Sea Posts Strong Profits and DBS CEO's Wild 2024 Pay

Welcome to the new-look newsletter from TTM! With a summary of relevant market moves, credit card hacks, and how you can make smarter money decisions, I hope to both inform and entertain. Thanks for subscribing.

📈 Market Money Moves

Singapore-headquartered e-commerce giant Sea Ltd (NYSE: SE) posted net profit of US$238 million for Q4 2024, reversing a net loss of US$112 million in the same period a year earlier.

Many analysts are now raising their target prices on the company’s shares (by up to 39% in one case), with Sea stock up 135% in the past year and having advanced 30% in 2025 alone.

Tim’s Take: Sea posted a strong quarter and that was driven primarily by Shopee, its e-commerce arm, which saw 41% year-on-year growth in revenue - outpacing Sea’s overall revenue growth rate. Gaming is also back, with Free Fire back on fire with paying users.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is how profitable Shopee has become, from once being a black hole for capital (i.e. massively loss making). For investors to keep seeing Sea shares trend higher, the company will have to continue delivering consistent - and higher - profitability in the quarters ahead.

DBS CEO Piyush Gupta, who is stepping down at the end of this month, earned S$17.6 million (US$13.2 million) in 2024 as Singapore’s biggest bank posted record profit last year.

His 2024 pay package was up 57% from 2023 and he leaves the top job on 28 March. Gupta will be succeeded by DBS insider Tan Su Shan - who is set to become the bank’s first female CEO.

Tim’s Take: Piyush Gupta has had an incredibly successful run as CEO of DBS. After taking over as CEO in November 2009, he led the bank to record profitability as the Little Red Dot’s biggest bank. However, his tenure wasn’t without controversy, with widely-publicised outages in banking services over the past few years causing a cut to his 2023 pay. Looking at DBS when he first took over versus where it is now, though, it’s hard to argue the bank is not in a much better position.

Since November 2009, according to Bloomberg, DBS shares have given shareholders a total return (price return + dividends) of 400%. Meanwhile, DBS’s net profit in 2010 - Gupta’s first full year in charge - was S$1.63 billion. In 2024, DBS posted net profit of S$11.4 billion, up 600% from 2010. His pay? In 2010, Gupta was paid “only” S$8 million by DBS so his total compensation has risen 120% from that point. Is that value for money? It’s all in the eye of the shareholder.

💳 Card Hack of the Week

The Instarem Amaze card is one of those “hacks” for miles chasers in Singapore since it allows you to link specific credit cards to it, turning online spend into offline spend.

The biggest “go to” card of this? The Citi Rewards Mastercard, which earns 4 miles per dollar on all online spend but which could be turned into offline spend via Amaze.

However, Instarem has recently announced that it will start charging a 1% fee on all local SGD transactions from tomorrow (10 March 2025). Previously that 1% fee only applied to transactions in excess of S$1,000. Overseas spend won’t be affected.

Additionally, InstaPoints, which were earned on overseas spend and represented a form of cashback up to 0.5%, will now be only available to transfer into KrisFlyer miles (at an extremely poor conversion rate).

The takeaway? Redeem all InstaPoints now for cashback and accept paying a $10 fee (if maxing out the S$1,000 Citi Rewards MC 4mpd monthly cap) to earn miles. As for alternative in-person 4mpd cards, there are plenty out there which we can turn to.

🎯 Personal Finance Quick Action

Regularly understanding what protection coverage we have, in terms of insurance, is a great way of giving ourselves a financial audit of sorts. That’s because buying protection should be one of the first financial purchases we make.

Buying life and health insurance at a younger age allows us to lock in lower premiums for certain coverage (which we’re hopefully healthier!) and can also lead to generating significant savings over time - who ever enjoys paying more than we need to for our insurance?!

At the end of the day, we don’t want to be overpaying for protection and the best motto to work with is to “buy only what we need”, with the emphasis being on “need”.

When we’re younger, we don’t need as much but we still need protection. As we get older, our protection coverage needs will change but we won’t regret having taken that first step way back when.

👋 How I Can Help

Introducing Miles Consulting from Tim Talks Money

I’m excited to announce the launch of my Miles Consulting service! I realise that - like investing - every person is different. When it comes to credit cards, our spending patterns vary wildly and I’ll tailor a miles plan that fits YOUR spend. Through this service, you’ll get:

• ✨ An exclusive 60-minute one-on-one consultation

• 📊 Comprehensive credit card spending audit

• 📝 Personalised miles report

• 💳 Tips on how to maximise sign-up bonuses

• 🚫 Avoiding common pitfalls

• ✈️ Expert Singapore Airlines insights

• 💡 How to optimise miles accumulation for couples/families