MercadoLibre - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 delivered broad-based strength: Net revenues & financial income rose 37% YoY to $5.94B, EBIT of $763M (12.9% margin), and net income of $494M (8.3% margin) as Argentina’s recovery and ecosystem reinvestment offset Brazil/Mexico cost pressures.
• Significant beats vs S&P Global consensus: revenue by ~$0.41B, EPS by ~$1.75, and EBITDA by ~$0.16B; the beat was driven by stronger Argentina, resilient commerce KPIs, and expanding Ads contribution, while credit portfolio growth remained disciplined*.
• Management reiterated a growth-first, reinvestment posture (shipping, credit card, product/UX) rather than near-term margin targets; margins improved YoY, aided by Argentina mix, but Brazil/Mexico saw short-term compression tied to strategic investments.
• Strategic updates: Ads grew ~50% FX-neutral with Display acceleration and Mercado Play on >70M smart TVs; Fintech MAUs reached 64M (+31% YoY), credit portfolio grew 75% YoY to $7.8B with asset quality at “comfortable” levels.
• Stock narrative catalysts: clear estimate beats, accelerating Argentina KPIs, Ads runway (Display/Video), and confidence in credit asset quality with disciplined risk appetite; management emphasized “the best is yet to come”.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Argentina momentum: FX-neutral GMV +126% YoY and items sold +52% YoY; contribution margins reached record levels, helped by lower interest rates, SG&A dilution from growth, and improving credit profitability.
• Ads expansion: Advertising revenue grew ~50% FX-neutral, with Display revenue more than doubling YoY and broader availability via self-serve; Mercado Play launched on TVs (>70M devices) to extend inventory beyond marketplace.
• Fintech scale with healthy asset quality: MAUs reached 64M (+31% YoY); Brazil credit card first-payment defaults hit an all-time low in March, with overall 15–90 day NPL at 8.2% and NIMAL spread 22.7% despite mix effects.

Management quotes:

• “Argentina performed exceptionally well… income from operations grew 45% YoY to $763mn in Q1’25”.
• “Advertising revenue grew 50% YoY on an FX-neutral basis… share of Display within our Ads revenue rose by almost 10ppts YoY”.
• “First payment defaults on the credit card in Brazil… reached another all-time low in March… 15-90 day NPL of 8.2%… remains within the same range”.

What Went Wrong

• Margin pressure in Brazil/Mexico: contribution margins compressed ~5pts YoY in both, reflecting logistics expansion and scaling credit card; currency depreciation also weighed on margins.
• Mexico tech category softness: weaker sales trends in a high ASP technology vertical due to aggressive competition (pricing/financing) and selection gaps; company is deploying targeted rate/rebate initiatives to address.
• NIMAL spread compressed YoY to 22.7% (from 27.6% in Q4’24 and 24.2% in Q3’24), driven by higher credit card mix and move upmarket to lower-risk users, partially offset by maturing cohorts.

Transcript

Richard Cathcart (Investor Relations Officer)

Welcome to the MercadoLibre earnings conference call for the quarter ended March 31, 2025. Thank you for joining us. I'm Richard Cathcart, MercadoLibre's Investor Relations Officer. Today we will share our quarterly highlights on video, after which we will begin our live Q&A session with our management team. Before we go on to discuss our results for the first quarter of 2025, I remind you that management may make or refer to, and this presentation may contain, forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. Please refer to the disclaimer on screen, which will also be available in our earnings materials on our Investor Relations website. Please note that this call is being recorded, and a replay will be made available on our IR website as well. With that, let's begin with a short message from our CFO.

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

Hello everyone. We are excited to kick off 2025 with another great quarter at MercadoLibre as we continue to deliver strong growth across both e-commerce and fintech. In Q1, we maintained the rapid pace of net revenue growth achieved in 2024 while making solid progress on all of our strategic initiatives. This momentum is fueled by continued investments and improvements in the value proposition for our users. In e-commerce, we continue to deliver strong growth, outpacing all of our major markets. Brand preference metrics for our marketplace reached all-time highs in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile during the quarter. This is clear evidence that our investments are working and that we are further consolidating our position as a destination of choice for online purchasing in Latin America.

In fintech services, monthly active users continue to grow at startup rates of more than 30% year on year, reaching a total of 64 million. Our strategy of offering attractive remuneration on deposits is proving to be a powerful tool to attract, retain, and engage users. Our credit portfolio grew by 75% year-on-year while maintaining delinquency at comfortable levels. In March, first-term defaults on the credit card in Brazil reached a new all-time low, driven by ongoing improvements in our scoring models and a successful move-up market. As a result, we are scaling the credit card business while improving its profitability. Argentina performed exceptionally well in Q1 in all of our business units, with $ revenues more than doubling year on year. The stabilization of the macroeconomic environment has helped us to fully leverage the strength of our brands and value proposition in the country.

Income from operations grew at a faster pace than revenue, helped by the strong performance in Argentina. We are very encouraged by the positive impact of our strategic investments across the MercadoLibre ecosystem, which are critical for us to capture the many long-term growth opportunities that we see in both commerce and fintech in Latin America. Thank you for your continued support and interest. Now, I hand it over to Richard for some exciting updates on fintech.

Richard Cathcart (Investor Relations Officer)

Q1 was the most recent of a long series of quarterly results that reflect MercadoPago's fantastic momentum. Monthly active users, for example, continued to grow above 30% year-on-year and reached 64 million in Q1 2025. Today, we want to highlight some of the exciting changes that are taking place as we continue to democratize financial services in the region. Our aim is to transform people's relationships with financial services so that as many people as possible have access to products such as a yielding account, credit, investments, insurance, and much more. Perhaps more importantly, we want users to see the relationship as win-win. This is a core pillar of MercadoPago's positioning and, more importantly, how we intend to continue disrupting the markets in which we operate.

Here's a short video that should help investors understand how we're thinking about every decision we take as we build MercadoPago to become users' primary financial relationship.

Late fees, denied loans, exploitation. That's finance as we know it. A win-lose game in a suit-and-tie disguise. MercadoPago is changing this game, turning it into a win-win situation. A game with one unnegotiable rule: every user feels like winning in every single financial move. Every sale, every tap, every new card, every yield check. This isn't just about transactions. It's about transformations. When you win, the world around you wins too. Your favorite café thrives, your local shop grows, your community flourishes. Real winning isn't about outdoing others. It's about progress we all share. The future of finance is here, and this time, everyone wins.

Aside from communicating the win-win value proposition of MercadoPago, we also want it to be even more closely tied to MercadoLibre at the center of our ecosystem. This is why MercadoPago has turned yellow and now shares the primary color of our ecosystem. This allows us to feed off the huge awareness and high levels of confidence that consumers across the region have in our marketplace. We do not want to have a yellow side of the ecosystem and a blue side of the ecosystem. We want to have a single ecosystem. We launched the new branding in our apps and sites in Chile and Mexico in Q1, with Brazil following in mid-April. This change does not only impact our fintech services business, but also our acquiring business. Alongside the yellow colorway, we are also implementing an updated visual identity that is more aspirational and more modern.

We have also updated MercadoPago's UX, evolving the in-app experience from something that resembled a super app to a look and feel that brings a more specialized banking experience. We are raising the bar so that all of the products we offer are displayed and can be navigated in the simplest way possible. These are all changes that should help us achieve our long-term ambition of becoming the largest and best digital account in Latin America. It is another reason why we are excited that the best is yet to come.

Moderator (participant)

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. We also ask that you please limit yourself to one question, and if you have further questions, you may re-enter the question queue. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question will come from Andrew Rubin with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Andrew Rubin (Analyst)

Hey, Andrew. Morgan Stanley here. Thanks very much for the question. I'd like to explore a bit the sustainability of some of the trends you're seeing in Argentina. Items sold, it looks like this step changed to 52% growth. So I'm trying to understand even quarter on quarter what drove such an acceleration. And similarly, when we look to the contribution profit in the country, you mentioned the reinvestment in Brazil, reinvestment in Mexico, but still quite strong margin in Argentina. So trying to understand the sustainability of that trend and how you're thinking about investments in the country going forward. Thank you.

Moderator (participant)

Perhaps our speaker lines are muted.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Hey, Andrew. This is Ariel. Thanks for your questions. As you said, we had an amazing quarter in Argentina with last year recovery in demand strengthening even further. We were able to capture strong growth. As you said, 126% of GMV growth year over year, 52% on items sold, items per unique buyer going up. Of course, there are different effects. On the one hand, we are comparing our numbers with a baseline from Q1 last year, which was a bit weak. Simultaneously, we see ourselves, and more importantly, we see ourselves gaining market share. That is not just because of what happened last year, but it is also because of everything we have been executing over the last few months in order to help the business get recovered, being in shipping and making our prices more affordable, pushing for more financing, improving selection, and so on.

In all, we continue to enhance our value proposition and will continue to do so in the coming quarters. Of course, comparables will get tougher, but we are convinced we have the core of what we need to continue having a great business coming from the country.

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

Just to complement, Andrew, yeah, we're seeing clearly stabilization of Argentina. We have seen it for the past few quarters, but obviously we have a tough comp. Comp last year was a really tough quarter of Q1, so that also helped us with the comparison. Having said that, we've seen lower inflation, decreasing interest rates, which is helping us with our credit book. Our credit book grew by 4x year on year in Argentina in dollar terms. Not only that, but improved profitability as well. That's helping profitability in Argentina. Asset under management from a very large base in Argentina continues to grow, grew at 69% year on year. Profitability overall, the consolidated profitability for Argentina improved by 11 percentage points during the quarter compared to last year.

We think we are very optimistic about Argentina, not only because of macro, but more important than that, because of all the brand that we have in Argentina, both from MercadoLibre and MercadoPago, the user experience that we have in Argentina performing extremely well, as Ari mentioned, both in commerce as well as in fintech. We will continue to deploy and improve the user experience in Argentina, just like we are doing in the other countries.

If I were to add one comment with regards to the reinvestment we are doing in Brazil and Mexico on the fintech side, that is mostly related to our credit card in those countries. We have not yet launched a credit card in Argentina. When we do, definitely we will invest also in building that portfolio.

Andrew Rubin (Analyst)

Great. Thank you all for the color.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Irma Gars with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Irma Gars (Analyst)

1P GMV posted some really solid growth. Can you talk a little bit in more detail about what drove this growth and what categories perhaps contributed more? Was supermarket, for example, a relevant force here? If you can also comment on margin evolution here, are you getting closer to break-even, ex-eds, and on a full-cost basis, or is that something on the cards for this year? Thank you.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Hey, Irma. How are you? Ariel here again. Yes, as you said, 1P had a tremendous Q1 with GMV growth evolving 102% year over year with strong performance across market and across categories. I would say that's the consequence of continuing to improve selection and price competitiveness. We also continue to make progress in terms of managing the business through more and more technology. We are doing automatic onboarding, automatic buying, automatic pricing, and that's all contributing for us to get better economics and simultaneously continuing to grow. I would say growth in 1P is not driven by supermarket. 1P supermarket is growing, but our growth in 1P goes much beyond what happened in supermarket and is more and more spread across different categories of our business. Of course, consumer electronics continues to hold a big share of what we are doing in 1P.

To the second part of the question going to supermarket, we are extremely satisfied with the consistent progress we have been making in supermarket for some quarters already. In Q1, we grew 65% year over year. That is faster than any other category in our marketplace and sequentially accelerated. I would say that is the result of an improved value proposition across the board. We have better and more consistent selection. We have better navigation with aisles that facilitate shopping experience. We have deployed features for repurchase and some other things that allow our users to fill in their carts and buy stuff easily. We improved our promotional activities and special dates. Last but not least, we are increasing the share of 1P within supermarket. We are doing so because it helps us get more effective in getting consistency and availability of supply day after day.

It also brings efficiency and improvement in economics. 1P in supermarket actually has better unit economics than 3P as we manage to operate with massive movements in our warehouses operating by pallets and master cases. We manage to get better revenues from advertising through our relationships with manufacturers. 1P is and will definitely play a strategic role in supermarket moving forward. Going to the question on margins, year over year, margins in supermarket in particular continue to improve. We are excited with that. That is part of the reason why we feel comfortable investing behind doing more and more side merchandising to push for a category in which we have a lot of confidence and we have proven that can bring downstream impact in the users that do engage in buying consumer packaged goods in MercadoLibre.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Robert Foreitt with Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

Robert Foreitt (Analyst)

Hey, good evening, Richard, Martín, Ariel, Osvaldo. Thanks for taking my question. With respect to fast-moving consumer goods, I was actually surprised that it was a highlight in Argentina. Can you talk a little bit about the TAM across the region, maybe the halo effect for other categories, how you're thinking about subscribe and save? You alluded to this, Ariel, but how big of an unlock is this in terms of having now a full-funnel solution in FMCG for advertising?

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Hey, Bob, Ariel, once again, so thanks for the question. I think in general terms, e-commerce penetration in FMCG is pretty, pretty low. Longer term, the opportunity is huge. We are just starting with this category, both ourselves and probably some of our competitors. We are excited with everything we see and with everything we can build as to push that penetration closer to what e-commerce represents to the general retail. On halo effect, I was just mentioning before, we do measure downstream impact of supermarkets. Buyers who buy CPG in MercadoLibre end up buying more of general merchandise in MercadoLibre as well. That is very positive. There is a huge list of product improvements that we need to deploy and we need to code first. Subscribe and save is definitely in that list.

It will get a time in which we will be able to do that, but we are more on the basic feature building right now. So many things to continue doing in order to get there. We will at some point, but again, excited with the progress. This is happening in every single market where we operate, and we expect that to continue in the future.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Marcelo Santos with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Marcelo Santos (Analyst)

Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. I would like to ask for an update on the logistics plan, especially on Brazil. I think there were some news saying that you're planning to boost the distribution center deployment. Where you are now, where do you want to get, and if you could also comment on other regions. Thank you very much.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Hey, Marcelo, how are you? Yeah, I think there's nothing changing in terms of our logistics plan to be shared in this call. As we mentioned in the past, we think logistics is a key enabler for the growth of our business, and we don't want to take risks in terms of not having the required capacity to deal with demand. Given our current scenario and our internal projections, there are no changes to what we announced in the past in terms of footprint. We were very active in deploying a large number of fulfillment centers last year. I think this Q in particular, the number was a bit lower, but that's just because of seasonality and time to market in setting up new facilities.

We will continue building and expanding our footprint as needed in order to deal with the demand that we think we will continue generating in the marketplace.

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

To complement from a financial perspective, if you take logistics investment or Capex and logistics this quarter as percentage of revenues, it's consistent with what we had a year ago. Similar path from a financial perspective.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Rodrigo Gastem with Itaú BBA. Please go ahead.

Rodrigo Gastem (Analyst)

Yeah, thank you. Good evening, everyone. I just would like to double-click here on the main drivers behind Argentina's contribution margin evolution. You said it is easy comps, I understand that, but you've reached the highest contribution margin ever. Just wondering here where it mostly came from. Is it coming from higher take rates, revenue mix with higher growth, the fintech business, the acquiring business which has higher margins, SG&A dilution from the faster top-line growth? Anything here on the main drivers, specific drivers in Argentina, actually to help us to understand the future would also be very helpful. Thank you, guys.

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

Hi, Rodrigo Martín here. I think Argentina performed extremely well both on commerce and fintech. Most of our businesses grew very nicely in the quarter. I think that's one of the main drivers is growth that enabled us to dilute fixed costs in a very efficient way and also to find efficiencies in logistics and many other areas of our business. The credit business grew very nicely. I mentioned it before, and improved profitability, interest rates coming down in Argentina, helping us also with the credit business, not only because of more adoption of credit, because it's more affordable to people, but also by lowering the cost of funding, it improves our margins on that particular product. I think for the most part, we've seen recoveries, as Ari mentioned earlier, in commerce, items all growing at 50+% year on year.

I think throughout the business, margins have improved. This is the reason why, not only because of comp from last year, but also genuine and sustainable improvements on profitability we've seen in Argentina so far.

The only thing I would add to that is that as interest rates have continued coming down, we also saw an increase in the percentage of transactions that were paid with credit cards and installments, where we have also extra revenues and an extra take rate.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Niha Arguala with HSBC. Please go ahead.

Niha Arguala (Analyst)

Hi. Can you talk a bit about the asset quality trends? We did expect some seasonality and some seasonal worsening, but I also see that there's stronger growth in credit cards, which should dilute the asset quality both earlier in the season and today in PL. If you can shed some more light on what kind of trends should we expect going forward, and also if there's any contribution of the growth in the Argentina credit business on these asset quality numbers that we are seeing. Thank you so much.

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

I'll say there are several moving parts when we look at our portfolio of loans. Basically, on the one hand, we are increasing the share of credit cards to the overall portfolio. And even though, yes, credit cards have a lower NIML than other parts of the portfolio, the NIML of credit cards itself has been improving. We never had such a good quarter as this one. The asset quality is super good. What is changing is the share there. Also, as we grow our portfolio and older cohorts mature, the percentage of cohorts that are older and therefore with a positive NIML will increase, and therefore this goes in the opposite direction. This improves and offsets the change in mix. We are moving up market.

By moving up markets, both in the merchant and particularly in the consumer side of the credit book. What it means is we will have a little bit lower risk, but also lower spreads because of the better credit we are offering. I would say that those have been the main drivers behind the change of mix in the credit portfolio. With regards to Argentina, in Argentina, I would say that is the country where we find delinquencies to be the lowest. Part of the reason behind that is that it is a country where the private sector has lower debt than in every other market just because the credit markets were closed for so long. Also, people really use MercadoPago pretty much every day.

They tend to pay us back quickly because we are, in many cases, their primary account that they need us for their everyday lives. The credit quality in Argentina continues to be very good, and that has driven up the increases Martín mentioned in terms of portfolio size, both on the consumer and on the merchant side of the business.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Jeffrey Elliott with Autonomous. Please go ahead.

Jeffrey Elliot (Analyst)

Hello, thanks very much for taking the question. Can you discuss the strategy in terms of deposits in Brazil? We've seen the 120% of CDI rate offered over the last few days. What's behind that? Is that about building customer loyalty? Is it about funding? Is it about something else? Can you give some thoughts there?

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

Jeffrey, I would say that the main driver for that is really marketing and positioning ourselves as really the leading digital bank. It's something that when we look at our positioning, it's moving in this direction, and this really adds to principality. Once consumers start bringing their money into MercadoPago, what they do is they start using MercadoPago more often. We increase their retention. We increase the use they do of their money in the marketplace. There are many, many positives. We launched a campaign a few weeks back, a very powerful marketing campaign in Brazil, where we are starting to use the yellow color as background instead of the blue color. We have recruited Anita, which is a very popular singer in Brazil, to push for our to advertise MercadoPago. That is working very nicely.

Part of the value proposition is that we are the account that pays the most in Brazil. We are making sure that continues to be the case. There are limits to that, as you know. There are three different conditions you have to keep in order to get the 120% of CDI. You have to be part of our loyalty program. You have to put together the money in a special pot, and there is a limit of a few thousand BRL that you can invest in that pot. I think it is working nicely. We have created a lot of awareness, and people associate us with a digital bank. It is thinking, I would say, in the right direction.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Caio Prado with UBS. Please go ahead.

Caio Prado (Analyst)

Hello, and good evening. Thanks for the opportunity for asking questions here. I would like to explore a little bit more about the credit business. First, I would like to understand how is your appetite today across your main products, if you can share. Last quarter, you made clear that you were going to reduce the issues of microcards. Just wondering if you can share a little bit the effects from that and more about the strategy going forward. Also, if you can talk a little bit by region, it would be helpful. Finally, we noted a drop of your credit portfolio. We've seen one of your funding structures findings in Brazil in March. In this report, you mentioned that you had almost $800 million from own cash for funding on the fintech. Can you provide further details on this?

What is the funding breakdown of the portfolio today? If you are somewhat changing the strategy going forward, and if so, what is the rationale? Thank you very much.

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

Hi, Caio. Let me start with how we are seeing the credit portfolio in general. Let me start with Brazil and our risk appetite in Brazil. We have not seen any deterioration in our portfolio. I think that both on the consumer side and on the credit side, we continue to be very profitable, and NPLs continue to be very healthy. Now in Brazil, as I mentioned, the credit card book, the recent cohort has the lowest first payment defaults we have seen. We are very excited with how our credit models are evolving. That said, we have taken some more measures to reduce risk because we are looking at what is happening in the market, and we have seen some deterioration from other players.

What we have done is, beyond reducing the issues of microcards, we have been, I would say, more conservative with regards to those customers who have the lower credit score. I would say this tightening is rather small, but it is something that we have done, and we are very comfortable with the level of risk we are currently taking. Something similar has happened in Mexico, probably more towards the end of last year and early this year. We have been able to relax a little bit the issues of new cards, but we were also more conservative and tightened a little with regards to those customers that have a lower credit score. We have not seen any impact in our NPLs. Regarding funding, Caio, the strategy continues to be the same.

Just as a reminder, we fund our books, our credit books in Mexico and Brazil mostly with warehouse facilities, which are funded by large banks, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup. In Argentina, we typically go to the capital markets on a regular basis to fund our credit portfolio. In Brazil specifically, which you asked, we also book certain loans on our financial institution as opposed to sending it to the FIDIC. Sometimes we optimize the cost of funding by leaving some more loans in our financial institution. This is what we did this quarter. This is probably what you're referring to. There is no change in terms of the share of third-party funding and the ways we are funding our credit book. This is mostly a tactical adjustment that we did this quarter.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Jao Suarez with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Jao Suarez (Analyst)

Thank you for taking the question. Very quick points and kind of follow-ups. The first one is just to understand if they should expect any, what would be the repercussions on the commerce growth when you move, when you try to de-risk a little bit your concession, right? Initially, we saw with the microcredits and we saw a limited impact, and now you're moving towards cutting some of the, let's say, middle-level risk here on the client. Just wanting to understand if there would be any repercussions on the commerce growth. And just to understand the opportunity of the credit card in Argentina and any view on timing, should we expect a similar impact that we saw as you start to accelerate credit origination in other countries? Should we expect something similar in Argentina?

I don't know how the behavior changes, varies, right, if you compare to Brazil and Mexico. Those would be the questions. Thank you.

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

Hi, Jao. Let me address first the first part of the question, which is what repercussion it may have or not in the marketplace, what the actions we're taking with MercadoPago. I would say we don't expect any repercussions in the marketplace. When we look and what we track closely is what we call blue money, which is the total of payments on the marketplace that are coming from any of the MercadoPago sources, own sources, such as account to account or personal loans or credit cards. Some of those three variables continue to grow in all three markets, in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. We expect that to continue to be the case. We don't expect to see any deceleration in the marketplace driven by us tightening a little bit on the credit side.

Moving on to the second part, which was the potential evolution of the credit card in Argentina. We expect this to be a very relevant card in the market. I would say that we have been learning. We first launched in Brazil. Then we were able to launch faster in Mexico. I believe we have a very strong position in Argentina, and we would expect it to be interesting. Obviously, we will be cautious as we adapt the models to the local country. Each country is different, but we expect to be able to do that in the second to start issuing cards in the second half of the year.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Marvin Fong with BTIG. Please go ahead.

Marvin Fong (Analyst)

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Congratulations on the quarter. I would just like to drill down. I think on Mexico, you mentioned in the shareholder letter that there was one high ASP category that you saw a bit of softness on. I was just wondering if you could elaborate on that and what growth outside of that category looked like. Was the growth outside of that category consistent with what we've seen in prior quarters in Mexico? I have a quick question on NYML. I think you referenced the seasonality factor that the fourth quarter was unusually high because of the additional payment period.

If we kind of normalize for all that, and I recognize all your commentary about the underlying strength and the credit cards as gaining share there, but at a headline level, would NIML have improved quarter over quarter without that seasonal factor, or just kind of any visibility on when you think NIML at a consolidated level might begin expanding quarter over quarter would be great. Thank you.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Hey, Marvin. Ariel here. Thanks for your question. We are very satisfied with the progress of our business in Mexico in general and during Q1 in particular. We continued compounding growth and value created for our millions of consumers, unique buyers grew north of 25%, and top line remained very solid. I would say we were still negatively impacted by a slower start of the year for our technology vertical. It grew below the average of the rest of the marketplace. We basically saw more aggressive competition, both in terms of pricing and financing in this category. In some cases, we lacked some of the selection that we needed to compete. We have clearly identified the issue and have several targeted initiatives to deal with this, such as some selected adjustments to our premium take rates, some rebates to improve price competitiveness, and some other things.

We are already seeing positive results coming from each of those. By the way, the effect from technology was kind of isolated. Our overall GMV continued well ahead of the market, and the rest of the categories grew even further, I would say, with the trend that we used to have in previous quarters, around 30% year over year in general terms. Very good momentum. With regards to NIML, I would say that both sequentially and year over year, part of the compression is due to the function of spreads and product and country mix. On the one hand, the mix, as I mentioned, is more towards credit cards. The share of credit cards increased by 8 percentage points over the year. This is structurally a product that has a lower NIML than consumer loans, for example.

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

As we are moving up market, both in the consumer and merchant originations, that also has an impact both on yield and in bad debt yield, basically. It is safer. We have less default, but we have an impact in revenue yield and bad debt yield. As for country mix, Argentina's share of the credit portfolio doubled year over year, and this partially compensates for the NIML compression because we have higher margins in Argentina.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Craig Marr with FT Partners. Please go ahead.

Craig Marr (Analyst)

Yes, hi. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to ask a bit more specifically about the fintech competition in Mexico. Your product offering is trending more toward what we see from the likes of NIML. I was wondering if you can comment on how you see that evolving over time. Secondly, with regards to the trade war dynamics that the U.S. is propagating, we've been hearing that those e-com businesses that are getting shut out of the U.S. market are redeploying resources to Latin America. I was wondering if you're seeing any change in behavior from your competition, specifically from Asia in Latin America. Thanks.

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

Hi, Craig. Let me take the first question. I would say that definitely in Mexico, all over Latin America, what we want to be in MercadoPago is, on the one hand, acquiring business, but on the other hand, we want to become the best and largest digital bank in the region. Definitely we'll be competing with the more traditional banks and with fintechs, also the digital banks. We are very excited by the growth we are seeing. We are very excited by the net promoter score we are obtaining from our users, also from the frequency with which the users use MercadoPago, and also by the sheer growth of our user base in Mexico. I would say that the most relevant products for us have been the super yielding account and the credit card, and both of them are growing strongly.

I would say, yes, I think there is an opportunity in Mexico. We are seeing that what we saw happen in Brazil over the last 10 years in terms of increased use of financial services, and in particular of digital financial services, that is happening in Mexico right now, and we want to seize that opportunity. I think the second part of your question was regarding international competition and cross-border trading to Latin America. We have been operating in a very competitive environment. Many players are coming to the region, not only shipping from Asia, but also building their operations locally in the region. We have not seen a change in that pattern. We continue to compete with them, and nothing really changed, at least in the short term, because of tariffs.

In fact, the other way around, there are certain tariffs that were imposed in Mexico and Brazil, increasing the cost of shipping products into the country that diminished a little bit the volume of cross-border trading to the region. On the flip side, Argentina flexibilized and opened the market, so there's more volume coming into Argentina. That represents an opportunity for us as well because we are shipping products from the U.S., while at the same time, some international players will come into Argentina, but we'd much rather see an open market than a closed market. To summarize, I think for the most part, we haven't seen a big impact related to the tariffs in the U.S.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Deepak Madhivanan with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Deepak Madhivanan (Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. So Martin, even margin in one Q is up 70 basis points year on year, and you kind of have a relatively favorable comp in the next few quarters as some of the credit card portfolio headwinds stabilize. Argentina contribution margin trends have also been very good in one Q. I guess the question is, should we still expect some of the investment plans that you have constrain fully your margin expansion? Can you give us an updated view on how you think about the margin trends? The second question, just to double-click a little bit on ads, the penetration as a percent of GMV seems to have kind of gained a few more basis points quarter on quarter than we typically see.

Can you expand how much is driven by ad units like display video, versus some of the more traditional ad units? Can we expect this run rate of penetration gains to continue in the next few quarters? Thank you so much.

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

Hi, Deepak. How are you? Yeah, I mean, you're correct. I mean, margins, if you look at EBIT margins, improved by 70 basis points year on year from 12.2% to 12.9%. Most of the exponential for that is country mix. Argentina, which by the way has a bigger margin than the other countries, increased shares of revenues from 14% to 34%. That on itself helps us in terms of improving margins. On the other hand, Argentina itself also improved margins as we discussed earlier today. That also helped in a positive direction.

That more than compensated this quarter the investments that we continue to make in Brazil and Mexico, mainly in logistics and credit card. That generated some margin compression in Brazil and Mexico. Obviously, we do not guide regarding margins, but we have been consistently saying that we do not manage the business to a short-term margin goal. What we want to make sure is that we do not miss the large opportunity of growth that we have ahead of us in commerce and fintech. If we need to invest behind those opportunities, we will continue to do so, even if it might make some short-term pressure on margins.

I think the example of last year where we had in 2024, we had margins slightly lower than 2023, but we deliver strong growth, and this is something that we want to continue to deliver because the opportunity continues to be enormous in Latin America. Only 15% of transactions are done online, and we play an important role of bringing more people online. Fintech adoption and financial inclusion is very, very low in most of the region, particularly in Mexico, as Osvaldo was mentioning. Again, the focus is on growth, but at the same time, managing for reasonable profitability, as we call it in MELI, growth fit, balancing, finding the right balance between growth and profits. Hey, Deepak. Ariel here. To your question about ads, we had a solid quarter.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

We grew about 50% year over year on an FX-neutral basis with penetration going up in Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. That is basically coming from an improvement in our product stack. We had a great quarter in brand ads, which is part of our search offering. Although coming from a low base, we have seen a positive acceleration coming from the extension of the product to sellers. It was previously only available for top brands, and making it more widely available is paying off. Kind of the same thing happened with display. We grew this quarter above 100% year over year in display, similarly to brand ads coming from a widely available offer to more sellers, and also coming from new features in the product like automatic generation of creativities for campaigns, better analytics, etc., etc. PASS continues to do very well. We remain optimistic, right?

We have already a business that is the size of $1 billion in revenues per year, but we think we are just getting started. Last but not least, the launch of MercadoPlay on TV is another exciting step in the direction of expanding our inventory beyond the marketplace, and it will definitely play a key role in our strategy in the long term.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Josh Beck with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Josh Beck (Analyst)

Yep. Thank you so much for taking the question. I wanted to ask about the magnitude of short-term margin pressure that you're seeing from the strategic investments in shipping. Just would like to understand that. A little bit of a follow-on to, I think, Craig's question. Are you seeing any impact from maybe higher ocean freight rates? Because there's certainly been such a slowdown. Maybe just kind of help us think through the sourcing of some of your goods, if you have any notable exposure to some of these ocean routes that all of a sudden have a lot less volume. Would love an update there.

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

Yeah, I think, as I mentioned earlier, right, when you look at the margins in the different countries, and you can find this in our disclosures, the direct contribution margins in Argentina improved by 11 percentage points compared to last year, for the reason that I explained earlier. Whereas on the opposite side, Mexico and Brazil compressed roughly 5 percentage points, both of them, compared to last year. The reason for that, the main reason for that, I would point out to three reasons. Credit card continues to grow and put in some margin pressure in the short term. As we continue to improve the profitability of the credit card, that might change. If we look at credit cards older than two years, they are already profitable.

The logistic infrastructure will continue to build our logistic infrastructure to try to increase the penetration of fulfillment in Brazil and keep up with the levels that we have in Mexico in a market that's growing 25%-30% year on year. That requires investments. Lastly, I think, if you look at year over year, both Mexico and Brazil were affected by the valuation. That also put a little pressure on both Brazil and Mexico's contribution margins. Regarding the second part of your questions, our CBT business is relatively small. It's mostly into Mexico. It's nascent into Argentina over the past this quarter. In the previous quarter, we started to deliver products into Argentina. Now that it's open.

We plan to continue to invest and develop that business because we think that it's a good opportunity as a business on itself, but also to complement the offering that we have within our marketplace to continue shipping products from Asia directly into Latin America and from the Texas operation that we have in the U.S.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from James Friedman with Susquehanna. Please go ahead.

James Friedman (Analyst)

Hi. It's Jamie Freeman at Susquehanna. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you could share any data that you might have on Credito, the credit portfolio, and its attached rate to the marketplace. In some markets, I think you've occasionally disclosed that. What sort of accelerator do you enjoy as you originate, and that attaches to purchasing in the broader marketplace ecosystem? Thank you.

Martín de los Santos (CFO)

I think that what we have disclosed in general is this is what we call blue money, which covers, on the one hand, credit, but also money that's already within the MercadoPago system. That is roughly in the order of, depending on the country, 20-30% of the GMV we process on the marketplace. That has been trending up, as I mentioned, but continues to be within that range for the mainstream countries.

Moderator (participant)

The next question will come from Danny Elger with XP. Please go ahead.

Danny Elger (Analyst)

Hi, good evening. Thank you for taking my question. I have a quick one on competition. It's actually a follow-up. Regarding Brazil, if you could just update us on your view regarding the TikTok Shop launch this month here. How do you see that in terms of maybe affecting you guys? In Argentina, you mentioned about the increased interest. We even saw some news recently. If you could also share your view on the recent developments in terms of competition in Argentina, that would be interesting as well. Thank you.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Hey, Danny, how are you? Ariel here. On TikTok, I think it's still early days. They launched in Mexico a few months back. They are just launching in Brazil, so we do not have too much info to share with you. Of course, we are paranoid, so we follow them closely, but there is not much to be shared. In Mexico, they seem to be focused on low-value items coming from domestic sellers. It remains to be seen what their strategy is going to be in Brazil. Taking a step back, I would say that there seems to be a higher overlap in their value prop with some other platforms more than with MercadoLibre. Again, time will tell, right? We will follow that one closely and decide how to respond.

To wrap this one up, I would say that typically when there's a new entrant in the e-commerce space, particularly when they come with a different playbook, they tend to bring new users who used to shop offline into the online world, and that will create another opportunity for us as well. We hope we can take advantage of that one. In terms of Argentina, even more early, we saw interest, and we know that Temu launched operations in the country. Amazon has also been shipping items from the U.S. into Argentina, but not much to be said, right? There are no numbers or indications that they are getting progress that is calling our attention. As Martín was saying before, this presents an opportunity for us as well.

Three weeks after the government opened the regulatory framework, we were live with our dropshipping from the U.S. into Argentina. Now we are live with shipping items from our Texas inventory into Argentina as well, and we expect to continue expanding that selection to complement our local marketplace.

Moderator (participant)

This will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks. Please go ahead. The conference is now concluded. Thank you.