Sea's Garena bookings rose 51.1% to $840.7 million in the third quarter of 2025

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, from public records. Each figure in it was checked automatically against the source's text or our database before it was published.

On Nov 11, 2025, Sea Limited announced that bookings at Garena, its games business, were $840.7 million in the third quarter ended Sep 30, 2025, up 51.1% from a year earlier. In the release Sea defined bookings as the segment's GAAP revenue plus the change in its deferred revenue, and used the metric as an approximation of the cash its users spent on the segment in the period. The segment's GAAP revenue, the revenue recognised under US accounting rules, was $653.0 million, up 31.2% from a year earlier. Sea filed the results with the SEC on Nov 12 in a Form 6-K, the report a foreign private issuer files.1^,2^,3^,4^,5^,6^,7^,8

The company said the rise in the segment's GAAP revenue was primarily due to a larger active user base and a deeper share of players paying. Quarterly active users were 670.8 million, up 6.7%, and quarterly paying users were 65.9 million, up 31.2%. The paying user ratio was 9.8%, against 8.0% a year earlier, and average bookings per user were $1.25, against $0.89. Adjusted EBITDA for the segment, a non-GAAP measure the company defines, was $465.9 million, up 48.2%, or 55.4% of bookings, against 56.5% a year earlier. Sea defined it as operating income plus depreciation and amortization and the net effect of changes in deferred revenue and its related cost for the segment.9^,10^,11^,12^,13^,14^,15^,16

Cost of revenue for the segment was $224.2 million, against $156.0 million a year earlier, primarily from payment channel costs and higher royalties for third-party intellectual property. Forrest Li, Sea's chairman and chief executive, said Free Fire anchored Garena's quarter with two campaigns, Squid Game and NARUTO SHIPPUDEN Chapter 2, and that the rise in bookings made it Garena's best quarter since 2021. He also said that, as of the release, Garena was on track for year-on-year bookings growth of more than 30% for 2025.17^,18^,19

Across the group, GAAP revenue was $6.0 billion, up 38.3%, and total net income was $375.0 million, against $153.3 million for the third quarter of 2024. Diluted earnings per share attributable to Sea's ordinary shareholders were $0.59, against $0.24 a year earlier. Total adjusted EBITDA, another non-GAAP measure, was $874.3 million, against $521.3 million a year earlier. E-commerce GAAP revenue was $4.3 billion, up 34.9%, and digital financial services GAAP revenue was $989.9 million, up 60.8%.20^,21^,22^,23^,15^,24^,25

The company called the figures unaudited and gave them in US dollars.26