There's no shortage of great stocks trading at discounts right now, and Latin American e-commerce giant MercadoLibre (MELI 4.05%) is one of them. In this segment of Backstage Pass, recorded on Dec. 3, Fool contributors Toby Bordelon and Rachel Warren discuss the stock and respond to a member's question.
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Toby Bordelon: Let me look at these questions here really quick. Darrin asks about MercadoLibre. I don't know if either of you have any thoughts on this. I will say, again, something I mentioned in the last show. Brian Withers mentioned in Slack to me, it's like the price-to-sales ratios is at a five-year low. Looking at this now, it one of his companies he really likes.
Yeah. I think, Darrin, I'm looking at it myself, I don't own shares. I don't think I do. It might be my wife's IRA, but I don't own shares in my main account, my personal account. I'm looking at it. I'm seriously looking at getting in, people have been talking about this for a long time. This might be a good opportunity. Jose, or Rachel, do you guys have any thoughts on MercadoLibre at all?
Rachel Warren: Yeah. I'll jump in here real quick.
Toby Bordelon: Sure.
Rachel Warren: I think this is a great company. I've written about it a lot in the past. I do not currently own shares either, although it's one I've been watching and perhaps after today I will not talk about it anymore so [laughs] I can take advantage of the discount.
It's interesting because this is a company I believe that dominates the Latin American e-commerce space. For anyone who is not familiar, that is a massive e-commerce market. According to Statista, Latin America has about 300 million digital buyers and retail e-commerce sales in the region were already above $70 billion two years ago before the pandemic.
This is a huge area of growth for the company. This is an area that's growing rapidly as well. A market that is growing very much on par with what we're seeing here in the U.S. I think this is the same thing we've been seeing with a lot of really awesome stocks that we love to talk about a lot.
The market is not really responding in the way that you would expect given the financial and business growth at some of these companies are reporting and I think that just speaks to some of the broader volatility we're seeing right now and why it's important to look beyond stock-price and really focused on the underlying business.
