MercadoLibre (MELI 1.58%) has continued to make it easier for both customers and buyers to use its platform, and has remained a promising, solid business along the way. In this clip from "3 Minute Stocks Updates" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on May 11, Motley Fool contributor Brian Withers discusses MercadoLibre's financials and quarterly performance, and why it's his highest conviction stock.
Brian Withers: You know what, MercadoLibre is my highest conviction stock I own in my portfolio, and it had an incredible quarter. Let's take a look at the numbers. I can spend a few minutes on this slide because I really like the way they present their data. You can see up here there's four different colors. They have a couple of different businesses that they manage that all complement each other. MercadoLibre in yellow is its marketplace platform, the e-commerce platform. Think of Amazon.com (AMZN +1.44%) where you go to buy fulfillment stuff. Here's the yellow stuff, $7.7 billion versus sales on the platform. That's up 32%. There's FXN with the two things. That just means currency-neutral. They sell products in 18 different countries across Latin America so looking at things from a constant-currency standpoint makes a lot of sense. The items that they sold are up 20%. Revenue was up more than the items that they sold; meaning, the items that they are selling are more expensive today than they were a year ago. That's got to be good news. Mercado Envios is their shipping platform and their logistics platform. Ninety percent is how much of their products have gone through their managed network, whether it's one of their drop-off locations, their fulfillment locations, or their shipping locations. They are doing an incredible job of making it easier and easier for customers and buyers to do business with the platform. This is up almost 10% year-over-year. Really love the progress here. The blue staff, Mercado Pago, the payments and fintech platform, it's all lumped together. But you can see the payments volume here, TPV, total payments volume, $25.3 billion. That's in the quarter. That's up 81%. Look at what they sold on their platform. All of these sales are just people going through their e-commerce website. In fact, 17 billion in the 25 is off-marketplace. That's in the local communities and shops and gas stations. Their payments platform is being widely accepted across the region, and these off payment platforms, up 139%. Seventy-three percent up in transactions, 1.1 billion transactions in the quarter. Wow, last thing. Mercado Credit, they're making loans to both. Think of "buy now, pay later" for their buyers as well as their sellers, up 319%. Nice little niche business. Look at their payments, their fintech platform growing 113% year-over-year up to almost a billion dollars in the quarter. Their commerce marketplace, $1.3 billion, up 44%. A little bit slowing growth, but absolutely a solid business. I love these guys.
