Sea Limited (SE) Stock: Q3 2025 Earnings, $1 Billion Buyback and 2026 Price Targets Explained

Sea Limited’s stock has had a whiplash year. After soaring earlier in 2025, the shares have pulled back sharply following third‑quarter earnings, even as the company delivered some of its strongest growth metrics in years and announced a $1 billion share repurchase program.

As of intraday trading on December 9, 2025, Sea Limited (NYSE: SE) is changing hands around $128 per share, down about 4% on the day and roughly a third below its 52‑week high near $199. ^[1] The question now dominating investor conversations: is this a buying opportunity, or a warning sign that expectations have run too far ahead of reality?

This article walks through the latest results, buyback, analyst forecasts, valuation and key risks shaping the Sea Limited stock outlook going into 2026.

Sea Limited stock today: high growth, high volatility

Sea is a Singapore‑based consumer internet group operating three major platforms:

Shopee – e‑commerce across Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Brazil
Monee (formerly SeaMoney) – digital financial services and lending
Garena – online gaming, led by the battle‑royale hit Free Fire ^[2]

The stock has been on a roller‑coaster:

In 2025 it rallied more than 80% into September, helped by improving profitability and accelerating growth, before sliding roughly 25% from its high after Q3 earnings and renewed competition worries. ^[3]
Over the last 12 months, SE has traded in a wide range between $99.50 and $199.30. ^[4]

Despite the pullback, Sea remains a richly valued growth name. Several independent analyses put the trailing P/E in the 60–70x range, with forward P/E falling into the mid‑30s on 2025 earnings forecasts. ^[5] Zacks, using its own modeling, pegs the forward 12‑month P/E closer to ~24x, still above many traditional value names but below the broader tech sector average. ^[6]

Q3 2025: revenue and profit surge, but estimates missed

Sea’s Q3 2025 results (for the quarter ended September 30) were objectively strong on the fundamentals:

Total GAAP revenue:$6.0 billion, up 38.3% year over year ^[7]
Net income:$375 million, up from $153 million a year earlier ^[8]
Adjusted EBITDA:$874 million, up 68% year over year ^[9]
GAAP margins: gross margin about 43–44%, operating margin ~7.9%, net margin ~6.3% ^[10]

On a per‑share basis:

GAAP diluted EPS:$0.59 vs $0.24 in Q3 2024 ^[11]
Adjusted EPS (Zacks):$0.78, up 44% year over year but missing consensus by about 24%. ^[12]

That combination — big upside on revenue and cash flow but a notable EPS miss versus expectations — is a big part of why the stock sold off after earnings even as the business performance looked better than ever.

Sea’s CEO Forrest Li emphasized that the strategy remains “high and profitable growth” across all three segments as e‑commerce and digital finance penetration are still low in its core markets. ^[13]

Segment breakdown: Shopee, Monee and Garena

Shopee: e‑commerce growth vs margin pressure

Shopee is still the engine of Sea’s revenue:

E‑commerce revenue: about $4.3 billion, up 34.9% year over year
GMV (gross merchandise value):$32.2 billion, up 28.4%
Core marketplace revenue (fees + advertising): up ~53% year over year ^[14]

These numbers confirm that Shopee is growing faster than its underlying market in Southeast Asia and Brazil, while monetizing its marketplace more aggressively through higher take‑rates and advertising.

But profitability is more complicated:

E‑commerce adjusted EBITDA margin (as a percentage of GMV) came in around 0.6%, down from 0.8% in Q2 despite the stronger monetization.
Value‑added services revenue (mainly logistics) actually declined ~5–6% year over year, even as GMV grew nearly 30% — suggesting stepped‑up subsidies and promotional spending to drive growth. ^[15]

Management continues to guide for a “steady‑state” e‑commerce EBITDA margin of 2–3% over time, but Q3 shows they’re still willing to lean on spending when they see an opportunity to consolidate share, particularly in Brazil and Taiwan. ^[16]

Some color from recent analysis:

Brazil remains a standout, with GMV growth outpacing the market while remaining profitably positive on adjusted EBITDA, and Shopee Mall GMV more than doubling year over year in the country. ^[17]
In Taiwan, Shopee has built a large automated locker network now over 2,500 locations, lowering last‑mile costs by more than 30% versus traditional pickup. ^[18]

The big open question for 2026: can Shopee sustain high GMV growth and expanding take‑rates without permanently sacrificing margins to subsidies?

Monee (SeaMoney): fast‑growing fintech with low NPLs

Sea’s digital financial services arm, now branded Monee, may be its most powerful long‑term growth engine:

DFS revenue in Q3: about $990 million, up ~61% year over year
Loan book:$7.9 billion, up around 70% year over year
Non‑performing loans (NPL90+): still around 1.0–1.1%, indicating good credit quality so far ^[19]

Management has shifted from a waitlist‑based onboarding to near‑instant credit approval for most Shopee users, adding over 5 million first‑time borrowers in Q3 alone, with new cohorts showing positive unit economics. Off‑Shopee “SPayLater” loans grew over 300% year over year and more than 40% quarter‑on‑quarter, yet still make up less than 10% of the loan book — suggesting a long runway. ^[20]

Independent analysis notes that:

Monee’s growth is heavily funded by internal cash flow from Sea’s other businesses, not external debt.
The group generated about $3.55 billion in operating cash flow in the first nine months of 2025, largely funding the expansion of the loan portfolio. ^[21]

The key risk here is classic banking risk: if credit quality deteriorates, the loan‑driven growth could quickly become a drag on cash flow. So far, though, the metrics look unusually clean for such rapid expansion.

Garena: Free Fire is back — but concentration risk is real

Garena’s gaming business delivered its best quarter since 2021:

Bookings: roughly $840.7 million, up 51.1% year over year
Digital entertainment revenue:$653 million, up 31.2%
Quarterly active users (QAU): up 6.7% to about 671 million
Quarterly paying users (QPU): up 31.2% to ~66 million, lifting the payers ratio from 8.0% to 9.8% ^[22]

The rebound was driven largely by new Free Fire campaigns, including collaborations with Netflix’s “Squid Game” and Naruto Shippuden Chapter 2, which generated enormous engagement and monetization. ^[23]

However, multiple analyses flag a growing concentration risk:

Growth is coming more from higher spend per user than from expanding the player base.
Cost of revenue jumped nearly 44% year over year, reflecting payment fees and higher IP royalties for those collaborations.
Garena still relies heavily on Free Fire, with relatively few new internally developed hits compared with competitors like Tencent, NetEase, Take‑Two or Roblox. ^[24]

Zacks recently framed this squarely as a risk: a business “increasingly concentrated around select titles,” with event‑driven monetization now at the core of revenue growth. ^[25]

Management is trying to diversify via publishing partnerships (for example EA SPORTS FC Mobile, Digimon and an upcoming Jujutsu Kaisen collaboration in early 2026), but for now Garena’s fortunes still rise and fall with Free Fire.

$1 billion share buyback and a conservative balance sheet

Shortly after reporting Q3 results, Sea’s board authorized a share repurchase program of up to $1 billion of its ADSs. ^[26]

Key points:

Management says the buyback “demonstrates the company’s confidence in its long‑term prospects” and allows opportunistic repurchases. ^[27]
The program can be executed via open‑market purchases, block trades, private deals or 10b5‑1 plans, giving Sea flexibility around timing. ^[28]

Importantly, Sea has room to do this without overstretching its balance sheet:

Debt‑to‑equity sits around 0.42, down from a historical median around 0.62, indicating a relatively low leverage profile. ^[29]
As of late Q3, Sea had over $5 billion in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash, plus strong positive operating cash flow. ^[30]

Independent analysts generally see the buyback as a signal of financial maturity: Sea is no longer a “grow at all costs” story funded by external capital, but a group that can self‑fund expansion and return capital when the stock is under pressure. ^[31]

Wall Street views: Strong Buy consensus vs Zacks “Strong Sell”

One of the stranger things about Sea Limited right now is how divided the ratings picture looks depending on which lens you use.

Brokerage and price‑target consensus: bullish

Across traditional Wall Street coverage:

Average brokerage recommendation (ABR) is 1.41 on a 1–5 scale, between “Strong Buy” and “Buy,” based on 23 firms, with 17 Strong Buys and 2 Buys. ^[32]
StockAnalysis.com, MarketBeat, TipRanks and Zacks’ price‑target page all cluster around 12‑month average price targets in the $189–$195 range, with lows around $138–$145 and highs near $226–$241. ^[33]
That implies roughly 40–50% upside from recent trading levels, depending on the source and reference price. ^[34]

Recent moves:

Phillip Securities upgraded Sea from Neutral to Buy with a $170 target, citing a 28% jump in Q3 GMV, a 51% rebound in Garena bookings, and an upgraded full‑year GMV growth outlook to >25%. ^[35]
Bank of America reiterated a Buy with a $200 target, highlighting Shopee’s market share gains, healthy balance sheet and guidance for more than 25% GMV growth in 2025. ^[36]
Deutsche Bank recently upgraded Sea from Hold to Buy and raised its price target from $165 to $170. ^[37]
Benchmark reiterated a Buy with a $176 price target days after Q3 earnings. ^[38]

Seeking Alpha contributors and institutional‑style analyses also generally lean bullish, with one recent note rating Sea a Buy with a $187 target, calling the premium valuation “backed by strong execution and global diversification.” ^[39]

Zacks perspective: earnings revisions trigger a Strong Sell

Zacks, which focuses heavily on earnings estimate revisions, sees a different picture:

The consensus 2025 EPS estimate has been cut about 6% over the past month to roughly $3.6 per share, still more than 100% above 2024 levels but heading the wrong way. ^[40]
The 2026 EPS estimate has been trimmed as well (to roughly $5.6 per share), even though it still implies >50% year‑over‑year growth. ^[41]
Based on the magnitude and direction of these revisions, Zacks now assigns Sea a Rank #5 (Strong Sell) and a Value Score of “F”, arguing that the stock trades at a premium relative to peers. ^[42]

In a December 8 note on Garena, Zacks warned that SE’s forward P/E of ~24x and heavy dependence on Free Fire could limit upside if user growth stalls or competition intensifies. ^[43]

In short: most brokers see SE as a high‑conviction growth buy with meaningful upside, while Zacks’ model suggests near‑term underperformance due to downward estimate revisions and a premium valuation.

Fundamental forecasts: revenue, earnings and “fair value”

Looking across recent projections:

Revenue and earnings forecasts

Zacks’ deep‑dive on Sea as a “trending stock” summarizes near‑term expectations: ^[44]

Q4 2025 EPS: about $0.94, up ~52% year over year
Full‑year 2025 EPS: about $3.6, more than double 2024, but recently revised down 6–7%
Full‑year 2026 EPS: around $5.6, implying ~55–60% earnings growth vs 2025
2025 revenue: around $23–23.5 billion, up ~35–38% year over year
2026 revenue: around $27–29+ billion, adding another ~24–26%

Other sources show similar ballparks, with Yahoo Finance listing average EPS estimates for 2025 around $3.5 and $5.1 for 2026, based on 10–11 covering analysts. ^[45]

“Fair value” models and DCF narratives

A few longer‑horizon models also feed into the debate:

Simply Wall St’s most followed fair‑value narrative pegs Sea’s intrinsic value around $192–193 per share, roughly 30–40% above recent levels, assuming ~20% annual revenue growth to 2028 and earnings of about $4.7 billion by then. ^[46]
Community fair‑value estimates on the same platform range from roughly $153 to $315 per share, illustrating how sensitive the outcome is to assumptions on margins and competition. ^[47]
A detailed DCF‑style analysis at DCFmodeling.com notes that trailing‑twelve‑month revenue as of Q3 stands at $21.04 billion (up ~36% year over year), with a TTM net margin of about 6.8% and low leverage, but also stresses that Sea trades at elevated multiples (forward P/E ~36x, EV/EBITDA ~45–50x) relative to broad market norms. ^[48]

Together, these models broadly agree on direction — Sea needs to sustain high‑teens to low‑20s annual revenue growth and steady margin expansion to justify current prices and the bullish price targets.

Valuation snapshot: is Sea Limited stock expensive?

Different frameworks give different answers, but a few themes are consistent:

On simple multiples, Sea looks expensive vs the market, with:
- TTM P/E widely cited in the 60–70x range
- Forward P/E depending on the year used, from mid‑20s (Zacks) to mid‑30s (DCFmodeling)
- P/B around 8–9x and EV/EBITDA north of 40x ^[49]
Versus high‑growth internet peers, Sea’s multiples are rich but not outrageous, especially if you believe that Shopee and Monee can maintain current growth and that Garena’s rebound is durable. ^[50]
Zacks assigns a Value Score of F, flagging that Sea trades at a premium to peers on most standard metrics, even if its forward growth is stronger. ^[51]

The core valuation question is straightforward: are investors comfortable paying a premium multiple for a company that is now clearly profitable, but still highly exposed to competitive intensity in e‑commerce, game concentration risk, and a rapidly growing loan book?

Key risks investors are debating now

Recent research and commentary highlight a handful of recurring concerns:

Dependence on Free Fire
Garena’s comeback has been heavily driven by Free Fire events and collaborations. Analysts worry that over‑reliance on one title leaves earnings vulnerable if engagement fades or if competitors such as Roblox or Take‑Two gain share, especially with big launches like GTA VI on the horizon. ^[52]
E‑commerce margin uncertainty and competition
Shopee’s value‑added logistics revenue fell despite strong GMV growth, suggesting aggressive subsidies. Yet management describes the competitive landscape as “relatively stable,” which some analysts view as inconsistent with the margin compression. ^[53]
Sea also faces intense competition from MercadoLibre in Latin America and JD.com, Amazon and others in Asia, all willing to invest heavily in logistics and fintech. ^[54]
Credit risk in Monee
Monee’s loan book is expanding quickly, and while its NPL ratio is currently low, a turn in the credit cycle or mis‑pricing of risk in newer markets could pressure both earnings and cash flow. ^[55]
Estimate cuts and sentiment shifts
Small but broad‑based downward revisions to 2025 and 2026 EPS estimates over the last month have been enough for Zacks and some quants to move Sea into a negative near‑term rating bucket, supporting the narrative that expectations may have gotten ahead of themselves after the 2025 rally. ^[56]
Macro and regulatory exposure
Sea operates across emerging markets with varying regulatory regimes, currency volatility and political risk. Changes in lending regulations, data rules, or e‑commerce taxes in key geographies such as Indonesia, Brazil or India could impact growth or profitability.

The bull case: integrated ecosystem and long runway

On the other side of the ledger, recent bullish theses emphasize:

Sea’s “ecosystem fortress” — the idea that Shopee, Monee and Garena reinforce each other, with marketplace data improving credit underwriting and gaming cash flows historically funding expansion. ^[57]
Strong Q3 metrics across all three segments, including GMV growth, loan‑book expansion and Garena bookings, all while remaining firmly profitable at the group level. ^[58]
A cleaner balance sheet and $1 billion buyback authorization, which give Sea more tools to manage capital as a mature compounder rather than just a hyper‑growth story. ^[59]
Structural tailwinds: rising internet penetration, young demographics and increasing digital wallet adoption in Southeast Asia and Brazil, all of which expand Sea’s addressable market. ^[60]

Put simply, the bull case rests on Sea continuing to execute its current playbook — high‑growth e‑commerce and fintech, supported by a revitalized gaming business and disciplined capital allocation.

Sea Limited stock forecast and what to watch into 2026

No model can predict the stock price with certainty, but the main drivers of Sea Limited’s 2026 share‑price trajectory are fairly clear:

Shopee’s margins vs growth
Watch whether e‑commerce EBITDA margins trend back toward the 2–3% target even as GMV continues to grow >20% annually. If subsidies remain elevated, some bullish valuation models will need to be revisited. ^[61]
Garena’s ability to diversify beyond Free Fire
Sustained bookings growth with broader title breadth — rather than just bigger events on the same game — would go a long way toward easing concentration risk. ^[62]
Credit quality and regulation in Monee
Continued low NPLs and healthy unit economics as the loan book grows would support the core fintech thesis. Any sign of rising defaults or regulatory pushback would likely hit the stock hard. ^[63]
Execution of the $1 billion buyback
How aggressively Sea deploys the buyback at current prices will send a strong signal about how management views intrinsic value relative to the market. ^[64]
Earnings revisions and new guidance
Upward revisions to 2026–2027 estimates and reaffirmed guidance for >25% GMV growth would support the prevailing bullish 12‑month price targets near $190–$195. Continued downward revisions would strengthen the cautious Zacks view. ^[65]

Bottom line

As of December 9, 2025, Sea Limited (SE) sits at an interesting crossroads:

The business is clearly stronger than it was a year ago — faster growth, solid profitability, a healthier balance sheet, and a newly authorized buyback.
The stock, however, still prices in a lot of future success, trading at premium multiples and increasingly sensitive to small wobbles in earnings expectations or competitive intensity.

Most Wall Street analysts still see significant upside from current levels based on 12‑month price targets and long‑term DCF models. At the same time, quantitative frameworks focused on earnings revisions and valuation are flashing a more cautious “not cheap and expectations are high” warning.

For investors watching Sea Limited stock, the next few quarters will be less about whether the company can grow — that part is now well‑established — and more about how profitably it can do so while managing concentration and credit risks.