Sea Ltd’s (冬海) billionaire founder declared a 5 percent pay increase for most employees starting in July, sending a strong signal to investors that he thinks the e-commerce and gaming business has turned the corner after years of bleeding losses.
Workers who joined on or before March 31 would get the salary bump, Sea chief executive officer Forrest Li (李小冬) said in a memo to staff yesterday.
He said Sea has reached “self-sufficiency,” as its cash balance is increasing rather than shrinking every quarter, a goal it achieved months ahead of a target set last year.
The across-the-board hike marks a reversal from just a couple of quarters ago, when Li surprised investors with a company-wide salary freeze and deep layoffs.
The Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊)-backed Southeast Asian Internet leader’s about-face could presage a broader recovery for the region’s tech sector, which has endured deep job losses and downward-spiraling valuations after a COVID-19-era online spending boom sputtered out last year.
Sea reported its first-ever quarterly net profit in March, about 14 years after its founding.
The company last year took brutal measures to convince investors of its profit-making ability, including cutting thousands of jobs, retreating from major markets and slashing more than US$700 million from its quarterly sales and marketing expenses.
In his 1,300-word missive, sent out about a week before the company is set to report its next earnings, Li addressed head-on the painful struggles Sea went through during its turnaround effort.
Sea was at one point in 2020 the world’s best-performing stock, buoyed by hopes that the company would embody Southeast Asia’s nascent e-commerce and entertainment boom.
However, the company lost about US$160 billion of market value since a peak in October 2021 on questions about its money-making prospects and a global decline in tech stocks.
“This past year was probably the most difficult period in the history of our company,” Li said, describing “painful” decisions, including layoffs the management had to take to navigate a worsening business environment.
Last year, Sea cut about 3,500 people from its workforce, its annual report said.
In September last year, the leadership team said they would forgo their salaries and tighten company expense policies until the company reaches self-sufficiency.
“The external environment is still a challenging one,” Li said. “With self-sufficiency, we have a foundation for strong growth once again.”
Semiconductor business between Taiwan and the US is a “win-win” model for both sides given the high level of complementarity, the government said yesterday responding to tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Taiwan is a key link in the global technology supply chain for companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp. Trump said on Monday he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, pharmaceuticals and steel in an effort to get the producers to make them in the US. “Taiwan and the US semiconductor and other technology industries
SMALL AND EFFICIENT: The Chinese AI app’s initial success has spurred worries in the US that its tech giants’ massive AI spending needs re-evaluation, a market strategist said Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) eponymous AI assistant rocketed to the top of Apple Inc’s iPhone download charts, stirring doubts in Silicon Valley about the strength of the US’ technological dominance. The app’s underlying AI model is widely seen as competitive with OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc’s latest. Its claim that it cost much less to train and develop triggered share moves across Asia’s supply chain. Chinese tech firms linked to DeepSeek, such as Iflytek Co (科大訊飛), surged yesterday, while chipmaking tool makers like Advantest Corp slumped on the potential threat to demand for Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators. US stock
The US Federal Reserve is expected to announce a pause in rate cuts on Wednesday, as policymakers look to continue tackling inflation under close and vocal scrutiny from US President Donald Trump. The Fed cut its key lending rate by a full percentage point in the final four months of last year and indicated it would move more cautiously going forward amid an uptick in inflation away from its long-term target of 2 percent. “I think they will do nothing, and I think they should do nothing,” Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis former president Jim Bullard said. “I think the
SUBSIDIES: The nominee for commerce secretary indicated the Trump administration wants to put its stamp on the plan, but not unravel it entirely US President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency in charge of a US$52 billion semiconductor subsidy program declined to give it unqualified support, raising questions about the disbursement of funds to companies like Intel Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電). “I can’t say that I can honor something I haven’t read,” Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, said of the binding CHIPS and Science Act awards in a confirmation hearing on Wednesday. “To the extent monies have been disbursed, I would commit to rigorously enforcing documents that have been signed by those companies to make sure we get
RSS