Sea Ltd (冬海) is making its first major job cuts in areas spanning shopping and food, joining other tech firms downsizing this year in anticipation of unprecedented market and economic volatility.
Southeast Asia’s largest tech firm plans to let employees go across its e-commerce division, Shopee, Chris Feng (馮陟旻), the unit’s chief executive officer, said in an e-mail to employees seen by Bloomberg News.
It would reduce headcount across its ShopeeFood and ShopeePay divisions in Southeast Asia.
The cuts would also extend across its Mexico, Argentina and Chile teams, as well as the cross-border team supporting Spain.
Sea faces increasing pressure to slash costs as growth in its main commerce business comes off a high during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While mobile gaming has proven more resilient, the company has lost about US$160 billion of its market value since a high in October last year as investors begin to scrutinize its longer-term trajectory.
“Given elevated uncertainty in the broader economy, we believe that it is prudent to make certain difficult, but important adjustments to enhance our operational efficiency and focus our resources,” Feng wrote in the e-mail.
He said the job cuts are to ensure that the business remains in the “best possible position” to continue scaling sustainably.
Consumers emerging from prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns are cutting back on online purchases, especially with the war in Ukraine and rising interest rates clouding the global economic outlook.
More than 132,000 tech jobs have been cut since the start of the pandemic, data from tracking site Layoffs.fyi showed.
The dismissals come after Sea revised its full-year outlook for e-commerce sales, its main source of revenue, to US$8.5 billion to US$9.1 billion from its previous guidance of US$8.9 billion to US$9.1 billion.
The company also posted a wider loss for the first three months of this year as expenses soared.
The Singaporean giant is now gradually reducing its overseas footprint and periphery businesses as competition takes a toll.
That is a shift from the platform’s previous stance of continued spending for global growth.
“This reallocation of resources to further focus on our priorities will help us grow our business even better,” Feng wrote. “While we need to continue to optimize our efficiency, we are also generally still growing and hiring as needed to support that growth.”
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Taiwanese prosecutors suspect that three people successfully smuggled at least one shipment of Nvidia Corp artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China after first exporting them to Japan, people familiar with the matter said. The trio was detained last week by the Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office for allegedly falsifying documents related to exports of Super Micro Computer Inc servers containing advanced Nvidia chips, which the US has barred from sale to China without a license from Washington. The move marked Taiwan’s first public crackdown on AI chip diversion after years of pressure from the US to take a more active role in curtailing
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) employee bonuses are likely to grow more than 30 percent this year, in line with the past few years as the company’s profits continue to set new records, an anonymous source cited TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) as saying yesterday. TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is committed to taking care of its workers, the source said, citing Wei’s meeting with employees yesterday morning. Wei also expressed gratitude to employees for their contribution to the company’s improving bottom line, the source added. Since 2023, TSMC’s employee bonuses have grown at an annual rate of
RSS