Sea Group has long been seen as one of the more resilient Asian platform companies, with a diversified portfolio including gaming, e-commerce, and digital financial services. Sea’s fintech business, Monee, accounts for less than 15% of its overall revenue but has been a consistent bright spot for the company, which faces intense pressure in the ultra-competitive e-commerce segment.
Monee is indeed growing rapidly. In the fourth quarter its revenue jumped 54.3% annually to US$1.1 billion, while adjusted EBITDA was US$263.1 million, up 24.7% year-on-year. Consumer and SME lending was the main growth driver. As of December 31, 2025, consumer and SME loans’ principal outstanding was US$9.2 billion, up 80.4% year-on-year.
Sea Group has been a listed company for almost a decade, giving investors plenty of time to become accustomed to its business model. Still, public markets can be unforgiving, and Sea’s stock price has plummeted almost 25% over the past month and more than 50% over the past six months despite strong revenue growth.
To that end, investors reacted harshly to Sea Group’s fourth-quarter earnings report. Though revenue growth was solid, Sea’s net income of $410.9 million missed analyst expectations of $442 million. Unsurprisingly, e-commerce – which has never been an easy business to make profitable – was the main culprit. Increased investment in the Shopee VIP program and logistics to defend market share has pressured short-term profitability. At the same time, intense rivalry with ByteDance’s TikTok Shop and Alibaba’s Lazada in Southeast Asia is forcing higher promotional spending and impacting margins.
Close behind e-commerce in compressing Sea’s margins is intensifying fintech competition. This is not a new development. Monee’s peers like Grab and GoTo have been at the fintech game for almost as long, if not longer (depending on which business units we include in the analysis) than Sea. And they are just as determined to build out digital banks, payment services, insurance, wealth management, etc. across Southeast Asia.
That said, the fundamentals for Monee are strong. As CEO Forrest Li noted in Sea’s fourth quarter earnings call, in 2025, Monee’s annual revenue reached $3.8 billion, representing 60% year-on-year growth. Adjusted EBITDA exceeded $1 billion, representing 43% year-on-year growth.
Notably, the Shopee-Monee integration continues apace. We believe that boosting that ecosystem remains Sea Group’s best fintech bet overall, especially for digital banks eager to attract retail customers.
To that end, by the end of 2025, off-Shopee SPayLater loans grew over 300% year-on-year, accounting for over 15% of our total SPayLater portfolio. In Malaysia, close to 30% of SPayLater usage was already off Shopee. “Our success with off-Shopee SPayLater has been driven by the close attention we pay to user experience,” Li said. He added that Sea ensured SPayLater could be activated in seconds and used seamlessly for in-store purchases. “We integrated SPayLater with national QR payment systems across key markets, making it much easier for consumers to use in day-to-day purchases,” he said.
Li added that Sea is making good progress growing its products and services beyond credit, from digital banking to insurance and more. “We believe Monee will be a significant long-term profit contributor for us,” he said.
Compared to Sea’s digital banking operations in the mature markets of Singapore and Malaysia, SeaBank operating in Indonesia and the Philippines appears to have higher growth potential. Both are backed by Sea Group’s robust Shopee ecosystem, positioning them to scale quickly via established user bases. And both of the digital banks used to be incumbent lenders before Sea acquired them, which means they started off in a much more competitive position than most pure-play online lenders.
That said, Sea seems intent on making its Singaporean digital bank, Maribank, successful—and maybe in the long term it will be. In January, Sea ploughed another S$75 million into Maribank, bringing the online lender’s overall paid-up capital to about US$639 million.