IT HAS been 17 months since Sea became the first big regional tech player to lay out plans for profitability.
The US-listed company in September 2022 pledged to achieve positive cashflow in order to prevail in an era of rising interest rates, high inflation and a volatile market that battered tech stocks.
Since then, other tech companies including Grab and GoTo have set profitability targets – and hit them. Yet, their journeys have shown that it takes more than profits to convince investors of their money-making potential.
Since 2022, the “growth-at-all-costs” approach beloved by tech companies has been put to shame, as investors realised that money was no longer cheap. But it does not mean…