MercadoLibre knows exactly how to ride tailwinds - in this case, the combination of growing consumerism in emerging and frontier markets, as well as demand for financial services. The valuation is high, but can it be justified by the quality of the business?
Having covered MercadoLibre in Magic Markets Premium this week, we had Latin America on the brain. Combined with the mess around the South African budget speech (or complete lack thereof), this triggered the idea to consider whether the reforms seen in Argentina under Javier Milei could work in South Africa. Moe certainly took this assignment seriously, with a detailed discussion on the approach taken in Argentina and exactly which bits might work in South Africa - and which ones are a step too far! The conversation then evolved into points around the effect of reforms on growth and the ability for platform businesses to scale effectively within South Africa.
In episode 136 of Magic Markets, we kicked off the discussion by talking about retail stocks. They are always relevant to investors because people know the brands and feel like they understand the businesses. Of course, like everything in the market, it’s not quite that simple. In this action-packed discussion that touched on many different topics ranging from global to SA retailers, through to real estate, E-commerce, the rise of shrinkage (theft) in global retailers and SO much more! Listen in NOW!
Use the podcast player below to listen to our discussion on MercadoLibre and its Q4'22 result, which accompanies the detailed write-up below: (Date of report: 2 March 2023) In 2022, MercadoLibre achieved three big milestones that they describe as 100, 10 and 1. That means $100 billion in payments processed, $10 billion in revenue and $1 billion in EBIT. Latin America’s leading eCommerce platform is more than just Amazon or Etsy. There’s a strong flavour of Tencent going on here, which isn’t a bad thing. Perhaps most of all, the similarities to Alibaba are striking. Operating in a high growth region [...]
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