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.”
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”