Investment Thesis

In this article, I aimed to use alternative data to track the progress of both Shopee and Garena. According to Google Trend and SensorTower, Shopee continues to lead Southeast Asia (“SEA”) as it is ranked as the no.1 shopping app across the region. In Brazil, it is ranked 2nd, surpassing Mercado Libre. For Garena, Free Fire’s monthly active users are stabilizing, and its new game releases can be tracked via data.ai, with Primitive Era being the most recent launch. This indicates that the management is working on developing their own games, along with Phoenix Lab. The company’s overall hiring has slowed down rapidly with October 2022 being the lowest in terms of job openings. This goes to show that management is working on accelerating the route to profitability.

And if you have not already known, I have also recently published a deep dive into why I think Sea Limited’s (NYSE:SE) long-term fundamentals are intact and why its valuation may be attractive for investors in the long term.

Shopee

Google Trends

Google Trend shows that Shopee continues to lead its competitors primarily Tokopedia (IDX: GOTO), Lazada (BABA), and Bukalapak (IDX: BUKA) by a mile. Although, we did see that there was a slight deceleration at the end.

Rankings

Shopee has consistently ranked as the number 2 shopping app in Brazil, surpassing MercadoLibre (MELI), although SheIn continues to lead…