Shopee’s parent, Sea Group, delivered an impressive set of Q2 2025 results – net income grew 5x YoY, exceptional growth from Monee’s billion-dollar loan books, and the rise of SPX Express in Southeast Asia’s logistics game.
Investors took notice, sending the stock up 19.07% by the end of the trading day.
But there was an unexpected twist. For the first time in recent quarters, no one asked about TikTok Shop during the earnings call. Instead, attention shifted to Brazil, where Shopee is battling it out with MercadoLivre, Temu, SHEIN, TikTok Shop, and possibly Keeta?
From billion-dollar credit plays to last-mile delivery innovations to Brazil’s intense ecommerce battleground, tune in as we break down Sea Group’s latest numbers and what this means for the future of ecommerce in the region.
Timestamps:
00:00:00 – Sea Group’s net income up 5x YoY in Q2
01:21:00 – Monee’s loan books hit US$ 1 Billion-dollar in 3 markets
05:09:00 – How community networks made SPX Express a logistics powerhouse
09:20:00 – Analysts Skip TikTok Shop; Eyes turn to Brazil instead
13:23 – Will Meituan’s Keeta join Brazil’s ecommerce battle?
Featured materials:
Shopee delivers a stellar quarter – but why no one asked about TikTok Shop?
TikTok Shop in the U.S. H1 2025
Ecommerce in Southeast Asia 2025
Behind $0 Bubble tea in China: China’s quick commerce war explained | Impulso E128
Why is EVERY Chinese company going to Brazil?| Impulso E119
Shopee’s in-house logistics: 4 billion parcels a year? | Impulso E98
Hyperlocal Deliveries Fuel 300% Stock Rise for Shopee Owner Sea
Also available on Spotify
[AI-generated transcript]
[00:00:00] Jianggan: So Shopee’s GMV is probably about a hundred billion across all the markets. So when you have $6.9 billion of loan outstanding, times that by three or four, so you have like 25 billion. Dollars of disbursements over the course of a year. That’s already like a, more than a quarter of Shoppe’s. GMV.
[00:00:23] Sabrina: hi everyone and welcome to the Impulso Podcast by Momentum Works. So Shoppe’s parent company, Sea Group recently released their Q2 results, right? So that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. But before we begin, don’t forget to like and subscribe to our channel if you enjoy today’s episode.
So, as I was saying, Sea Group recently announced their Q2 results and it was a pretty good set of results, right? So I think their quarterly net income grew about five times year on year.
[00:00:49] Jianggan: So in plain language, five times more profit.
[00:00:52] Sabrina: Yeah. And of course, I think the stock market reacted well to it
their share price rule grew about 19% by the end of the trading day. They’ve been doing pretty well recently. Right. Shopee as a whole,
[00:01:04] Jianggan: I think the, it’s largely Shopee, right? Yeah. That Shopee as well as Shoppe’s digital financial services Monee so it’s I think it’s surprised the analyst and the investor community a bit. And, and of course, I mean, e-commerce is no secret. Many people have been tracking it. But but still yeah, it’s a good set of results.
[00:01:21] Sabrina: So I think we have an article on the lowdown blog that will be laying down in the show notes below if you guys wanna check it out.
We go a little more in depth into 15 of our thoughts of Sea groups, latest results. But I think one thing that we pointed out in the article was that Monee has had really good growth in the past few quarters.
In three of their markets, so in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, they actually have a loan book of More Than Us $1 billion. Right?
[00:01:47] Jianggan: Mm.
[00:01:48] Sabrina: Of course. And they’ve kept their NPL ratio pretty low.
[00:01:52] Jianggan: This is actually interesting because I mean, you know what loan principle outstanding means, right? It’s like how much money that has been loan out.
So Shopee announced how much money is outside and of course most of these loans are, are short term, like one month, two month, three month. So in Shopee’s case, if you look at, a loan book of $6.9 billion, if you analyze that the disbursement is probably three times of it. Because the Money gets loan out. And people pay back
[00:02:22] Sabrina: return and then they loan out
[00:02:23] Jianggan: and they disperse again. So, the money keeps growing.
[00:02:25] Sabrina: Oh, okay. Okay.
[00:02:25] Jianggan: So Shopee’s GMV is probably about a hundred billion across all the markets. So when you have $6.9 billion of loan outstanding, times that by three or four, so you have like 25 billion. Dollars of disbursements over the course of a year. That’s already like a, more than a quarter of Shoppe’s. GMV.
[00:02:49] Sabrina: Yeah. That’s almost 30% of their GMV.
[00:02:51] Jianggan: Yeah. So I don’t know. I mean, do 30% of the Shopee purchases get paid by a like Shopee pay later
[00:02:58] Sabrina: This Shopee pay later is actually useful. ’cause they also have vouchers to incentivize you to your Shopee pay later. Mm-hmm. But of course, if I buy my shampoo, it’s like $20. I don’t need to split that across three months of payment. That’s a bit ridiculous.
But so that’s, I’m assuming that’s their own book loans, right?
[00:03:15] Jianggan: They have own book. That’s where
[00:03:17] Sabrina: Shopee pay later would come in too.
[00:03:19] Jianggan: Interesting. I’m just looking at that. On book is, 5.9 billion. That’s quite high. So, which means that they’re not taking much leverage in a way.
[00:03:28] Sabrina: Mm.
[00:03:29] Jianggan: But anyway, so with such a large loan book, they still managed to keep the
[00:03:34] Sabrina: NPR ratio.
[00:03:35] Jianggan: Yeah.
[00:03:36] Sabrina: Very low.
[00:03:37] Jianggan: 1%.
1%. It’s actually kept lowering.
Yeah. So from 1.3% to 1.2%, then to, to 1.1%. And now to 1%.
There are some investors who are saying that, oh, we’re a bit worried, right? Because, and we grew the loan book. And sometimes you don’t control the risk as much as, I mean, we have seen that in many lending companies if you want, growth, you sacrifice the credit control capabilities.
But I think in, this case, they have been pretty, pretty good in managing both
[00:04:04] Sabrina: sustainable growth.
[00:04:06] Jianggan: If the numbers are real, which I think they are. And it’s pretty sustainable.
[00:04:09] Sabrina: So of course Monee isn’t the only sort of arm of Sea group that’s doing well. Right. Of course. Like we said, Shopee is kind of the bulk of their GMV as well as net income. So Shopee is their e-commerce arm and the take rate for Shopee has actually been increasing.
[00:04:25] Jianggan: So, yeah, you, it grew from 12.3% to 12.6% in Q2 I think. The way take rate is calculated is the revenue divided by GMV? Right. So how much of the, of the total transaction volume on your platform is captured as your revenue.
And even with that, I think Shopee continues to, raise the take rate, I mean, some people will say that it’s because the competition not that fierce anymore. And I’m more inclined to believe the narrative that TikTok shop has sort of a different tactic compared to two years ago.
They are. Because they have consumer traffic. Yes. There’s so many people using TikTok, so, so they’re probably taking a more sort of patient and hour driven approach, which you have me in our report.
[00:05:09] Sabrina: Yes. So we have an e-commerce and Southeast Asia report that will be linked in the show notes if you guys are curious where we go a little bit more in depth into key players in this region and their strategies.
So while we’re talking about Shopee, I think another thing that. Has kind of been mentioned quite a bit is SPX. Right? So SPX is Shoppe’s in-house logistic arm. Which they recently renamed from Shopee Express to
[00:05:33] Jianggan: to SPX Express.
[00:05:33] Sabrina: Express. ’cause I think they’re trying to sort of diversify outside of Shopee as well.
And Jianggan, you actually recently did an interview with Olivia from Bloomberg about SPX?
[00:05:44] Jianggan: Yeah. I think Bloomberg recently wrote an article about SPX and I like the way they dive into this, right? They look at, okay, the story is that I think SPX mobilized an army of like aunties and uncle too.
[00:05:55] Sabrina: Yes. So,
The article be linked down below if you guys wanna check it out, but basically she talks about how SPX really leverages the community in Southeast Asia. Most of us leave so closely to one another and what they’ve realized is that people help their neighbors collect parcels and so they just leverage this network to sort of.
I guess help these people earn like a side income as well.
[00:06:15] Jianggan: Yeah I mean, you have been to like e-commerce sorting centers, right?
[00:06:19] Sabrina: Yes.
[00:06:19] Jianggan: I mean, lots of parcels being sort of collected and, and
[00:06:21] Sabrina: bunch of parcels
[00:06:23] Jianggan: and sorted. But. We go to the last mile, and this is where it gets fascinating, right?
I mean, different countries , the sort of communities are structured in different ways. And I mean, how do you deliver the parcels to people or to their neighbors or to the shop At the, at the, at the intersection of the road or,
[00:06:39] Sabrina: yeah. Some small mom and pop shop.
Yeah. In the
community.
[00:06:42] Jianggan: And you really see a diversity, right? I mean, Singapore, now you just downstairs or a building, you see a. Parcel locker.
[00:06:47] Sabrina: The locker. That’s interesting. ’cause So last year when the Q3 results were out right, we actually did an episode where we talked about SPX in more detail. It’ll be linked in the show notes below if you guys want like a more in-depth dive.
And so we were talking about the lockers. And back then there were only two lockers in the whole of Singapore, one of which is the one down below our office. But now I feel there are lockers everywhere.
[00:07:09] Jianggan: It’s, it’s actually interesting they manage to penetrate through the condominiums in Singapore.
[00:07:13] Sabrina: It’s a good location. It really makes sense.
[00:07:16] Jianggan: It is good. I mean. Singapore’s interesting that many of the condominiums on the, the committee has really has lots of power and usually they don’t like random stuff being sort of inserted into the common space.
And, and the fact that the SPX express parcel lockers are now expanding means that there is enough sort of acceptance of Shopee as a delivery means.
If you look at this page, this is the, the market share of e-commerce logistic players that we have. Published in our e-commerce in Southeast Asia 3.0 report in June. And you can see that SPX Express and J&T Express, so both of them added together is
[00:07:50] Sabrina: about 50, more than 50%,
[00:07:52] Jianggan: 50% of the market share. And and obviously we heard from reliable sources that in Q3 last year, last year, there was a brief. Moment that SPX express is parcel volume will actually becoming the number one.
[00:08:05] Sabrina: Oh. So they overtook
[00:08:07] Jianggan: briefly and of course nowadays, I mean , so if you look at J&T Express’s numbers, which they also announced for the first half of this year, they delivered 3.2 billion parcels in Southeast Asia compared to 2 billion the same time last year. So that’s like 58% in growth.
And we know that most of this growth is driven by TikTok shop.
[00:08:26] Sabrina: Yes, because TikTok shop has also been growing quite. Fast in this region. In most Southeast Asian markets, TikTok shop actually grew by about 90 to 150.
[00:08:36] Jianggan: So essentially almost doubled, right?
[00:08:39] Sabrina: Yes. So I think the fastest growing was Malaysia. I mean, no surprise, they were the second fastest growing e-commerce market in general in the region this year.
[00:08:48] Jianggan: TikTok has been growing and we have been speaking with people on the ground in multiple countries, and, less so in Malaysia, but in countries like Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia on the ground, people are saying that te TikTok shop has been growing quite aggressively.
And some people believe that in terms of parcel volume and in multiple countries, it might have already overtaken Shopee. So you can see that with the proxy of J&T Express, right? but of course people use TikTok shop usually to buy cheap stuff and because of Shopee pay later and their own logistics, et cetera.
So shop is more trusted to buy more expensive stuff.
[00:09:20] Sabrina: But surprisingly, even though TikTok shop has been growing quite a bit in Southeast Asia, no one actually asked about them during the earnings call, which is the first, right, because I remember the previous few earnings calls.
There were always questions about like, oh, your competitor. Not specified,
[00:09:36] Jianggan: but so I listened through the whole earnings call and of course there’s lots of analysts asking questions and yeah, nobody asked about competitive dynamics in Southeast Asia, so we also did a talk with one of the banks, with like institutional investors.
It seems that investors, I mean, some of the investors were very concerned about competition in Southeast Asia, but mostly investors were not concerned. I dunno why I think. I think the, the numbers are good. Mm-hmm. So, and, and, and also I do think that there’s a lot of interest to see what’s happening in Brazil, right?
’cause now so much interest in Brazil. That’s true. Much competition. Most
of the analysts that were asking talked about Brazil.
I counted like, I don’t know, four questions.
[00:10:14] Sabrina: Four questions about specifically about Brazil.
[00:10:16] Jianggan: Specific about Brazil from different analysts.
[00:10:18] Sabrina: I mean, Brazil is a market that Shopee is in as well, right? And we’ve actually also talked about Brazil quite a bit. The past few episodes. We did an episode where we say that a lot of Chinese companies are going into Brazil, and of course this includes Chinese e-commerce companies, right? . So Temu is in Brazil now. SHEIN is in Brazil. I think TikTok shop recently launched in Brazil
[00:10:38] Jianggan: Launched in May,
yeah. So it has been there for.
[00:10:41] Sabrina: Less than three months.
[00:10:41] Jianggan: Less than three months.
[00:10:42] Sabrina: Almost three months, actually.
[00:10:43] Jianggan: Less than a quarter and, actually Shopee’s, management was asked about TikTok shop in Brazil during the earnings call. And I think their response is that we’re quite familiar with their business.
So they’re still young. They’re still very small, but we’re watching them. So we know that Temu is growing quite aggressively in Brazil.
[00:10:59] Sabrina: Mm-hmm,
[00:11:00] Jianggan: quite. Aggressively.
[00:11:01] Sabrina: I think Temu has been sort of trying to diversify their attention away from the U.S. Right. With all the geopolitical tension. So they’ve kind of been investing quite a bit in other markets as well.
[00:11:11] Jianggan: I think that company is interesting, right? Because i’ve spoken with quite a number of people who know the inner working of this company.
And all of them are telling me that this company never sets a target.
[00:11:20] Sabrina: Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Like they never set a target to hit or,
[00:11:24] Jianggan: no, they never set a target because a target is meaningless. So what they do is that I mean, they put different countries, they put different teams . And get them to compete against each other. Then you see sort of the real potential being unleashed.
[00:11:36] Sabrina: Mm, interesting.
[00:11:37] Jianggan: Yeah.
[00:11:38] Sabrina: But that makes sense. ’cause technically once, if you set a target, people will do whatever nonsense, to hit the target,
and then once they hit the target, they just get comfortable that’s so stressful. Oh my gosh.
[00:11:49] Jianggan: It is very stressful. This is a fascinating company.
[00:11:52] Sabrina: Yeah. We should do an episode about that. Yeah. If you guys have questions about Temu or Pinduoduo culture, since they’re the parent company, right.
Can leave comments down below and we’ll do an episode about it.
[00:12:01] Jianggan: Yeah. So we talk about TikTok shop, talk about Temu and SHEIN in Brazil, and
[00:12:05] Sabrina: There’s also MercadoLivre. So that’s
[00:12:07] Jianggan: which is the incumbent. And of course they’re defending the
[00:12:09] Sabrina: home ground.
[00:12:10] Jianggan: Yeah. So they expanded their free shipping program.
Which means that they sacrifice a bit of the margins to protect the market share , and encourage growth. They have also been. Recruiting quite aggressively in China. So , they’ve built a team for sourcing for ads and stuff because at the end of the day you look at all these players, they pretty much realize that to power the e-commerce growth, they need a supply chain from China.
[00:12:31] Sabrina: Yes.
Yeah. And I mean, most of these companies already have an advantage ’cause they’re tapping into the supply chain from China.
[00:12:37] Jianggan: Yeah. So Shopee claims to be number one by order volume in Brazil and they have their own logistics and stuff. So I do think that this market will still offer them a lot of growth and with all these players coming together and collectively they will expand the market quite a bit.
[00:12:53] Sabrina: I think that’s true for Brazil and Southeast Asia. Right. And that this market both just, they have room for e-commerce penetration to grow. . I think there’s still room for multiple competitors to come in.
[00:13:04] Jianggan: Southeast asia, I’m not so sure, but we can talk about this.
So I’ve been to Brazil a few times and we can talk about this country in more detail, but the spending power and the willingness to spend in Brazil still far exceed most countries in Southeast Asia. So it’s a country which is established and industrialized much earlier compared to many countries here.
[00:13:23] Sabrina: We should do an episode on Brazil e-commerce specifically. If you guys have questions, you can leave them down below and we will answer them in our next episode, our next few episodes about Brazil, about e-commerce in Brazil, because I think a lot of things are happening in Brazil.
Right? And of course we’re on the topic of e-commerce, but Keeta, who is the international arm of Meituan, is also entering Brazil and with what all Meituan is doing with Quick Commerce in China. There’s also a possibility that Keeta could enter quick commerce.
[00:13:53] Jianggan: In Brazil. Yeah. Yeah, it is. So
[00:13:55] Sabrina: which brings, them into this competition as well.
[00:13:57] Jianggan: There’s
lots of talk about you know that Meituan is fighting a very expensive subsidy war with Alibaba in China. On quick commerce and food delivery.
[00:14:04] Sabrina: We also did a podcast about that linked in the show notes down below.
[00:14:09] Jianggan: But there’s lot, lots of talk about whether the war in China would sort of divert resources that the could possibly invest international markets. And in terms of people and, and some resources, definitely we see that, okay, some people, which were previously meant to be sent to international markets, now they have to stay in China to defend the turf.
But but I don’t think that changed the determination for them to go out because. So one school of thought which, which I agree, is that look at, how constantly competitive and fierce the competition is in China. . And then that makes, each platform will think that, okay, what a nice, what a nice sort of breezer to go to international markets where the competition’s not that fierce,
[00:14:50] Sabrina: less intense,
[00:14:51] Jianggan: but maybe, I mean, but if all of them think the same way, they look
at what’s happening in Brazil.
[00:14:56] Sabrina: That’s true. And usually they have the same few countries that they want to go into because obviously the country has potential,
[00:15:03] Jianggan: the country has potential.
And also, I mean and also these guys are competitive, right? So, so they don’t want, want others to capture the market. And and also if they go in together, they leverage the same base of service providers, same base of payment providers, same base of sort of supply chain, et cetera.
So, so that actually help them collectively expand the market. Eventually who will win? It’s hard to say, but but of course, I mean, for the market, this is supposedly a good thing.
[00:15:28] Sabrina: Mm ’cause it’s, yeah, it grows, it’s a very good thing for consumers. Competition is always good for consumers.
’cause then you get free shipping, you get vouchers, you get free bubble tea and,
[00:15:38] Jianggan: and you get a variety of different goods which will produce previously not available to you in your neighborhood store.
[00:15:42] Sabrina: That’s true. You get the variety of the quantity of goods that you can get.
[00:15:47] Jianggan: The selection. Yeah. so another thing about Brazil is that this is also a country with a large credit market and we know that Nubank. And MercadocLivre have both ‘built very successful sort of consumer credit businesses.
And you can look at Nubank share price. I think the company’s doing quite well . so it is a fascinating play, but I think Shopee has, its like user base and stuff, so there’s still a lot of room for growth for their consumer credit business in Brazil will they overtake Nubank. I think Nubank has a very, very good head start, so it’s a bit hard.
In terms of growth potential, there should be a lot of growth potential. So we mentioned about the three countries, which have had a long book of 1 billion, right?
We actually said that a bit curious why the Philippines has not become one, because we know that the country has a.
Very robust consumer credit needs there. And and GCash the local player, has been doing a pretty, pretty good job in lending business and so it’ll be interesting to see that. Okay. Which one will become the fourth? Would, would there a bit of Philippines or, or would it be Brazil?
[00:16:47] Sabrina: And I think also for Shopee, the advantage they have is that obviously for them it’s an ecosystem so they can leverage their e-commerce platform to sort of drive their financial services.
[00:16:58] Jianggan: Yes. And, and also for them to get rich sort of understanding by their consumers, right? I mean,
[00:17:03] Sabrina: through the amount data they have,
[00:17:05] Jianggan: it’s, it’s a playbook that has been proven by Alibaba in China.
Look at how successful Ann became, but of course, I mean, took too much leverage that led to some regulation concerns. But you can learn from the positive lessons as well as the pitfalls and actually grow that creative business in Southeast Asia as well as in Brazil.
[00:17:22] Sabrina: So I think we can see from the Q2 results that the arms of Sea Group. Shopee Monee has been all doing quite well, right?
[00:17:29] Jianggan: They, they have all engines fired up, right? Yeah.
[00:17:31] Sabrina: They’re really like
accelerating and of course it’s. It’s interesting to see, ’cause competition in this space is still evolving. . We know that Auto TikTok shop is kind of focusing on more sustainable growth. They do still wanna grow, right? So it’ll be interesting to see how sort of brands or even all the enablers, logistic providers,
[00:17:46] Jianggan: sellers,
[00:17:47] Sabrina: especially in the region where platform logistics are kind of always taking the lead.
How other third party logistic players would kind of evolve to see. So if you guys have any thoughts, you can leave them in the comment down below. That’s all for this week’s episode of the I Podcast. I hope you guys enjoyed today’s episode, and if you did, do like this video and subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay up to date on the latest happenings and trends in tech, new retail, and the broader digital economy.
Okay. Thank you, and bye-bye
The post Shopee, SPX, Monee: Sea Group’s Engines Are Powering Ahead, but Eyes Are on Brazil | Impulso E130 first appeared on The Low Down - Momentum Works.
