Forrest Li, chief executive officer of Sea Ltd., in Singapore, on Wednesday, May 3, 2023.
Ore Huiying | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Shares of Southeast Asian tech giant Sea plummeted this week after missing revenue expectations and saying it would focus on growth over profits — a reversal from recent cost-cutting measures in the face of economic uncertainty. But analysts said the pivot is a move to defend market share.
On Tuesday, the company reported revenue that missed analyst expectations, coming in at $3.1 billion versus the $3.2 billion expected, according to a Refinitiv consensus estimate.
While Forrest Li, Sea’s chairman and group CEO, said the company has “achieved self-sufficiency” and is “now on firmer footing,” he said Sea will now “reaccelerate investments in growth.”
The stock plunged after Tuesday’s earnings report, ending the session 28% lower.
Just last year, Sea overhauled its business to focus on profitability amid high inflation and interest rates. At the same time, investors were pressuring tech firms to move toward profitability. Other regional tech giants like GoTo and Grab slashed costs by conducting mass layoffs and reducing customer incentives.
Sea’s top management gave up their salaries, while the company froze salaries for most employees and paid out lower bonuses. Local media reported the company laid off more than 7,000 employees in six months.
Defending your market share is the right strategy in e-commerce. You don’t want to give a foot in the door to the new player. That’s what we think Sea’s doing.
Sachin Mittal
Head of telecom, media and technology researh, DBS Bank
As a result, Sea posted positive net income for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2022 and that figure has remained in the black since. Before that, Sea was largely unprofitable, amassing billions of dollars in losses since its inception.
“The good news for them is that they have built up sort of a buffer to increase some of its spending, with all of its segments now profitable,” said Woo.
Boosting e-commerce
In particular, Li said the company has “started, and will continue, to ramp up our investments in growing the e-commerce business across our markets.” JPMorgan said those investments could take the form of expensive shipping subsidies and discount vouchers.
“Given the weakening macro environment and increasing competition from Lazada and TikTok Shop, Sea probably did not have much of a choice but to start spending to at least maintain its market share in the region,” said Jonathan Woo, senior research analyst at Phillip Securities Research.
Sea’s decision to accelerate ecommerce investments in growth is likely to materially weigh on its earnings and share price in the near-term.
JPMorgan
Head of telecom, media and technology research, DBS Bank
Shopee remains the market leader in the region, with a gross merchandise volume of $47.9 billion in 2022, according to a report from Momentum Works. Lazada’s GMV came in at $20.1 billion in the same year.
“In our view, the pivot could be driven by competition along with Sea positioning itself for an increase in consumer spend, and to grow live-streaming and in-house logistics,” said JPMorgan analysts.
Right strategy?
But Sea’s decision to ramp up investments is likely to impact earnings, said JPMorgan. The bank downgraded Sea’s rating from “overweight” to “neutral” with a price target of $40.50, representing 2.56% upside from the stock’s Thursday close of $39.49.
“Sea’s decision to accelerate ecommerce investments in growth is likely to materially weigh on its earnings and share price in the near-term,” said JPMorgan.
“Sea could potentially incur heavy investments in second half of 2023 (a busy campaign period) resulting in earnings decline in second half.”
Sachin Mittal, head of telecom, media and technology research at DBS Bank, is bullish on Sea. The firm has a price target of $90 for Sea, representing roughly 160.9% upside.
“Defending your market share is the right strategy in e-commerce. You don’t want to give a foot in the door to the new player. That’s what we think Sea’s doing,” said Mittal.
But TikTok Shop is “not such a large threat” to Shopee, he said.
“TikTok doesn’t have in-house logistics. They use third-party players to provide e-commerce packages,” Mittal said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Wednesday. Unlike TikTok Shop, Shopee and Lazada have their own logistics networks of warehouses and fulfilment centers around the world.
“This is one of the ways to compete with TikTok. TikTok is still very small. It’s not such a large threat,” said Mittal. TikTok Shop’s current GMV is only a fraction of Shopee and Lazada’s.
— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc., during Stanford’s 2024 Business, Government, and Society forum in Stanford, California, April 3, 2024.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Google is going to spend $10 billion more this year than it previously expected due to the growing demand for cloud services, which has created a backlog, executives said Wednesday.
As part of its second quarter earnings, the company increased its forecast for capital expenditures in 2025 to $85 billion due to “strong and growing demand for our Cloud products and services” as it continues to expand infrastructure to power more AI services that use its cloud technology. That’s up from the $75 billion projection that Google provided in February, which was already above the $58.84 billion that Wall Street expected at the time.
The increased forecast comes as demand for cloud services surges across the tech industry as AI services increase in popularity. As a result, companies are doubling down on infrastructure to keep pace with demand and are planning multi‑year buildouts of data centers.
In its second quarter earnings, Google reported that cloud revenues increased by 32% to $13.6 billion in the period. The demand is so high for Google’s cloud services that it now amounts to a $106 billion backlog, Alphabet finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said during the company’s post-earnings conference call.
“It’s a tight supply environment,” she said.
The vast majority of Alphabet’s capital spend was invested in technical infrastructure during the second quarter, with approximately two-thirds of investments going to servers and one-third in data center and networking equipment, Ashkenazi said.
She added that the updated outlook reflects additional investment in servers, the timing of delivery of servers and “an acceleration in the pace of data center construction, primarily to meet Cloud customer demand.”
Ashkenazi said that despite the company’s “improved” pace of getting servers up and running, investors should expect further increase in capital spend in 2026 “due to the demand as well as growth opportunities across the company.” She didn’t specify what those opportunities are but said the company will provide more details on a future earnings call.
“We’re increasing capacity with every quarter that goes by,” Ashkenazi said.
Due to the increased spend, Google will have to record more expenses over time, which will make profits look smaller, she said.
“Obviously, we’re working hard to bring more capacity online,” Ashkenazi said.
The SK Hynix Inc. logo is displayed on a glass door at the company’s office in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. SK Hynix aims to select a U.S. site for its advanced chip packaging plant and break ground there around the first quarter of next year.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
South Korea’s SK Hynix on Thursday posted record operating profit and revenuein the second quarter on sustained demand for its high bandwidth memory technology used in generative AI chipsets.
Here are SK Hynix’s second-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:
Revenue: 22.23 trillion won ($16.17 billion) vs. 20.56 trillion won
Operating profit: 9.21 trillion won vs. 9 trillion won
Revenue rose about 35% in the June quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, while operating profit rose nearly 69%, year on year.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, revenue rose 26%, while operating profit jumped 24%.
The company said in a statement that it enjoyed strong demand and favorable pricing conditions in the first half of the year. SK Hynix added that there was a low likelihood of sharp demand corrections for the rest of 2025, due to stable customer inventory levels and expected demand from new product launches.
SK Hynix is a leading supplier of dynamic random access memory — a type of semiconductor memory commonly found in PCs, workstations and servers that is used to store data and program code.
Much of the company’s recent success can be credited to its business in high bandwidth memory, or HBM — a type of DRAM used in artificial intelligence servers.
SK Hynix has established itself as the global leader in HBM, supplying clients such as U.S. AI darling Nvidia. In the first quarter, this had seen the company overtake rival Samsung Electronics in the global DRAM market for the first time, according to Counterpoint Research.
A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month estimated that SK Hynix had tied Samsung’s combined DRAM and NAND revenues in the second quarter, with both vying for the top position in the global memory market. NAND is a type of flash memory that is commonly used in storage devices.
Samsung and US.-based memory maker Micron Technology are both seeking to catch up to SK Hynix in the HBM space. However, analysts expect SK Hynix’s dominance to persist in the short-term.
“As of now, I believe SK Hynix still holds its leadership in the HBM race … despite Samsung’s and Micron’s catch‑up efforts,” said Ray Wang, research director of semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at The Futurum Group.
“I expect this edge to persist through the rest of 2025 and extend into 2026,” he added.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna appears at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 16, 2024.
Stefan Wermuth | Bloomberg | Getty Images
IBM shares fell as much as 5% in extended trading on Wednesday after the tech conglomerate issued second-quarter results that topped Wall Street projections.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $2.80 adjusted vs. $2.64 expected
Revenue: $16.98 billion vs. $16.59 billion
IBM’s revenue increased nearly 8% year over year in the quarter, according to a statement. Growth in the first quarter was below 1%. Net income, which includes costs related to acquisitions, rose to $2.19 billion, or $2.31 per share, from $1.83 billion, or $1.96 per share, a year ago.
Software revenue climbed about 10% to $7.39 billion, exceeding the $7.43 billion consensus among analysts surveyed by StreetAccount. Hybrid cloud revenue, including Red Hat, showed 16% growth. The software unit’s gross margin of 83.9% was barely narrower than StreetAccount’s 84.0% consensus.
Revenue from consulting rose almost 3% to $5.31 billion, higher than StreetAccount’s $5.16 billion consensus. Infrastructure revenue went up 14% to $4.14 billion, above the $3.75 billion StreetAccount average estimate.
During the quarter, IBM announced the next-generation z17 mainframe computer and the acquisition of data and artificial intelligence consulting firm Hakkoda.
IBM called for over $13.5 billion in 2025 free cash flow, similar to a projection from April. The company still sees at least 5% revenue growth at constant currency for the year.
As of Wednesday’s close, IBM shares were up 28% so far in 2025, while the S&P 500 index has gained around 8% in the same period.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
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