Sea Ltd (NYSE:SE) stock fell 6.61% (As on November 16, 11:08:33 AM UTC-4, Source: Google Finance) after the company said it will renew its focus on profitability instead of outright, blistering growth. The company fell deeper into the red in the third quarter ending September, as adjusted EBITDA loss widened to $358 million. That’s compared to the $166 million loss in the same period last year. After adjusting for US$77.4 million of severance and early lease termination related costs for the quarter, adjusted EBITDA improved by 44.7% quarter-on-quarter. E-commerce and financial services units saw higher EBITDA year-on-year for the third quarter ending September, but was offset by a disappointing gaming sales performance. Adjusted EBITDA loss for Shopee was $495.7 million, improving by 27.5% year-on-year. EBITDA loss of its digital financial services unit, which includes Shopee Pay and its buy now, pay later service SPayLater, narrowed to $67.7 million, improving by 57.4% compared to a year ago, “predominantly driven by more targeted sales and marketing spending for the mobile wallet business.” Meanwhile, its gaming arm Garena saw adjusted EBITDA drop about 60% year-on-year to $289.9 million for the third quarter. As of September 30, 2022, cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments was US$7.3 billion, representing a net change of US$(485.1) million from June 30, 2022.

Further, Sea also lowered its expected bookings for Garena for the full year of 2022 to be between $2.6 billion and $2.8 billion, as compared to the previous guidance of between $2.9 billion to $3.1 billion, due to “rising macro uncertainties.” Sea said it does not intend to provide any guidance for 2023 for its businesses, given the ongoing macro uncertainties.

SE in the third quarter of FY 22 has reported the adjusted loss per share of 66 cents, beating the analysts’ estimates for the adjusted loss per share of 99 cents. The company had reported the adjusted revenue growth of 17.4 percent to $3.2 billion in the third quarter of FY 22, beating the analysts’ estimates for revenue of $3.01 billion. Core marketplace revenue, mainly consisting of transaction-based fees and advertising revenues, was up 54.1% year-on-year to US$1.0 billion. Faster growth of core marketplace revenue was one of the factors contributing to the strong improvement in Shopee’s profitability in the quarter.  Value-added services revenue, mainly consisting of revenues related to logistics services, was up 20.3% year-on-year to US$0.6 billion. Gross orders totaled 2.0 billion for the quarter, increasing by 19.2% year-on-year. GMV was US$19.1 billion for the quarter, increasing by 13.5% year-on-year.