every geography across every platform.\n<table>\n <tbody>\n <tr>\n <td>Indonesia Mobile Rankings</td>\n <td>Q1 20</td>\n <td>Q2 20</td>\n <td>Q3 20</td>\n <td>Q4 20</td>\n <td>Q1 21</td>\n </tr>\n <tr>\n <td>Shopee App Store</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n </tr>\n <tr>\n <td>Shopee PlayStore</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n <td>1</td>\n </tr>\n <tr>\n <td>Tokopedia App Store</td>\n <td>2</td>\n <td>2</td>\n <td>2</td>\n <td>2</td>\n <td>2</td>\n </tr>\n <tr>\n <td>Tokopedia PlayStore</td>\n <td>3</td>\n <td>3</td>\n <td>4</td>\n <td>4</td>\n <td>4</td>\n </tr>\n </tbody>\n</table>\nSource: Southeast Asia Map of eCommerce, iPrice Group\nI would conclude that Tokopedia is a key competitor that needs to be watched closely and will prevent Shopee from exercising its take rates more liberally in the country. Furthermore, Indonesia represents the largest Southeast Asian market for e-commerce.Cross-pollination isn't just occurring across Sea's segments but also across Shopee's different e-commerce geographies.Profits from Shopee Thailand, for example, may be used to bring forth more competitive product pricing to Shopee Indonesia. Tokopedia is distinctly e-Commerce and limited to Indonesia, and likely doesn't have these internal cash generative advantages.\nLet's take a look at what's happening across the globe in Latin America. Shopee is growing like wildfire in Mexico and Brazil. The charts below represent recent data as of late May.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e59030ed9023a1f492a597a9af00d646\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"247\">Source: App Annie, Rankings by Country in the \"Shopping\" category\nBrazil and Mexico together make up for a population of ~330 million. The other e-commerce star in the category, MercadoLibre (MELI) ranks behind Shopee on Android for both Brazil and Mexico. The rankings depend on downloads instead of engagement, and MercadoLibre is often pegged to have a majority market share in Latin America as a whole (dominates Argentina). However, what the above alternative data above tell us is that Shopee has momentum in user share acquisition on an absolute basis. One can infer that more people are downloading Shopee in Mexico and Brazil as of late May compared to MercadoLibre at a faster rate. Higher downloads often translate to higher relatively higher market share gains.\nAdd all the Shopee geographies together and they represent a billion people and a combined GDP of $6.5T according to my calculations (Source for GDP:Worldometer). I reckon this is where to start when drawing up true long-term potential before narrowing down further.\nSeaMoney (Digital Financial Services)\n<ul>\n <li>Total Payment Volumes increased to $3.4B in Q1 21, from $1.0B during the same period last year</li>\n <li>Quarterly Paying Users increased to 26.1 million in Q1 21, from ~10 million during the same period last year</li>\n</ul>\nSource:Q1 2021 Earnings Release\nSeaMoney is the umbrella under which Sea Group operates multiple Fintech Apps including Shopee Pay. Current products include payments and payment processing, but if one were to look beyond into other Fintech Apps in China or the West, digital financial services tend to coalesce into super apps. For many people living in Southeast Asia, it isn't even about disruption but rather their first introduction to financial services of any sort. Unfortunately, a glance at the Fintech environment would leave any public market investor a bit confused.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/09e8a02fd03188b0d9cb12841f889fe5\" tg-width=\"1280\" tg-height=\"501\">Source:FintechNews.SG\n26.1 million quarterly paying users (QPUs), and not monthly-PUs or daily-PUs for that matter doesn't give us much granularity in data or how the segment is truly performing. $3.4B in Transaction Payment Volume is somewhat impressive, considering the last quarter saw about $12.6B in GMV on Shopee. Ultimately, the broader adoption of SeaMoney by both merchants and consumers beyond the Shopee platform is important to catalyze network large scale effects. The greater the versatility of SeaMoney across instances in real-life, the better the hold the division would have over consumers. Longer-term, offering just payments is not enough. Credit, Debit, Investing, and other financial services, all in one app have been shown to differentiate the winners from the losers in geographies like China, or in the United States with Cash App by Square (SQ).\nWhat can be said though, is that chances for continued growth, and winning market share are higher due to the group cross-pollination effects and network effects against Shopee customers. I would still see the segment through the eyes of an embedded option in the share price that would produce asymmetric reward if it does expand to more customers.\nThe Runway Ahead\nThe excerpts below were taken from a report published in late 2020 by Google, Temasek, and Bain &amp; Company. The report highlights internet spending forecasts over six major markets in Southeast Asia: Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bffb6329895d550a13b311bb474fde85\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"222\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6a66aadbe2d042623e0efa580879f9f2\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"335\">Source:e-Conomy SEA 2020; by Google, Temasek, and Bain &amp; Company\nAs a whole, the internet economy in these countries is expected to compound at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 24%, almost tripling from $105B in GMV in 2020 to $309B in 2025. This provides a sense of scale for the region and the internet opportunity that Sea currently operates in as a leader. Note that these numbers exclude Taiwan and Latin America.\nFor Digital Entertainment, Garena's Free Fire market appears to be a lot closer to saturation considering it is already one of the highest-grossing mobile games on the planet. Other Garena endeavours have a chance of success though I'd argue that \"Free Fire\"-like success is hard to come by especially in mobile gaming. Digital Financial Services is still early to call at least until it achieves broader mass adoption across the region. 26 million paying users is significant, though we'll have to give the business time until we can call it a meaningful sales contributor that in turn drives the stock price. As of now, it's a cash burn.\nThat leaves e-Commerce as the main sales driver for the company in the next 2-3 years. Here are some country-specific forecasts for e-Commerce by the same source.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b13ad7630877eaae1221848e7aa7d6e3\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"321\">Source:e-Conomy SEA 2020, Local Highlights\nAs one would expect, Indonesia is the largest market. Vietnam is expected to compound at the fastest rate over the next few years. It's important to note that while the CAGRs are drawn in the 20-30% range, 2021 will see the highest rate while 2025 will see the lowest. 40%+ YoY SEA GMV growth for 2021 is quite likely in my opinion while 2025 could be closer to 15%.\nThe above chart uses GMV or Gross Merchandise Value. As discussed earlier, sales are a function of the take rate and the GMV. The take rate increases, the sales increase. Sea does this by dominating geographies and then deliberately increasing the take rate when network effects or the habituation of consumers on Shopee works at scale. Therefore, Sea's sales growth is set to outpace GMV expansion, especially when they widen their lead in a market. Given Latin America is also experiencing rapid Shopee adoption, it is reasonable to expect hyper-growth in the e-Commerce segment for years. The company expects 112% YoY growth for Shopee in FY2021 at the midpoint of their guidance (Source:Q4 20 Transcript).\nWeave the above pieces together, Sea has an immense growth runway. The e-Commerce opportunity indicates that the company can theoretically be in hyper-growth mode for another 2-3 years, well into 2023.\nWith an established competitive moat, if there's one company to bet on to capitalize and win on the $300B internet GMV opportunity for 2025 (not counting Latin America &amp; Taiwan), Sea seems to be it. I expect the management will also come up with newer verticals that could expand their TAM further. Online in-app investing? travel? TV and movies? Streaming? With network effects this good, they have an unfair advantage. The management has already executed across multiple businesses and seems to deeply understand how the emerging market consumer thinks. They've also displayed evidence of tailoring apps, like Free Fire, to individual geography tastes to maximize execution. Let's look at the financials and valuation multiples to see how much of their future success is already factored in.\nGroup Financial Overview\nI previously mentioned the cash flow valley of death and how segments balance out to achieve cash flow generative growth. The company reports Adjusted EBITDA figures by segment that display similar trends. The \"adjustments\" are quite substantial compared to GAAP metrics, but they're a reasonable indicator after removing stock-based compensation, convertible interest payments, and non-core profitability generation. We're looking long-term here, so the game becomes comparing profitability to itself across time rather than other businesses. I'm more interested in trends and margin expansion rather than absolute values for now. The following chart shows how the breakdown balances out.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2d09aa44220209f2c3a08bdf77363fee\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"347\">Source: Author, Data from Company Filings\nThe trends were seen above follow the cash flow valley diagram. Digital Entertainment is funding Shopee and SeaMoney, and the net result (the bright pink line) is Group Adjusted EBITDA positive for the past four quarters. Going forward, I expect e-Commerce to pass its valley shortly as sales growth decelerates, and expect digital financial services to continue to burn cash at higher amounts sequentially. The group's total financial performance is encapsulated in the chart below:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/50cdf1dd4ad0cc063ae074d6bec713bd\" tg-width=\"605\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: Author, Data from Company Filings\nGross Profits have risen due to higher take rates in e-Commerce and improving incremental margins on Digital Entertainment. These margins would come under some pressure as Shopee will outpace Garena, and the lower-margin e-commerce will make a larger proportion of the gross profit mix. Adjusted EBITDA is under control, and while the company is unprofitable on a GAAP basis, I believe it is still fair given that the top-line is growing at triple-digit percentages. Total Revenue for Q4 has grown 12.6% QoQ and 146.7% YoY. On an LTM basis, Revenues have grown 113.7% YoY. With a long-runway ahead, and with the currently phenomenal product and sales execution, Sea Group is a financially healthy company.The profit tradeoff for growth is fair, even though it's a rarity given the sheer scale of the business.\nInvestors would take some relief in the fact that the company has amassed ~$5.8B in Cash &amp; Equivalents on its balance sheet that would fund losses for some time. If need be, there is a profit switch in Shopee that the company can activate that will result in larger take rates to boost profitability. Sellers on the platform may have no choice in such a situation, considering the breadth, reach, and engagement on the Shopee platform and would go along with the asking price. There is a substantial moat here and the resulting pricing power can be exercised on demand to boost profitability. This isn't new information; Amazon's (AMZN) US e-commerce for example has made similar moves.\nValuation\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1c5cf2d88f832fa4e10dd048d0492f1d\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"331\">Source: Koyfin\nGroup Gross Profits are at the 30% range and Shopee specific metrics are expectedly lower. So a 23.7x LTM EV/S multiple is obviously huge. When contextualizing growth prospects and the excellent competitive positioning, the forward EV/S metrics are far more reasonable. According to the Koyfin database, the analyst consensus forward multiples are as follow:\n<ul>\n <li>FY 2021 EV/S of 16.0x</li>\n <li>FY 2022 EV/S of 11.1x</li>\n <li>FY 2023 EV/S of 8.3x</li>\n</ul>\nSource: Koyfin\nAnalysts have historically been on the side of conservatism for almost every high-growth tech company. Sea Group has almost always beaten its revenue figures though they usually fall slightly short on profitability. The 8.3x for 2023 means it's valued on Tencent-like multiples (adjusted for lower gross profits) but in three years. It is indeed a baby Tencent, and I would also argue that&nbsp;OTCPK:TCEHY&nbsp;itself is somewhat undervalued given the low sentiment surrounding regulations and foreign investments in Chinese tech. Are these multiples reasonable? And where is the upside? I believe SE's current price fair, but the upside will have to come from sustained revenue beats, continued product developments, and mass-scale user acquisition. Multiple compression may need to counter share price dilution, and then actually give us a reasonable rate of return. This is a situation where the following wisdom is applicable in my opinion:\n<blockquote>\n It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price-Warren Buffett\n</blockquote>\nIn my experience, when the quality of the company shines for a fair price, it's still worth an investment. Winners continue to win, and Sea Group is a rockstar business factoring in most qualitative aspects.Given the visionary management (Forrest Li &amp; Co.) and what they've achieved so far, I'd put the odds in their favour.\nSpeaking of odds, there are potential catalysts that could pull the future towards us. One would hypothesise that Shopee winning in Indonesia on a more definitive basis would result in sales getting a boost from a strategic take-rate expansion. Across the planet, the Latin American story is looking impressive and shouldn't be underestimated given the size of Brazil and Mexico. That's an additional 50% e-Commerce TAM compared to Southeast Asia. SeaMoney still has a lot to prove but the network effects from Shopee should help sustain an onboarding of customers. The overall business has optionality. By that I mean, embedded options that could be triggered by a few developments and unlock share price appreciation. These are worth a premium.\nI'm currently long SE. I reckon there's still substantial outperformance potential over benchmarks though the easy alpha potential like we saw in 2020 is unlikely to present itself ever again. The bull thesis is too obvious now, everyone knows it, but it should still play out with alpha in my opinion. Every tech hedge fund in the world seems to be holding SE, and I agree with them. On the other hand, let's look at risks.\nRisks\n<ul>\n <li>Free Fire Concentration:The mobile gaming industry is fast, dynamic, and always changing. The next great game is always around the corner and it's entirely possible that Free Fire's popularity fades and the accompanying cash generation dries up. I believe this risk has reduced over the last year, but it's still worth considering.</li>\n <li>Competition:Tokopedia in Indonesia, MercadoLibre in Latin America, and other internet businesses like Grab &amp; Gojek. There's plenty of competition at multiple fronts throughout the ecosystem.</li>\n <li>Overly aggressive expansion strategy:Sea Group's expansion into 7-8 countries and counting demonstrates a uniquely aggressive growth strategy. While their approach has worked out so far, it may work against them in the future. Knowing when to give up in a market that doesn't play out can stop unnecessary cash burn when the prize isn't significant enough.</li>\n <li>Systemic Risks:As a GAAP net loss business, Sea Group is subject to higher volatility, deep drawdowns, and sector/style selloffs. The sell-off in March is a recent example.</li>\n <li>Macro:Regulations and geopolitical factors in the emerging market geographies are typically more volatile than those in the US. A variety of macro risks and F/X risks are present at large.</li>\n</ul>\nEnding Notes\nConcerns about overvaluation are perhaps warranted on a short-term outlook. In this situation, I do not have a strong near-term opinion but instead, harbour conviction in the company's long-term prospects. If one were to think in years rather than months, it is apparent to me that no competitor comes close to Sea Group in its chances for dominating e-commerce market share in most of its operating geographies. Indonesia is a key country to watch as Tokopedia is still putting up a fight. I'd put the odds on Sea since Tokopedia is a vanilla e-commerce player and doesn't have the scale and cross-pollination advantage unless they merge with another giant. Latin America is also looking like it will be a meaningful push to the top-line if not near term profitability. With excellent execution, Sea Group is leveraging its competitive positioning and is winning more often than not. The cross-pollination effect is a key advantage for internal cash generation and will help sustain the relentless growth as the business captures the massive opportunity that remains.\nI imagine many experienced investors that caught the Amazon (AMZN) train early would look back on their investment as a staple component of their portfolio over the years. In my opinion, Sea Group offers a similar proposition a bit earlier in its lifecycle. Currently trading at a market cap of $130B, Sea can theoretically double in a few years once again in my opinion. Tencent in a duopolistic landscape (withBABA) features a $748B market cap across a 1.3 billion Chinese population. SE can go a third of that in a few years with a monopolistic position in Southeast Asia, scaling to a 1 billion strong emerging market population. This isn't a pure alpha opportunity as multiples have substantially expanded, but I would ballpark the company to deliver a 20%+ compounded return for investors that continue to hold it for a few years.I'm long SE.\n*****\nThanks for reading! On a separate note, I'm excited to announce that I will be releasing a Marketplace subscription service soon called The Abstract Portfolio. High growth tech investing can involve a lot of fragmented information, sentiment, and noise. The Abstract Portfolio aims to bring focus and clarity by weaving together what matters and filtering out what doesn't. The service will feature a concentrated portfolio of cherry-picked stocks backed by rigorous fundamental research, assembled to deliver high absolute returns. Stay tuned!","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Analyzing Sea Limited's Relentless Growth</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nAnalyzing Sea Limited's Relentless Growth\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-02 17:34 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4432517-analyzing-sea-limiteds-relentless-growth>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nThis article focuses on the growth engine that enables Sea Group. I provide a high-level overview and dive deeper into each operating segment.\nThe company has a significant advantage through ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4432517-analyzing-sea-limiteds-relentless-growth\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"SE":"Sea Ltd"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4432517-analyzing-sea-limiteds-relentless-growth","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1100705667","content_text":"Summary\n\nThis article focuses on the growth engine that enables Sea Group. I provide a high-level overview and dive deeper into each operating segment.\nThe company has a significant advantage through segments that cross-pollinate each other with cash. Garena is currently funding the growth of Shopee and SeaMoney. This is a key moat contributor.\nShopee continues to be the key top-line driver with substantial Gross Merchandise Value growth forecasted in Southeast Asia. Consequently, increasing take rates will likely lead to even higher revenue growth.\nLooking at overall online spending, the six largest Southeast Asian countries are forecasted to grow from $100B GMV in 2020 to $300B GMV in 2025. Sea stands to benefit across the board.\nAt an FY2023 EV/S of ~8.3x, Sea Group is fairly priced for an investment. It is a long-term conviction \"buy and hold\" for me.\n\nPhoto by Wachiwit/iStock Editorial via Getty Images\nSea Group (NYSE:SE) is still running in hyper-growth mode (>100% YoY last quarter and on a last-twelve-month basis).\nIt's been over a year since I first wrote about Sea on Seeking Alpha. The company's rise has been staggering and the business has continued to surpass most expectations, with the stock returning over 300% in the last 12 months. I'd like to use this article as an opportunity to dive into what makes such growth at a ~$120B market cap possible and put forward my opinion on why the company is positioned to win more in the coming years. While a lot of alpha has been captured in the past, I still expect substantial broad index outperformance going forward over the long term. I'm long SE.\nRecap\nHere's a quick recap of what the company constitutes. Sea Group is a Singapore-based consumer internet company that has three major divisions: Digital Entertainment, E-Commerce, and Digital Financial Services. In layman's terms, think of it as a smaller and younger version of Tencent (OTCPK:TCEHY) with a Southeast Asia focus.\nSource: Author, Logos from Sea Group Media Resources\nGarena\nTheir Digital Entertainment arm known as \"Garena\" began as a third party game licensor and operator for popular online games (mostly by Tencent) for the South East Asia region. It consequently grew into an independent mobile game developer, and they now operate one of the most widely played mobile games on the planet, Free Fire, which has about 650 million quarterly active users worldwide. Free Fire is a battle-royale style multiplayer game, optimized to run smoothly on mobile phones with lower computing power specifications.The game generates revenue primarily from in-app purchases. It also features social media aspects, and more recently, an e-sports ecosystem built around it to host global tournaments streamed across the world. The cohesive gaming, social media, and entertainment aspects have led it to be highly engaging and relatively sticky with low churn as far as mobile games go.\nShopee\nShopee is the leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia + Taiwan, spanning about 7 countries with a population of over 600 million people. They also have a large presence in Latin America, including Mexico and Brazil (add another 300 million population). The app facilitated ~$12.6B in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) last quarter. Almost all the markets it operates in features rising middle classes, rapid digital consumerization, and strong GDP growth rates. These geographies have also been historically underpenetrated on the digital front, and are currently experiencing consumer internet adoption at a higher rate than their developed country counterparts. The pandemic catalyzed the seemingly inevitable trend of e-commerce adoption.\nSeaMoney\nThis is Sea Group's \"Digital Financial Services\" (Fintech) arm. SeaMoney includes a digital wallet, payments processing, credit offerings, and other financial services. The segment had over 26 million quarterly paying users with over $3.4B in total payment volume facilitated last quarter. It is Sea Group's youngest division but arguably presents the largest opportunity for the company given that most of the Southeast Asian population has historically been underbanked. Theoretically, investments, loans, credit, debit, and insurance are all potential pieces that can weave together under a unified consumer financial services ecosystem.\nTo summarize, Sea Group is a consumer internet titan with an ecosystem of high growth business divisions that are in total, likely touching over a billion people worldwide. On an LTM basis, the company's combined revenue grew 113.7% YoY. Sea is serving emerging markets that are experiencing internet adoption at accelerated rates, and is ballooning into a Tencent-like internet beast (consequently, they're Tencent-backed as well). A key factor in an investment consideration, is, of course, growth going forward. In the next few sections, I attempt to deconstruct growth using readily available-reported metrics and alternative data to make inferences on prospects.\nGroup Growth Through Cross-Pollination\nBig growth requires cash. Chasing an underpenetrated e-commerce opportunity spanning 100s of millions of consumers requires a lot of cash. Sea has executed well in raising capital and putting it to work for growth, often playing its cards close to the chest pre-2020. The secret sauce for effective cash utilization, however, lies in the company's three-headed ecosystem structure. Shopee's growth would not be possible without the preceding success of Garena. And it's fair to say that SeaMoney's odds of success are substantially better because of Shopee's proliferation. The following diagram explains this.\nSource: Author, Logos from Sea Group Media Resources\nA popular concept in venture capital is the \"Valley of Death\". A freshly funded startup enterprise tends to burn cash to invest in product development, overhead, sales, etc. It continues to burn cash until it finds product-market fit, and revenues eventually grow large enough to make the system work and turn the company cash flow generative. Businesses are vulnerable from a financial standpoint during the cash burn and have to beat the clock as their limited cash pours out rapidly until sales balance out expenditure. Many seed-stage startups just die due to this. Since venture capital proliferated in the last two decades and access to private funding has supplied enormous cash ammunition to growth businesses post product-market fit, the burn phase has extended to the public markets as well. If a public company's strategy doesn't work, it tends to downsize, get mildly profitable at modest growth rates, and turn into an acquisition target. Alternatively, it may collect in the vast land of unfulfilled public tech stocks. That's the anatomy of a modern tech company in a nutshell.\nExpanding upon this concept, Sea Group isn't one company. It's a lot like three companies. As of 2021, Garena is well out of the cash flow valley of death, Shopee is burning big cash but is seemingly at a trough, and SeaMoney is just getting started. Proceeds from mature segments like Garena are used to pollinate growth in segments that have lower market penetration and longer growth runways (like Shopee & SeaMoney).In totality, Sea Group is an ecosystem that continues to evolve with the next big company still embedded within, still in the making, all the time.What's impressive is that Shopee's market potential is larger than Garena's, and SeaMoney has an even larger theoretical market though any success might be early to call. The access to cash makes Sea Group's growth outright suffocating for competitors because individual non-ecosystems simply cannot compete on pricing, marketing budgets, and moderate economies of scale in the case of e-commerce. That's not to take away from Sea's excellent product and sales execution anyway. The following sections break down the three sub-companies and draw inferences from their growth metrics.\nGarena (Digital Entertainment)\nSource: Author,Data from Company Filings\nThe charts above pertain to the Digital Entertainment segment, with the marked lines displaying YoY (Year-over-Year), and QoQ (Quarter-over-Quarter) percentage growth. Gross Bookings are the key top-line metric as they represent revenues that are yet to be recognized on the GAAP front. Due to the nature of in-app purchases and other payments made on apps like Free Fire etc., there's a fairly substantial difference between the two. Previously reported as Adjusted Revenues, Gross Bookings have held strong and have recently recorded 10% QoQ growth for the first quarter even though the pandemic has been easing off with a reopening trend. Q1-Q3 2020 saw rapid growth, while the last few quarters have tapered down to levels that are seemingly more muted. This should be expected to continue.\nIt is worth mentioning how Free Fire has stuck around instead of temporarily leading top mobile gaming charts like most other games. In the gaming world, you have temporarily viral games, and then you have games that have a dedicated following across millions of users that evolve and provide engagement over sustained periods of time. The latter includes Call of Duty, PUBG, League of Legends, and Fortnite to name a few. Ultimately, the revenues of these games are predictable and sticky enough. It appears as though Free Fire has joined this group.\nThe way Free Fire was built from the ground up is relatively contrarian. It's optimized to work on cheaper Android-powered smartphones instead of consoles and dedicated devices that are often seen as staple purchases for many gamers in developed countries. Getting a Switch, Xbox, or PC for most people in emerging markets is a serious expense. With Free Fire, you can get away with what you already have in India, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia. All you need is a smartphone and you're getting bang for your buck gaming and entertainment. This aspect has made it a perfect emerging market game.While most of the industry was focused on higher ticket experiences, Garena's contrarian outlook on making a game specifically for ignored categories of mobile players has helped it succeed.\n\nSource: Author, Data from Company Filings\nDespite going after large populations of price-sensitive emerging market gamers, we see a surprising number of users actually paying for in-app purchases every quarter. QPU growth has outpaced QAU growth, with a larger proportion of the overall user mix trending towards paying users over time (11.4%, 12.0%, and 12.3% respectively for the last three quarters). This is key for the division's bookings and revenues. About a year ago, I expressed concern regarding the over-reliance on Free Fire as a sustainable cash source. I questioned whether it was truly here to stay and won't be replaced by the next hot game. This concern was abated when I learned that the e-sports events were amassing millions of viewers, the game continued to evolve with seasons and geography-specific features, and the social media angle that resulted in network effects across players.It's impressive enough for a game to go to #1, but to stay in the top charts for 2-years running requires some excellent execution.\nHere's a table of Play Store rankings for the \"Games: Action\" category. I've included the Play Store since the majority of emerging market users are on Android as opposed to iOS.\n\n\n\nIndia\nIndonesia\nPakistan\nBrazil\nNigeria\nBangladesh\nMexico\nPhilippines\nVietnam\nThailand\n\n\nDownloads: Gaming\n10\n17\n18\n8\n7\n3\n11\n135\n11\n10\n\n\nDownloads: Gaming Action\n2\n4\n3\n2\n1\n1\n3\n27\n2\n2\n\n\nGrossing: Gaming\n1\n1\n2\n1\n8\n2\n1\n20\n1\n1\n\n\nGrossing: Gaming Action\n1\n1\n2\n1\n2\n1\n1\n4\n1\n1\n\n\n\nSource: App Annie, As of 28th May 2021\nThe above charts are compiled from some of the most populated emerging market countries I could find, along with my free App Annie account. While new downloads might have reduced over the last two quarters from the pandemic boost last year, the numbers are still impressive and Free Fire remains the top-grossing game amongst most of the geographies above. Importantly, it is the consistency of these rankings over time.\nGoing by the growth metrics, long-term engagement is likely to be sustained, but there should be a sequential slowdown in new user adds and incremental gross bookings in the coming months.This is consistent with what the management expects and reasonable given the reopening and saturation of the game across the global market. On the bright side, Digital Entertainment recorded an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 64% last quarter that should scale proportionately with gross bookings. After building out the game, there isn't too much in terms of costs to take away from the bottom line. Large sales and marketing expenditure isn't quite needed now that the game has global network effects. It's really about back-end, maintenance, and continued development work to keep evolving the already successful game and ecosystem.\nShopee (E-Commerce)\nThe following two charts present gross orders and gross merchandise value (GMV) for the e-commerce division.\n\nSource: Author, Data from Company Filings\nThe trends are similar across both charts. Q2 2020 saw acceleration due to the pandemic, Q4 2020 saw a seasonal high, and Q1 2021 saw QoQ deceleration going out of the holiday season across most geographies. As Gross Orders have outpaced GMV, we can conclude that more people are ordering cheaper items on the platform on average. If we consider seasonality, the 5-6% QoQ growth in Q1 2021 isn't particularly concerning and we'll likely see a sequential pickup in the next quarter. It's fair to expect the reopening trend to put some downward pressure on growth but the long term feasibility of the platform has likely cemented itself for consumers. The convenience and product pricing on e-commerce is simply hard to compete with for brick & mortar, and we're not going back to pre-pandemic levels of online retail again. The following earnings release excerpt provides some colour on e-commerce GAAP Revenue.\n\n GAAP revenue was US$922.3 million, up 250.4% year-on-year.\n\n\n GAAP revenue included US$715.9 million of GAAP marketplace revenue, up 285.0% year-on-year, and US$206.4 million of GAAP product revenue, up 167.1% year-on-year.\n\n\nSource:Q1 2021 Earnings Press Release\n\nComparing the above information to the GMV chart, we can infer thatSales have substantially outpaced GMV growth. This indicates a very deliberate move by the company to increase their take rates in dominant geographies.Take rates are a function of the GMV and represent the proportion of the total GMV that makes it to revenues. As the standard consumer internet company goes, you expand and acquire customers at all costs, then you increase prices and get profitable after capturing a market and habituating consumers to your platform. Overall, the actions have also decreased Adjusted EBITDA losses substantially and that allows Sea to play the balancing cash flow act on demand.\n\n Both in Southeast Asia and in Taiwan, Shopee ranked first in the Shopping category by average monthly active users and total time spent in-app on Android for the first quarter of 2021, according to App Annie.\n\n\n In Indonesia, where Shopee further accelerated its year-on-year growth in gross orders, it continued to rank first by average monthly active users and total time spent in app on Android in the Shopping category for the first quarter of 2021, according to App Annie.\n\n\nSource:Q1 2021 Earnings Press Release\n\nFrom a high-level view, Southeast Asia & Taiwan seem pretty much covered. However, within this region, Indonesia still presents the fiercest battleground for Shopee as it competes against the SoftBank-backed Tokopedia. The following charts show monthly website visits for both companies.\nSource:Southeast Asia Map of eCommerce, iPrice Group\nMonthly web visits from the iPrice Group show that Tokopedia saw more traffic (not necessarily sales) during the last quarter while it was behind during the last few. However, on mobile (App Store & Android), Shopee is the undisputed leader in the Shopping category. This is reassuring since mobile e-commerce has been outpacing total e-commerce as a category in almost every geography across every platform.\n\n\n\nIndonesia Mobile Rankings\nQ1 20\nQ2 20\nQ3 20\nQ4 20\nQ1 21\n\n\nShopee App Store\n1\n1\n1\n1\n1\n\n\nShopee PlayStore\n1\n1\n1\n1\n1\n\n\nTokopedia App Store\n2\n2\n2\n2\n2\n\n\nTokopedia PlayStore\n3\n3\n4\n4\n4\n\n\n\nSource: Southeast Asia Map of eCommerce, iPrice Group\nI would conclude that Tokopedia is a key competitor that needs to be watched closely and will prevent Shopee from exercising its take rates more liberally in the country. Furthermore, Indonesia represents the largest Southeast Asian market for e-commerce.Cross-pollination isn't just occurring across Sea's segments but also across Shopee's different e-commerce geographies.Profits from Shopee Thailand, for example, may be used to bring forth more competitive product pricing to Shopee Indonesia. Tokopedia is distinctly e-Commerce and limited to Indonesia, and likely doesn't have these internal cash generative advantages.\nLet's take a look at what's happening across the globe in Latin America. Shopee is growing like wildfire in Mexico and Brazil. The charts below represent recent data as of late May.\nSource: App Annie, Rankings by Country in the \"Shopping\" category\nBrazil and Mexico together make up for a population of ~330 million. The other e-commerce star in the category, MercadoLibre (MELI) ranks behind Shopee on Android for both Brazil and Mexico. The rankings depend on downloads instead of engagement, and MercadoLibre is often pegged to have a majority market share in Latin America as a whole (dominates Argentina). However, what the above alternative data above tell us is that Shopee has momentum in user share acquisition on an absolute basis. One can infer that more people are downloading Shopee in Mexico and Brazil as of late May compared to MercadoLibre at a faster rate. Higher downloads often translate to higher relatively higher market share gains.\nAdd all the Shopee geographies together and they represent a billion people and a combined GDP of $6.5T according to my calculations (Source for GDP:Worldometer). I reckon this is where to start when drawing up true long-term potential before narrowing down further.\nSeaMoney (Digital Financial Services)\n\nTotal Payment Volumes increased to $3.4B in Q1 21, from $1.0B during the same period last year\nQuarterly Paying Users increased to 26.1 million in Q1 21, from ~10 million during the same period last year\n\nSource:Q1 2021 Earnings Release\nSeaMoney is the umbrella under which Sea Group operates multiple Fintech Apps including Shopee Pay. Current products include payments and payment processing, but if one were to look beyond into other Fintech Apps in China or the West, digital financial services tend to coalesce into super apps. For many people living in Southeast Asia, it isn't even about disruption but rather their first introduction to financial services of any sort. Unfortunately, a glance at the Fintech environment would leave any public market investor a bit confused.\nSource:FintechNews.SG\n26.1 million quarterly paying users (QPUs), and not monthly-PUs or daily-PUs for that matter doesn't give us much granularity in data or how the segment is truly performing. $3.4B in Transaction Payment Volume is somewhat impressive, considering the last quarter saw about $12.6B in GMV on Shopee. Ultimately, the broader adoption of SeaMoney by both merchants and consumers beyond the Shopee platform is important to catalyze network large scale effects. The greater the versatility of SeaMoney across instances in real-life, the better the hold the division would have over consumers. Longer-term, offering just payments is not enough. Credit, Debit, Investing, and other financial services, all in one app have been shown to differentiate the winners from the losers in geographies like China, or in the United States with Cash App by Square (SQ).\nWhat can be said though, is that chances for continued growth, and winning market share are higher due to the group cross-pollination effects and network effects against Shopee customers. I would still see the segment through the eyes of an embedded option in the share price that would produce asymmetric reward if it does expand to more customers.\nThe Runway Ahead\nThe excerpts below were taken from a report published in late 2020 by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company. The report highlights internet spending forecasts over six major markets in Southeast Asia: Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam.\n\nSource:e-Conomy SEA 2020; by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company\nAs a whole, the internet economy in these countries is expected to compound at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 24%, almost tripling from $105B in GMV in 2020 to $309B in 2025. This provides a sense of scale for the region and the internet opportunity that Sea currently operates in as a leader. Note that these numbers exclude Taiwan and Latin America.\nFor Digital Entertainment, Garena's Free Fire market appears to be a lot closer to saturation considering it is already one of the highest-grossing mobile games on the planet. Other Garena endeavours have a chance of success though I'd argue that \"Free Fire\"-like success is hard to come by especially in mobile gaming. Digital Financial Services is still early to call at least until it achieves broader mass adoption across the region. 26 million paying users is significant, though we'll have to give the business time until we can call it a meaningful sales contributor that in turn drives the stock price. As of now, it's a cash burn.\nThat leaves e-Commerce as the main sales driver for the company in the next 2-3 years. Here are some country-specific forecasts for e-Commerce by the same source.\nSource:e-Conomy SEA 2020, Local Highlights\nAs one would expect, Indonesia is the largest market. Vietnam is expected to compound at the fastest rate over the next few years. It's important to note that while the CAGRs are drawn in the 20-30% range, 2021 will see the highest rate while 2025 will see the lowest. 40%+ YoY SEA GMV growth for 2021 is quite likely in my opinion while 2025 could be closer to 15%.\nThe above chart uses GMV or Gross Merchandise Value. As discussed earlier, sales are a function of the take rate and the GMV. The take rate increases, the sales increase. Sea does this by dominating geographies and then deliberately increasing the take rate when network effects or the habituation of consumers on Shopee works at scale. Therefore, Sea's sales growth is set to outpace GMV expansion, especially when they widen their lead in a market. Given Latin America is also experiencing rapid Shopee adoption, it is reasonable to expect hyper-growth in the e-Commerce segment for years. The company expects 112% YoY growth for Shopee in FY2021 at the midpoint of their guidance (Source:Q4 20 Transcript).\nWeave the above pieces together, Sea has an immense growth runway. The e-Commerce opportunity indicates that the company can theoretically be in hyper-growth mode for another 2-3 years, well into 2023.\nWith an established competitive moat, if there's one company to bet on to capitalize and win on the $300B internet GMV opportunity for 2025 (not counting Latin America & Taiwan), Sea seems to be it. I expect the management will also come up with newer verticals that could expand their TAM further. Online in-app investing? travel? TV and movies? Streaming? With network effects this good, they have an unfair advantage. The management has already executed across multiple businesses and seems to deeply understand how the emerging market consumer thinks. They've also displayed evidence of tailoring apps, like Free Fire, to individual geography tastes to maximize execution. Let's look at the financials and valuation multiples to see how much of their future success is already factored in.\nGroup Financial Overview\nI previously mentioned the cash flow valley of death and how segments balance out to achieve cash flow generative growth. The company reports Adjusted EBITDA figures by segment that display similar trends. The \"adjustments\" are quite substantial compared to GAAP metrics, but they're a reasonable indicator after removing stock-based compensation, convertible interest payments, and non-core profitability generation. We're looking long-term here, so the game becomes comparing profitability to itself across time rather than other businesses. I'm more interested in trends and margin expansion rather than absolute values for now. The following chart shows how the breakdown balances out.\nSource: Author, Data from Company Filings\nThe trends were seen above follow the cash flow valley diagram. Digital Entertainment is funding Shopee and SeaMoney, and the net result (the bright pink line) is Group Adjusted EBITDA positive for the past four quarters. Going forward, I expect e-Commerce to pass its valley shortly as sales growth decelerates, and expect digital financial services to continue to burn cash at higher amounts sequentially. The group's total financial performance is encapsulated in the chart below:\nSource: Author, Data from Company Filings\nGross Profits have risen due to higher take rates in e-Commerce and improving incremental margins on Digital Entertainment. These margins would come under some pressure as Shopee will outpace Garena, and the lower-margin e-commerce will make a larger proportion of the gross profit mix. Adjusted EBITDA is under control, and while the company is unprofitable on a GAAP basis, I believe it is still fair given that the top-line is growing at triple-digit percentages. Total Revenue for Q4 has grown 12.6% QoQ and 146.7% YoY. On an LTM basis, Revenues have grown 113.7% YoY. With a long-runway ahead, and with the currently phenomenal product and sales execution, Sea Group is a financially healthy company.The profit tradeoff for growth is fair, even though it's a rarity given the sheer scale of the business.\nInvestors would take some relief in the fact that the company has amassed ~$5.8B in Cash & Equivalents on its balance sheet that would fund losses for some time. If need be, there is a profit switch in Shopee that the company can activate that will result in larger take rates to boost profitability. Sellers on the platform may have no choice in such a situation, considering the breadth, reach, and engagement on the Shopee platform and would go along with the asking price. There is a substantial moat here and the resulting pricing power can be exercised on demand to boost profitability. This isn't new information; Amazon's (AMZN) US e-commerce for example has made similar moves.\nValuation\nSource: Koyfin\nGroup Gross Profits are at the 30% range and Shopee specific metrics are expectedly lower. So a 23.7x LTM EV/S multiple is obviously huge. When contextualizing growth prospects and the excellent competitive positioning, the forward EV/S metrics are far more reasonable. According to the Koyfin database, the analyst consensus forward multiples are as follow:\n\nFY 2021 EV/S of 16.0x\nFY 2022 EV/S of 11.1x\nFY 2023 EV/S of 8.3x\n\nSource: Koyfin\nAnalysts have historically been on the side of conservatism for almost every high-growth tech company. Sea Group has almost always beaten its revenue figures though they usually fall slightly short on profitability. The 8.3x for 2023 means it's valued on Tencent-like multiples (adjusted for lower gross profits) but in three years. It is indeed a baby Tencent, and I would also argue that OTCPK:TCEHY itself is somewhat undervalued given the low sentiment surrounding regulations and foreign investments in Chinese tech. Are these multiples reasonable? And where is the upside? I believe SE's current price fair, but the upside will have to come from sustained revenue beats, continued product developments, and mass-scale user acquisition. Multiple compression may need to counter share price dilution, and then actually give us a reasonable rate of return. This is a situation where the following wisdom is applicable in my opinion:\n\n It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price-Warren Buffett\n\nIn my experience, when the quality of the company shines for a fair price, it's still worth an investment. Winners continue to win, and Sea Group is a rockstar business factoring in most qualitative aspects.Given the visionary management (Forrest Li & Co.) and what they've achieved so far, I'd put the odds in their favour.\nSpeaking of odds, there are potential catalysts that could pull the future towards us. One would hypothesise that Shopee winning in Indonesia on a more definitive basis would result in sales getting a boost from a strategic take-rate expansion. Across the planet, the Latin American story is looking impressive and shouldn't be underestimated given the size of Brazil and Mexico. That's an additional 50% e-Commerce TAM compared to Southeast Asia. SeaMoney still has a lot to prove but the network effects from Shopee should help sustain an onboarding of customers. The overall business has optionality. By that I mean, embedded options that could be triggered by a few developments and unlock share price appreciation. These are worth a premium.\nI'm currently long SE. I reckon there's still substantial outperformance potential over benchmarks though the easy alpha potential like we saw in 2020 is unlikely to present itself ever again. The bull thesis is too obvious now, everyone knows it, but it should still play out with alpha in my opinion. Every tech hedge fund in the world seems to be holding SE, and I agree with them. On the other hand, let's look at risks.\nRisks\n\nFree Fire Concentration:The mobile gaming industry is fast, dynamic, and always changing. The next great game is always around the corner and it's entirely possible that Free Fire's popularity fades and the accompanying cash generation dries up. I believe this risk has reduced over the last year, but it's still worth considering.\nCompetition:Tokopedia in Indonesia, MercadoLibre in Latin America, and other internet businesses like Grab & Gojek. There's plenty of competition at multiple fronts throughout the ecosystem.\nOverly aggressive expansion strategy:Sea Group's expansion into 7-8 countries and counting demonstrates a uniquely aggressive growth strategy. While their approach has worked out so far, it may work against them in the future. Knowing when to give up in a market that doesn't play out can stop unnecessary cash burn when the prize isn't significant enough.\nSystemic Risks:As a GAAP net loss business, Sea Group is subject to higher volatility, deep drawdowns, and sector/style selloffs. The sell-off in March is a recent example.\nMacro:Regulations and geopolitical factors in the emerging market geographies are typically more volatile than those in the US. A variety of macro risks and F/X risks are present at large.\n\nEnding Notes\nConcerns about overvaluation are perhaps warranted on a short-term outlook. In this situation, I do not have a strong near-term opinion but instead, harbour conviction in the company's long-term prospects. If one were to think in years rather than months, it is apparent to me that no competitor comes close to Sea Group in its chances for dominating e-commerce market share in most of its operating geographies. Indonesia is a key country to watch as Tokopedia is still putting up a fight. I'd put the odds on Sea since Tokopedia is a vanilla e-commerce player and doesn't have the scale and cross-pollination advantage unless they merge with another giant. Latin America is also looking like it will be a meaningful push to the top-line if not near term profitability. With excellent execution, Sea Group is leveraging its competitive positioning and is winning more often than not. The cross-pollination effect is a key advantage for internal cash generation and will help sustain the relentless growth as the business captures the massive opportunity that remains.\nI imagine many experienced investors that caught the Amazon (AMZN) train early would look back on their investment as a staple component of their portfolio over the years. In my opinion, Sea Group offers a similar proposition a bit earlier in its lifecycle. Currently trading at a market cap of $130B, Sea can theoretically double in a few years once again in my opinion. Tencent in a duopolistic landscape (withBABA) features a $748B market cap across a 1.3 billion Chinese population. SE can go a third of that in a few years with a monopolistic position in Southeast Asia, scaling to a 1 billion strong emerging market population. This isn't a pure alpha opportunity as multiples have substantially expanded, but I would ballpark the company to deliver a 20%+ compounded return for investors that continue to hold it for a few years.I'm long SE.\n*****\nThanks for reading! On a separate note, I'm excited to announce that I will be releasing a Marketplace subscription service soon called The Abstract Portfolio. High growth tech investing can involve a lot of fragmented information, sentiment, and noise. The Abstract Portfolio aims to bring focus and clarity by weaving together what matters and filtering out what doesn't. The service will feature a concentrated portfolio of cherry-picked stocks backed by rigorous fundamental research, assembled to deliver high absolute returns. Stay tuned!","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":44,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":80,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"isTiger":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"url":"/m/post/113438170"}