The shares of MercadoLibre, the largest e-commerce company in Latin America, They shot up 10% this Friday, after announcing its first quarter results with a much better than expected profit. The role of the company founded by the Argentine Marcos Galperin It rose to US$ 1,665.19 on Wall Street.
“The company’s numbers were more than solid, and far exceeded market expectations in terms of net income (which totaled US$4.33 billion vs the US$ 3,940 million of the analyst consensus) and also managed to be above the projections in terms of earnings per share, which was US$ 6.78 (+71% year-on-year) when the estimates were US$ 6.12″, described by Maximiliano Donzelli, research manager at IOLinvestonline.
The company’s revenue in the first quarter grew 36% compared to last year, while total payment volume rose 35% to $40.7 billion.
The gross volume of products sold improved 20%, to US$11.4 billion. “Among some of the aspects that explain the good performance of the e-commerce segment, The pace of growth in Mexico and Brazil stands out, with growth rates of 30%. These appease the difficulty of the segment in Argentina”Donzelli added.
According to MELI, the number of items sold in the country declined 4% compared to the first quarter of last year, due to the “weak macroeconomic environment that followed the December devaluation”.
The Argentina net income fell 26.7%, to US$ 200 million in the e-commerce business, and 19.3%, to US$ 415 million in fintech, where in total an average drop of 21.9%, to US$ 615 million. It was the only market that fell, against a rise of 56.9% in Brazil and 59.2% in Mexico.
“This trend is likely to continue in the second quarter, given the challenging macroeconomic environment there,” say analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence. “Argentina could see that the expansion of gross merchandise volume continues below inflationsince the items sold remain under pressure and the growth of unique buyers slows.”
Payment Market, with greater volume
“The fintech segment remains solid, maintaining a continuous growth rate, a situation that is reflected in the rise in the total volume of payments, which registered an increase of 35% year-on-year. From the company itself they highlighted that they managed to reach more than 49 million users monthly assets at the end of March (+36%). Meanwhile, total assets under management experienced a growth of 90%,” detailed the IOL analyst.
Cash generated from operations showed another solid quarter, totaling US$ 1,512 million. The company allocated US$148 million to capital investments to improve its distribution and logistics networks.
