SINGAPORE - Sea Limited - the Singapore-based, New York-listed Internet company previously known as Garena - on Wednesday reported wider losses despite higher revenues for its fourth quarter ended Dec 31, 2017, as well as the retirement of its group president Nick Nash at the end of 2018.

Net loss (adjusted) for the quarter came up to US$251.6 million, more than four times that of US$62 million recorded a year ago.

Total adjusted revenue rose by 72.8 per cent to US$164.5 million - boosted by higher revenues from all its three business segments: digital entertainment, e-commerce and digital financial services.

Sales and marketing expenses increased by some 2.5 times to US$156.4 million, up from US$61.8 million in the previous year. This was due mainly to higher sales and marketing expenses for Shopee (Sea's e-commerce platform), which increased by about three times to US$135 million from US$44 million.

Sea said: "The increase in marketing efforts was aligned with our strategy to fully capture the market growth opportunity and was primarily driven by shipping and other promotions on our platform in order to increase user base and enhance user engagement." Loss per share came up to 0.90 US cent for the quarter, compared to 0.42 cent a year ago.

Nick Nash, the company's group president and director, will retire as group president at the end of 2018. During the period before his retirement, Mr Nash will continue to advise the company's group chief, Forrest Li, on the company's long-term strategic priorities, Sea said.

Concurrent with announcing his retirement, Mr Nash has also retired from the company's board as at Feb 23, 2018. On Feb 24, Sea's board elected Tony Tianyu Hou, chief financial officer of Sea, to serve as a director.