MercadoLibre
The commerce business pays for the fintech business, and the fintech business makes the commerce business impossible to compete with. Most investors still value one and ignore the other.
Credit book growth is outrunning provisions while logistics density keeps pushing delivery costs lower.
MercadoLibre is usually described as the Amazon of Latin America. That description is incomplete in a way that matters. Amazon used retail cash flow to build AWS. MercadoLibre used retail cash flow to build a lending and payments network — and then pointed that network back at its own merchants.
The flywheel is not a slide in an investor deck. A merchant who takes working capital through Mercado Pago lists more inventory, ships more volume, and lowers the platform's per-unit logistics cost. The lower logistics cost makes the marketplace more attractive to buyers. Every turn of the loop widens the gap with competitors who only have one of the two businesses.
The part that deserves scrutiny
The rest of the MercadoLibre thesis
Includes the risks we think matter, the numbers we check each quarter, and the exact conditions under which we would sell.
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