Sea Limited is the MercadoLibre of Southeast Asia: same marketplace plus fintech, all three businesses already profitable but its trading roughly half MELI's multiple and 40% down its high

Sea Limited is running the same engine as MercadoLibre, an ecommerce plus a fintech business but in Southeast Asia instead of Latam. All three of its businesses are already profitable, and the stock is about 40% down its high in September 2025

The financials have turned around in the last 3 years from 2022 to 2025:

\* FCF went from -$1.9B in 2022 to +$4.4B in 2025

\* Net profit from a $1.65B loss to $1.58B in profit

They're profitable and they're still growing revenue at an impressive +47% growth rate.

A deeper look into the business shows that each one of Sea Limited three three business, is doing a different job:

* **Shopee is the revenue:** In the last quarter reached a GMV record of $37.3B growing +30% YoY while the take rate raised to 13.7%.
* **Monee is the margin:** a $9.9B credit book at a healthy 1.1% 90-day NPL, and generating $275M of EBITDA, growing even faster than GrabFin it's closest competitor in the Southeast Asian region.
* **Garena is the cash:** The cash machine that funds the other two so Shopee can run its margin low on purpose to compete with TiktokShop and MercadoLibre in Brazil. Garena runs an impressive 61.6% margin, that is $574M of EBITDA.

However Sea Limited is trading at a forward EV/EBITDA around 11x (roughly half the MercadoLibre's multiple of 21x) and a PEG near 0.4.

My full investment thesis on Substack for free:

[https://equivara.substack.com/p/sea-limited-a-profitable-marketplace?r=8g3sj2](https://equivara.substack.com/p/sea-limited-a-profitable-marketplace?r=8g3sj2)

Same engine as MELI at half the multiple on a different region why is Sea Limited cheap?