Sea Stock After Q3 2026: Shopee Isn't the Problem

We think Shopee's moat held in Q3 2026, and the risk in Sea's stock has moved to its lending arm. Since March, investors have priced Sea as a marketplace under pressure from TikTok Shop, and GMV growth (the value of goods sold on Shopee) slowing to 23% fits that story. But Shopee's sellers paid about 51% more in commissions and ads, and its adjusted EBITDA rose 45%. A marketplace losing its sellers can't charge them that much more. The lines that lagged were Monee, Sea's lending arm, and Sea's newer bets, so for the stock we'd watch the loan book before the GMV line.

Core marketplace revenue is what sellers pay Shopee: transaction fees plus ads. When it grows twice as fast as GMV, Shopee is taking a bigger cut of each sale. On the call, CEO Forrest Li said "our ad take-rate improved by over 80 basis points year-on-year." The fee line has outgrown GMV by more than 20 points for five straight quarters.

For a moat question the fee line matters more than the GMV line. A buyer can shop anywhere, so GMV moves with vouchers and free shipping. A seller pays more only if leaving would cost more: the buyers, the reviews and the ad tools are all on Shopee. Sellers kept paying more in the quarter GMV slowed, and research firm Momentum Works ranked Shopee first in all six Southeast Asian markets in 2025 (table below).

Most of the extra fees didn't reach profit. Shopee collected about $1.5 billion more in core marketplace revenue than a year earlier, spent about $0.54 billion more on marketing, and absorbed higher logistics and other costs. Its adjusted EBITDA still rose $83 million, to about 0.68% of GMV from 0.58% by our arithmetic. Small, but rising while a rival spends to catch up.

Group adjusted EBITDA rose 29%, behind Shopee's 45% and Garena's 46% on Sea's new basis. Monee grew revenue 64% on a loan book up 60% to $12.6 billion. Its adjusted EBITDA rose only 16%, because group provisions for credit losses rose 82%. Other Services, the bucket for Sea's newer businesses, lost $84 million against $25 million a year earlier.

Li put Monee's uptick down to "an evolving credit environment, especially in Thailand and Brazil" and said Sea had adjusted underwriting for selected customers "at early signs of softness." That's a sensible response, but lending is where a bad year compounds: a book growing 60% a year shows its losses a few quarters after the loans go out. Garena's bookings rose just 6% on flat users, a growth problem more than a moat problem.

The strongest case against us reads the same chart backwards. A rising take rate with slowing GMV is what harvesting looks like: Shopee charges more because it can for now, and sellers who pay more list on TikTok Shop too. The rival is big enough to make that real, and in Vietnam it has closed most of the gap in two years.

Ads are the soft spot in our argument. Li said monetization "continued to do well, driven by ads," and an ad fee is partly a toll sellers pay to stay visible. That works until a seller earns less on Shopee ads than on TikTok Shop, and then the fee pushes sellers out instead of proving they're locked in. A quarterly release won't show that turn until it has happened.

Shopee's margin is also less steady than one quarter suggests. Its adjusted EBITDA fell 16% year over year in Q1 2026, when the release pointed to higher logistics costs and more shipping subsidies. And marketing growth has climbed every quarter in the chart, from 17% to 60%, passing fee growth in Q3 for the first time. If each new point of take rate goes back out as buyer subsidies, the fees prove sellers are stuck, but not that Shopee keeps the money.

We take that seriously, so here is our test. If Shopee's fee revenue grows less than 10 points faster than its GMV in both Q4 2026 and Q1 2027, while GMV growth stays under 25%, sellers are pushing back and we're wrong. For now they're paying more through the slowdown, and this quarter's new risk came from Monee's borrowers.