By Sam Boughedda
Investing.com -- Shares of Sea Ltd (NYSE:SE) have jumped 15% in early Tuesday trading after the company posted earnings before the bell, beating profit and revenue expectations.
The tech company, headquartered in Singapore, posted a loss per share of $0.80 on revenue of $2.9 billion, above estimates of a $1.26 loss per share and revenue of $2.86 billion.
The company said it is on track to achieving its previous projections of profitability in Asia markets.
"Shopee and SeaMoney continued to enjoy operating leverage and efficiency gain as they scale and strengthen their market leadership positions," said Forrest Li, Sea’s Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer.
"While Garena experienced headwinds in its growth post-COVID, we saw some preliminary positive effects from our efforts to improve user engagement in Free Fire. In particular, the monthly user trends for Free Fire began to show some early signs of stabilizing toward the end of the first quarter," added Li.
The company's Free Fire game was banned in India in February, following orders from the Indian Government to block China-linked apps in the country. Meanwhile, it decided to shut its Shopee operations in India not long after entering the country
While Sea is a Singaporean company, India banned the Free Fire app due to links to China through its founders, who are Chinese-born, while Chinese gaming giant Tencent (OTC:TCEHY) holds a stake.
Sea's e-commerce revenue for the quarter came in at $1.5 billion, up 64.4% year-on-year, with digital entertainment revenue at $1.1 billion, up 45.3%, and digital financial services revenue at $236 million.
Sea said that due to elevated macro uncertainties, it now sees a wider dispersion of potential scenarios for Shopee for 2022 and has lowered its e-commerce guidance to between $8.5 billion and $9.1 billion, representing 71.8% growth from 2021 compared to the previous guidance of between $8.9 billion and $9.1 billion.