Shopee shuts Poland office, CEO's announcement on profitability drives up shares

After only a little over a year of being in operation in Poland, Shopee closed its office. In a statement given to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, Shopee said that  the company is committed to focusing on the most promising opportunities available to us across its segments.

"Considering this, and the continuing significant macro uncertainty that clouds our long-term outlook for this region, we are closing our operations in Poland and we intend to concentrate our focus on serving our communities in Shopee’s markets in Asia and Latin America, where we already have achieved significant scale and we see strong long-term growth potential for us. During the transition period, we will focus on supporting our local seller and buyer communities as well as our local team members in Poland."

The launch of the Polish site in September 2021 came as part of the company’s global expansion plan part of which was saw it expanding into India and America. However, since then Shopee has had to exit many of its other international operations such as France, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Spain. The closing of the operations came shortly after Sea’s game Free Fire saw a ban in India. Here in Asia, Shopee has also slashed much of its staff from the regional office as the parent company, Sea, was reportedly struggling with achieving profitability.

However, despite the latest closure of its office, shares of Shopee’s parent company Sea Group jumped by 41% after the announcement of its third-quarter financial results. This can be attributed to CEO Forrest Li, chairman and group CEO of Sea Group saying that given the significant uncertainties in the macro environment, the company has shifted its mindset to focus on profitability rather than growth.

“He have entirely shifted our mindset and focus from growth to achieving self-sufficiency and profitability as soon as possible, without relying on any external funding,” he said.

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