There are low-interest-rate feelings in the air, and the S&P 500 market index is up 15% this year. We're in a bull market, and investors are feeling good about many key performance indicators. Now could be a great time to invest in a fabulous bull market buy. I recommend e-commerce superstar MercadoLibre (MELI +3.27%). Let's see if it has what it takes to help you become a millionaire.
25 years old but growing like a start-up
MercadoLibre is an e-commerce powerhouse serving 18 Latin American countries. It just celebrated 25 years in operation, which makes it almost as old as Amazon (AMZN +0.61%), but management noted that it's still growing at the rate of a start-up. That's a truly impressive feat, and it doesn't look like the growth is going to stop any time soon.
- Revenue increased 42% year over year in the second quarter of 2024, or 113% currency neutral.
- Both of its businesses -- e-commerce and payment processing -- continue to deliver phenomenal results.
- Gross merchandise volume (GMV), which is the volume of goods sold on the e-commerce platform, increased 20% year over year (83% currency neutral).
- Total payment volume (TPV), which measures how much money was processed in its payments business, increased 46% (86% currency neutral).
- Despite plenty of pressure due to rising costs and interest rates, net income more than doubled year over year to $531 million.
NASDAQ: MELI
Key Data Points
MercadoLibre is upping its game in e-commerce with improved logistics capabilities and margin-enhancing actions like offering a weekly delivery day for Meli+ members. It already has high rates of 48-hour shipments -- 53% -- but instead of making that metric a priority, the company is focusing on cost efficiency while still offering speed for members who choose it.
One recent surprise announcement is that MercadoLibre opened its first U.S. warehouse in Texas to service the Mexico market. It's piloting this program to offer a large range of products available to Mexican consumers, but this is a new development that could go a lot further.
The fintech business is a higher-margin and faster-growing operation, and it has moved beyond its origins as a digital payments service with a healthy credit business. Fintech monthly active users increased 37% year over year in the second quarter, heading past 50 million, and assets under management increased 86%. The total credit portfolio grew 51% to $4.9 billion.
How does a stock become a millionaire maker?
Obviously, whether a stock can turn your investment into $1 million depends on how much money you invest in it. A few rare stocks have been able to turn $1,000 into $1 million over several decades. Most of the time, it's a diversified portfolio of great stocks that work together to create a millionaire-maker portfolio.
MercadoLibre has been a public company since 2007, and if you had invested $1,000 at its IPO, you'd have $62,000 today. During that time, MercadoLibre's revenue increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19%, and net income increased at a CAGR of 33%, while the stock grew at an annualized rate of about 31%.
That's still far from $1 million, but as your capital continues to compound, it could be enough to become $1 million over decades of patient investing. Putting it differently, if you invest $62,000 today, there's the same possibility of making a million later.
If you invest $1,000 today, the chance will be lower. This company is still growing at the rate of a start-up, but that's unlikely to continue for the next 25 years.
However, MercadoLibre has plenty of growth drivers and should be able to support strong growth for the foreseeable future. If you buy MercadoLibre stock as a piece of a diversified long-term portfolio, it could help you achieve millionaire status in the long run.
