Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Hey listen, we have been really lucky in checking in
on the c suite this week, and a lot of
it has to do because so many companies around certainly
across the United States, but around the globe also reporting
their results. Shares of Mercado Libra they are actually trading
up about two point eight percent in today's session. They
will lower in the pre market, but certainly the regular
session investors coming in. This is after the e commerce
(00:36):
firm posted earnings that missed estimates. As the company ramps
up marketing spending to recruit more users, now move to
lower the threshold for free shipping in Brazil, also crimping profitability.
We'll get into that in just a moment. We'll point
out analysts the strategic value in these initiatives, saying they
will help shore up long term growth even as they
weigh on margins for the time being. So let's get
into the business. Time for our CFO briefing with us
(00:58):
is Martin Delos Santos. He is CEO of the e
commerce firm Ricordo Libra. He joins us from Montevideo, Uruguay,
and he will be featured, we should point out in
the upcoming edition of the Bloomberg CFO Briefing newsletter, which
you can sign up for at Bloomberg dot com slash
CFO Briefing. Also with us is Nina Trentman. She's Bloomberg
News senior editor who writes the Bloomberg CFO Briefing newsletter.
(01:21):
She's here in studio Martin. Great to have you here
with Nina, Matt and myself talk to us about the quarter,
because it does seem that investors analyst weighing in that
the biggest question is on investments and what you are
doing how they will provide some future growth. But welcome, welcome,
thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
How are you?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yes, we had a great quarter really in terms of
the results that we delivered revenue glub by thirty four
percent a year, the deliver operating income, a record operating
income of eight hundred and twenty five million got us.
I'm more important than that we continue to grow our
news surveys both on our commerce and in tech platform,
our barriers on the commerce platform rule by twenty five
(02:04):
percent year a year on fintech grew by thirty percent,
credit book double year and year GMB, which is the
volume to accepted America olivery rule by twenty nine percent
in Brazil thirty two percent in Mexico. In both cases
we continue to gain market share, so very good, you know,
very strong operating metrics.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And as you.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Said, this particular quarter was a quarter of investments. We
opened two new food film and centers to add to
the more than thirty four filming centers that we have
throughout the region. We also made a big change in
terms of lowering the free shipping thresholds in Brazil, which
is a strategic move that we have been doing for
many years and it's paying off very nicely. And also
(02:47):
we got due to invest in a credit card. But
very excited normally about the results. More important than that
about the future and the opportunity that we had ahead.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Of us, both in commerce as well as fintech.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
You mentioned the threshold for free shipping in Brazil as
one of the contributors. I think to you missing estimates
for net profit as well as core earnings. I'm just wondering,
as a CFO of a fast growing business, how do
you think about profitability and how do you manage the
short versus versus long term.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I mean we talked about this, Nina, I remember talking
to you a few quarters ago.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
We try to balance, right, We try to balance short
term profitability with the growth opportunities that we have ahead
of us.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
So we want to make sure that we do not
miss those opportunities.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
When you look at commerce penetration of e commerce in
Latin America, it's roughly mid teams of fifteen percent compared
to maybe twenty five percent, thirty or forty percent even
in China hour in the US, so there's plenty of
room to continue growing the fintech side of the business.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
The same thing happened.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Most people in Latin America have not been financially included
by the financial system, so that we see a large
opportunity to expand our footprint on the fintech side of
the business, and Marcalo bar So at the same time,
to capture our opportunity, it requires investments. Some of those
investments might put some short term pressure, but I think
this is a good example. When we lower the free
(04:10):
free shipping threshold, it does put pressure in the short term,
but we have approve and over time, and we've been
doing this since twenty seventeen when we introduced free shipping
in Brazil. At that time the free shipping threshold was
one hundred and twenty raalites. We brought it down to
eighty and now we brought it down to twenty. So
we have proved all the time that by lowering the
(04:31):
free shipping threshold, we eliminate the most you know, the high,
the most frictional point in terms of acquired buying things
online for people. So we're eliminating that friction, really generates
a lot more volume and then eventually that translates into profits.
So I think it's a it's a strategy that has
paying out to us and the long term investors of
Margalivera understand it, and we're already comfortable with the investments
(04:53):
that we're doing.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
You mentioned Brazil. That's of course an interesting market just
in the current and Terraff debates that we're seeing with
the Brazilian government so far holding out to Trump and
basically not giving in on the Trump Terraff suggestions for Brazil.
Just wondering and how far are you seeing that play
(05:16):
out in terms of consumer confidence and consumer spending. Are
you seeing any impacts in countries like Brazil. I know
you're also doing business in Mexico and other countries, all
of which will face higher terrors as part of the
US renegotiation of terrorts around the world.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yes, this is something that we are monitoring closely. Obviously,
we do not export into the US, so there's no
direct impact on our business, but it can't have secondary
effects on the economy.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
As you mentioned, we have not seen that so far.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
As I mentioned earlier, we're growing by nine percent GMB
in Brazil. As that the management, which is amount of
money investing of our users, investor mar deliver more than
now in Brazil are year. Our credit card book has
grown by one hundred and eighteen percent. The profitability of
the asset quality of our credit book continues to be
very solid in Brazil.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
So we have not seen any.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
You know, any deterioration on macro on consumption, but obviously
it's something that we are monitoring closely.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
Martin Gundya Matt Miller here in the studio with the ladies.
I was really blown away by the growth at Mercado CREDITO,
and I wonder if you're watching closely for signs of
credit stress there because I think you had like ninety
percent growth.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
That's correct, that's correct, Thank you for the question. Yeah, obviously,
when we look at credit, we take it very seriously.
We are very careful in the way we manage credit.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
But the way I used to.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Run the credit business before taking the position of CFO,
So the first thing we look at is the health
of our book. We saw that mpls and we disclosed
this number are the lowest record, lowest number it since
we've been disclosed in the metric the nay amount wich
is a measure of profitability is also improving quarter and quarter.
(07:06):
So we see very healthy science in terms of our
book and a profit ability. So the reason why you're
seeing ninety one percent growth in our credit book is
because we are seeing good results in terms of our
models predicting default rates and the quality of our credit
book continues to be very healthy. If we need something different,
we will slow down because we you know, we're very
(07:29):
conscious with the way we will manage our credit business.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
We're talking with Martin de los Santos. He is the
CFO Mercado Libre joining us from Uruguay. We should also
point out that this is the largest company we to
point Latin America's most valuable company if you think about
market caps, so really significant. We were talking about fintech,
and you know, you were talking about kind of the
health of that portfolio, But what can you tell us
(07:54):
more Martine when it comes to the mix of customers
that are in that portfolio.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I think what we're seeing is that we're seeing all
the different type of customers within the economics segments of
the populations. Keep in mind that we acquire most of
our users, most of our credit users from the marketplace
and all you know, all types of people using our marketplace,
so we have the advantage of having the distribution of medicalivery,
(08:22):
but also they buying information that those people have on
our marketplace and we use that information through AI and
machine learning models to escore people.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
And we have models that are.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Very accurate at predicting credit risks. So you will find
people of all kinds of social levels within our ecosystems
that are like half of the people that we offer
crede to, we offer credit for the first time they
never had access to create. But also the other half
are people that we properly moving their fintech business to
(08:55):
us because we offer it much better user experience than
the traditional.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Bands Martin one question in terms of earnings, I noted
that you also pointed out the impact of the Argentine
peso on your results. Of course, we've seen JAVMLA make
various changes in Argentina in recent months, including making changes
to the companies to the country's currency, which has resulted
(09:18):
to in basically the spread between the official and inofficial
rate falling apart. Just wondering how that's impacting your business
and specifically also are you changing your hedging strategy for Argentina.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, I think that the headline Argentia that we continue
to see a big recovery. I mean unique virus in
Argentina group by thirty percent your year, our GMB group
by seventy five percent in local currency or thirty five
percent in dollars, the items sold on the platform group
by forty six percent, so very strong recovery as we
see inflation coming down, consumption improving, and also as you mentioned,
(09:56):
the FX.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Market be normalized. Also how helps out business.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
They opened the economy, so we are bringing more products
from the US into Argentina as well, so most you know,
most of the business are performed extremely well in Argentina
and we're very happy with the way things are going
for our business there.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
You mentioned, Martine, you ran credit before at Marcattolibra, you
ran also strategy into it and you were at Bane
before that, so you know strategy up and down. I
want to know about your strategy regarding AD revenue because
it was also searched like up thirty eight percent. Is
that a profit center for you, a future profit center
(10:35):
or do you view that more as a tool to
drive your core marketplace growth?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah? Other times in business is roughly a one billion
dollar business.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
He's rowing at thirty eight percent, as you mentioned, and
he said, you know, it's a profit business for the company,
but it has tremendous potential going forward.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
If you look at the number of people interacting with
our ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Last year, we had more than one hundred million people
buying on Marclure. That sixty eight meters monthly active users
of our fintech platform. So in terms of a number
of eyeballs within Latin America, we are the third largest
pan regional platform and that gives us a great opportunity
to continue distributing advertising. We also can leverage all the
(11:16):
one first part the information that we have on our
users or to target marketing campaigns. So we see a big, big,
very large opportunity. I think it's more future to the
past and advertising business. We're just getting started, but as
you mentioned, we have been growing very rapidly for the
past several years.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
There's plenty of growth going forward.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Martin just got about twenty seconds. We always liked it
when we've got lucky enough to have someone like yourself
a global CEO. How would you describe the global outlook?
And just quickly.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, I think well, obviously we operate in Latin America,
and you know, depending on the countries, some countries have
some tough micro situations and some others might be in
a very conditioned we're talking about Argentina recovering day. I
think in our business in particular, the trend of people
moving online is so much stronger than macro that we
(12:07):
have plenty of opportunities ahead of us. And the same
thing on on fintech right where we're operating in America,
where petuation of fintech products is very, very low. We
play a big role in terms of generating financial inclusion
throughout the region, so we're very optimistic about Macro.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Is on our region.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
So glad we could get some time with you. Martin
de la Santa Ceo, Mercado Libro cfo, excuse me, Mercado
Libre gave them a little bit of a promotion and intreatment.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
Thank you.