Tencent sells $3bn of stake in Sea

Chinese tech giant Tencent has lowered its stake in Singaporean internet company Sea with sales of $3 billion in shares, reports Bloomberg. The deal comes amid speculation that Tencent is planning to trim holdings in some of China’s other big tech companies in a bid to pivot towards more international growth and new technology areas such as the metaverse.

Sea’s New York-listed depositary receipts fell 11.4% on Tuesday. Tencent sold the shares at $208 apiece, a discount of 6.9% to the previous close. China’s social media and gaming leader controlled a portfolio of investments worth $185 billion at the end of September, Bloomberg Intelligence estimates.

The share sale comes less than a month after Tencent said it would hand out more than $16 billion of JD.com stock as a one-time dividend, an effort to divest most of its stake in China’s No 2 online retailer. The surprise move was seen as being in response to Beijing’s push to curb anticompetitive behavior and open up closed ecosystems.