Shares of Sea Ltd (NYSE:SE) are up almost 8% in pre-open Tuesday after the company reported much better than expected Q4 results.
Sea posted a surprising profit of $0.72 per share while analysts were expecting a loss per share of $0.64. Revenue came in at $3.45 billion, ahead of the $3.06B consensus. The Ebitda beat was driven by the e-commerce outperformance, which delivered $191.6 million in adjusted profit while analysts were calling for a loss of $349.2M.
“We are starting 2023 on a much stronger footing,” said Forrest Li, Sea’s chairman and group chief executive officer. “Our decisive pivot to focus on efficiency and profitability since late last year is already driving meaningful bottom line improvements.”
“Given the macro uncertainty and our recent strong pivot, we are closely monitoring the market environment and we will continue to adjust our pace and fine-tune our operations accordingly. While there may be near-term fluctuations in our performance, we remain highly confident in the long-term growth potential of our markets and fully focused on capturing this opportunity.”
E-commerce revenue surged to $2.23B, beating the market view by roughly $200M. Digital entertainment unit fueled the massive beat by reporting $948.9M in revenue, beating the $667.3M consensus.
Sea shares are up over 26% year-to-date.