Best Buys July 2026- 2 : South East Asia

Interesting developments in the stock market. The AI pump bubble is going down and recovered a bit.

I saw a tweet saying that various of these AI companies are at 40 times sales and 200 times earnings or whatever. The meltdown coming is similar to the one we saw in Peleton and Zoom in 2022 after they were bubbles during covid.

Meanwhile, South East Asia contains some of the cheapest stock markets in the world, and investors going for Emerging markets will be making bank and in the hall of fame after it’s too late for the herd to follow.

(Nasdaq)

Sea limited is an e-commerce company with business in South East Asia and Latin America. It also owns video game assets like Garena Fire.

A fast growing fintech arm completes the lot.

Contrary to most of the deep value names in this list, it is a fast growing company.

In Q1 revenues were up an astonishing 46.6%.

However net income was only up 6%.

This is because the company is in the growth phase of its lifecycle. For example the ebitda of the E-commerce segment is down 15% in Q1.

SEA has 666 million quarterly active users.

The best way to valuate this company is by EV/SALES which is at 1.7 times, and EV/EBITDA at 13.3 times.

I think it is not the cheapest company, but it has fast growth and it is an essential holding if you want exposure to South East Asia. It is also cheap on an EV/Sales and on market cap (61 billion USD) vs (666 million) active users.

“We have had a strong start to the year. 2026 is a year where we are leaning in to deepen our competitive moats, while maintaining financial discipline. Our strong revenue growth reflects the effectiveness of these investments, and we are already seeing unit economics start to improve for some of these initiatives. We believe this is the right approach to maximize long-term value, given the significant runway for growth still ahead of us in our markets,” said Forrest Li, Sea’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Who is ready for my other top picks? They are not growth companies, but Illiquid defensive companies under 5 times earnings. Things that nobody wants but I hold. I have added two of the ideas this year. Subscribe for the Emerging value portfolio.