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Sea Limited. Equity Research! Part 2/3
Welcome to Part 2 of the Sea Limited Deep Dive!
In Part 1, we explored how Sea came to be and how this fast-growing technology company from Singapore makes money! (Read Below)
Today, we are looking at Sea’s competition and exploring the risks the company must manage while operating a fintech and e-commerce business in Southeast Asia!
Additionally, we will discuss the management team and look at the moats of the company.
Let’s take a look!
1. Management
2. Moats
3. Competitors
4. Risks
5. Part 3
1. Management
As mentioned earlier, the company was founded in 2009 as a digital video game distributor, Garena Interactive. Today, more than a decade later, all three co-founders are still running the company, with Gang Ye serving as COO, David Chen as Shopee CPO, and Forrest Li as CEO.
Gang’s and Forrest’s stories are quite similar, as both were originally born in China, but moved to the US for university. Gang holds a degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, while Forrest got his MBA at Stanford. Both would eventually move to Singapore, where they would meet David and create what would become Sea.
Forrest Li owns around 9% of the company, Gang Ye 5%, while David Chen 3%!
The salary of the management is set by an independent compensation committee. The members of the committee are appointed by the board of directors of Sea Limited, and are responsible for setting bonus goals and KPI’s for the CEO.
The total cash compensation of the entire management was $2.96M in 2024, a relatively modest amount compared to the salaries of similarly sized companies.
However,