MercadoLibre - Q2 2023

Transcript

Richard Cathcart (Investor Relations Officer)

Hello, everyone, welcome to the MercadoLibre Earnings Conference Call for the quarter ended June 30th, 2023. Thank you for joining us. I'm Richard Cathcart, Investor Relations Officer at MercadoLibre. Today, we will share our quarterly highlights on video, after which we'll begin our live Q&A session with our Chief Financial Officer, Pedro Arnt, Fintech President, Osvaldo Gimenez, and Commerce EVP, Ariel Szarfsztejn. Before going on to discuss our results of the Q2 of 2023, I remind you that management may make, and this presentation may contain, forward-looking statements. Please refer to the disclaimer on screen, which will also be available in our earnings materials on our investor relations website.

Before turning to our quarterly results, we would like to highlight that our new investor relations website is live and has new resources such as videos, podcasts, and frequently asked questions to help investors better understand our business. We have also improved navigation around the site, making it easier to find our earnings and SEC documents. With that, let's begin with a summary of our results.

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

Hello, everyone. I'm pleased to share with you that MercadoLibre continues to sustain its strong momentum of the last few quarters. Q2 '2023 was once again a very, very solid quarter. Rapid top-line growth and strong margin expansion were broad-based across geographies and business units, showing the strengths of our business and the potential of our financial model as we continue to scale. Let me begin with the financial highlights. Our revenue growth remains high despite our size, and this, combined with operational efficiency and scale, led to a big step up in our income from operations margin. Income from operations more than doubled year-on-year, reaching a new quarterly record. This quarterly result is a testament to the potential for solid margin expansion, combined with above-market rates of growth inherent in our performance. In the short run, not every quarter will look like this.

There are still multiple growth vectors for us to invest behind, but it certainly points to the long-term margin and cash upside we believe we can deliver. Turning to the KPIs of our commerce business. In Q2, MercadoLibre's GMV surpassed the $10 billion mark for the first time. This growth was driven mainly by Brazil and Mexico, which overtook Argentina to become our second-largest commerce geography for the first time. Brazil and Mexico both delivered an acceleration of successful items growth compared to the previous quarter. As we continue to bolster MercadoLibre's value proposition, our leadership position in the region has been going from strength to strength. Other highlights in commerce include fulfillment penetration in Brazil, which is accelerating and reached a new high, and also a further pickup in growth of our first-party business, which grew well ahead of overall GMV during Q2.

On top of that momentum, our advertising business also remains strong, with revenue reaching the equivalent of 1.6% of GMV, driven by higher engagement with product ads. Mercado Pago's TPV growth remains strong as well. The acquiring business delivered higher TPV per device as our move upmarket to larger SMBs continues to deliver results in both Brazil and Mexico. On the digital account front, TPV and engagement with our more complete stack of products also improved, as the KPIs indicate. Insurtech and asset management, newer and smaller businesses, are also gaining traction as these products scale, and we improve the experience and product offering to our consumers. Turning to credit, NIMAL continued to expand on the back of healthy spreads in Mexico, a good performance from the credit card in Brazil, and overall, broadly stable delinquency.

We are once again pleased to share MercadoLibre's strong results with our shareholders. We'll continue to develop our value proposition, investing aggressively, yet with discipline and always focusing on long-term value creation. Just before we go into the Q&A, Richard will share some more detailed business news with you. Thank you, and I look forward to reporting back to you in a quarter.

Richard Cathcart (Investor Relations Officer)

Today, we want to share a more detailed view of our fintech operations in Mexico. For Mercado Pago, Mexico represents an exciting opportunity. It's a growing country with a large population that currently has lower adoption of financial services than other markets in Latin America, such as Brazil. Over the last few quarters, we have been rolling out our fintech product stack in Mexico, positioning Mercado Pago as one of the leaders in the development of the market for digital payments and other financial services. Our strategy is to serve both payers and merchants, focusing on users that are already within our ecosystem. As we do this, we build on the trust of MercadoLibre's brand and build on the user relationships and knowledge from the commerce business to better serve our fintech users. Mercado Pago users in Mexico can open their digital account within minutes for free.

The money stored in the account generates interest at the benchmark rate through our partner, and can be used at any time with our free debit card, money transfers, and online payments. To get money into the account, users can transfer from other banks or use our money in solution at physical stores, an important feature in an economy where cash is still dominant. Another important characteristic of the Mexican market is remittances, a service used by millions of Mexicans every month. For Mercado Pago, this represents an opportunity to encourage the digitalization of cash, with transfer directly into the digital account. Mercado Pago offers these transfers through partnerships with two established and renowned players, and recently launched a third partnership with an exciting startup, Felix Pago.

Our consumer credit solutions are popular in Mexico and continue to perform well, with our buy now, pay later product having higher penetration on the marketplace than our other geographies. This highlights the synergies of our ecosystem, with marketplace knowledge helping the underwriting of credit. We also offer consumer loans, money deposited into the user's account to fulfill day-to-day financial needs. The consumer credit book has increased in size significantly in the last 12 months and continues to perform well with strong profitability and stable NPLs. In the first half of 2023, we launched our credit card in Mexico to complement our consumer credit offer. This is an important product for the development of the market in Mexico as it drives engagement, principality, and digitalization of cash.

This product is still at small scale, but we expect it to be a key piece of the Pago value proposition in Mexico in the long term. On top of that, this year we have expanded our insurance solutions, another important product with low penetration in Mexico. Like in other geographies, we began offering extended warranties for items bought on MercadoLibre, followed by insurance for life, cell phones, personal accidents, and digital account cover, building a complete product stack for consumers' core needs. In Q2, we expanded the extended warranty product to cross-border purchases for the first time. In an underbanked country like Mexico, our strategy has been to serve and develop both sides of the market, payers and merchants, to drive market development. By bringing more consumers to digital finance, we also drive adoption among merchants in the country.

That's why Mercado Pago offers complete payment solution to these merchants, combined with the fastest payment settlement in the market and competitive receivables discount rates. During 2023, we increased our focus on our smart POS in Mexico, aimed at larger merchants that generate higher TPV. Merchants also have access to online payment tools and are able to offer payments in installments to their buyers. On top of these products, merchants can access credit lines through Mercado Pago, many for the first time ever, to grow and develop their businesses. Mexico is a market that's still at an early stage of development, but presents sizable opportunities for Mercado Pago and MercadoLibre. With a robust product offer, we firmly believe in the potential of our value proposition to Mexican individuals and merchants, and will continue to work to tailor our services to their needs.

As always, the best is yet to come.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Irma Sgarz of Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Irma Sgarz (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yes. Hi, thanks for taking my question. In your remarks, you stated that you intend to use some of the headroom created by operating leverage to lean into certain areas of the business in the 2nd half of this year. Can you just lay out for us which areas are a priority for the, for the short and immediate near term? I would imagine that credit cards and 1P, as you've previously noted, are a top priorities here. I'm curious where you are where you're at regarding the lower value items, or those items below the free shipping threshold, specifically in light of the ongoing cross-border discussion. Somewhat related to this, in Mexico, you have a more sizable cross-border operation compared to the other markets. Is this an operation that is margin accretive overall, or for the Mexican market?

If so, can the same model be applied in Brazil? Thank you.

Richard Cathcart (Investor Relations Officer)

Hi, Irma. Thank you. In general, we continue to see multiple opportunities for us to invest behind our users and growth. We've been extremely pleased with the market share gains we've been delivering across the board over the last few quarters. It's important for us that we continue to carry out that balancing act between short-term margin expansion and long-term scale and overall size of the business. I'm not skirting the answer, but it really is there are multiple growth vectors and multiple areas that we can choose to lean into in quarters where we feel where we're coming in very strong on bottom line and have opportunity to accelerate growth even more. You've mentioned some of them, but there are multiple others. We've recently launched a new loyalty program.

We continue to invest heavily in technology for our advertising business, and really, there are multiple vectors of growth.

... and that's what we're trying to continue to be very consistent on, which is taking a long-term view and trying to capture as many opportunities as we can, and continuing to maximize market share while delivering operational leverage over longer periods of time. The CBT business in Mexico is performing very well. I think it's a very good example of how when we focus on cross-border trade and we build out the product, we can deliver strong results. Cross-border GMV in Mexico has been growing at about 2x, the growth of non-cross-border GMV, and it is a profitable business.

Irma Sgarz (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Bob Ford of Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Bob Ford (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Congratulations on the quarter, thanks for taking my questions. Pedro, can you talk about advertising and the operating leverage in Mexico specifically? There were some big gains there, in the context of building that credit book, we thought the performance was all the more impressive. In the last week, you've changed the landing page for the cross-border business in Brazil. You've added new categories, and you've gotten up to about 4.2 million listings. How are you thinking about cross-border and the relevance of the value proposition following Remessa Conforme? How long will the Remessa Conforme compliance certification process take, in your view? Lastly, can you talk a little bit about Mercado Play? How many titles are you launching with? How do the economics of the model work?

You know, what have the initial changes in engagement been so far, from the users in the early stages, both in terms of the marketplace as well as Mercado Pago? Thank you.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Hi, Bob. This is Ariel here. Let me start with cross-border in, in Brazil, which, which have been generating some discussions in the last few weeks. We've been competing against Asian players in Brazil for several years now. Moreover, the old scheme and the way it's implemented, created some loopholes for companies who were supposedly importing B2C items at a 0 import tax rate in the country. The way we think about it is that if anything, the new scheme will actually increase taxes for, for everyone.

I guess time will tell if the speed improvements that, that will be generated with the new model will, will actually increase demand or not, but we still think that the best-case scenarios in terms of lead times will, will still be far from our same day and next day value proposition, that, that we're currently offering in Brazil. Simultaneously, the new scheme presents a new opportunity for MercadoLibre as well. Our CBT business in the country is almost non-existent. We think that we can actually build and scale a robust cross-border business, taking advantage of our own strengths, such as our traffic, the trust in our brands, our payments infrastructure, our local logistics, et cetera, et cetera. As Pedro was saying before, our cross-border business in Mexico is growing twice as much as our website.

If you look at what we are doing in cross-border in Chile and Colombia, where we also put some focus, it's growing triple digits in each of those countries. We think we could build something around cross-border with the new scheme. We'll probably be putting some effort in there whenever our resources allow us to do so, and that's the way I, I guess it will play out. Regarding Mercado Play, I think it's too early. We are just deploying our first version of the product, increasing the catalog, so not much to be said on that one, not many numbers to share either. I guess, Pedro, you want to take leverage in Mexico?

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

Yeah. The Mexican expansion in margin, and this applies to Brazil as well. Brazil and Mexico both drove the lion share of the growth in EBIT and margin expansion, and it's been remarkably consistent across multiple products, both in commerce and fintech. With the exception of the 1P margin that contracted slightly, pretty much all other revenue streams are coming in with very solid cost management and strong growth in revenue. This wasn't driven solely by credits in Mexico nor in Brazil. I think that's important to point out.

Bob Ford (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

I think it's very important. Ariel, I just want-

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

Go ahead.

Bob Ford (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

I just want to follow up if, if I could, and, and that is, Ariel, how long do you think the Remessa Conforme compliance and certification process is gonna take?

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

I think it, it depends more on, on the government than on ourselves. It's hard to answer that question. We are ready and, and eager to engage in such a scheme. We think that, as I was saying before, that this could present an opportunity for us. Timing from a government perspective to adjust processes, customs, et cetera, et cetera, is, it's hard to predict.

Bob Ford (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Understood. Thank you so much.

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

Bob, one more thing here. Just one more thing. I think it's important. You asked on the model around Play, the financial model.

Bob Ford (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah.

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

I think it's important to point out that the upfront outlay on content is extremely controlled. Most of the contracts are structured primarily with a revenue share. Remember, this is a advertising video on demand platform. We, we really are trying to build out solid technology product, learn, but the outlays in terms of commitments on content are efficiently managed, and most of the economic model will work around rev share with the content owners.

Bob Ford (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Super helpful. Thank you so much, Pedro.

Operator (participant)

Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Ruben of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Andrew Ruben (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi. Thanks for the question. A couple items on logistics here. We saw the 40 basis point increase in Brazil fulfillment penetration. Curious what drove the step change and what the bottlenecks are for increasing that figure further? When looking at the quarter, we see, about a 80 basis point increase for shipping fees within the take rate. Curious, what is, what's driving that, how you're thinking about the fee structure? Thank you.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Yeah. Why, regarding the first one on fulfillment, I see stronger demand from sellers in trying to engage with our fulfillment program. I think we have also improved our technology and product to streamline new seller onboarding, plus, existing seller farming. We have the technology and tools to tell the sellers exactly what we think will sell in fulfillment and to help them drive more inventory into our warehouses. The combination of the two is, is probably the key explanation behind the increase in fulfillment penetration. That was the first part. The second one, Andrew, can you remind me?

Andrew Ruben (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, just around the impact in the quarter we're seeing-

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Oh, yeah.

Andrew Ruben (Equity Research Analyst)

the increase in shipping fees. Curious what's driving it. Thank you.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Sure. Yeah. When, when you look at, at market shipping, take rate, you should bear in mind that that's a combination of two things. On the one hand, it's how much we charge our buyers and sellers for logistic services, but on the other hand, you have contra revenues, including contra costs, including there, mainly distribution costs. The 70 basis points improvement that you see in, in shipping take rates are a combination of both. We have always been disciplined and explicit in saying that we will try to trust pass the logistics inflation to our buyers or, or sellers whenever it makes sense. On the second hand, we have been also very effective in trying to get productivity improvements from our distribution operation as well.

The combination of the two is, is basically what explain the 70 basis points that you see in there.

Andrew Ruben (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks for the color, and nice to have you on the call, Ariel.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Marcelo Santos of JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Marcelo Santos (Vice President and Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good evening to all. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. The first, I wanted to ask about the Argentinian peso exercise that you did, the simulation that you put in the release. I wanted to understand how you dealt with costs that might be denominated in pesos, but are effectively driven by US dollar. For example, I don't know, I imagine developers, probably they, they earn money in pesos, but their salary is somehow linked to the US dollar. Did you just got the cost in peso, whatever they were, and converted, and did the exercise, or did you use some discretion to try to address this issue that maybe this cost will increase if there is a devaluation? That's the first question. The second question is about the credit card in Brazil.

Is this product already producing positive NIMAL? Thank you.

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

Let me take the first one. I think, first of all, important to note, the spirit of the disclosure, and we can get into more detail if necessary, is to clarify that when quantifying the impact of a devaluation in Argentina, it's not as simple as linearly devaluing revenues and costs from Argentina, because there are also Argentine peso-denominated costs that don't appear in the Argentine segment, but appear in the other segments, because we export a lot of services from Argentina, and that obviously has a positive impact on margins in other country segments because the revenues there are not Argentine peso denominated. Your question about Argentine peso-denominated costs, but that could potentially have an underlying tie to US dollars, I think that, that's a third derivative that the model doesn't take into account, but I, I would, I would disagree that this is a linear pass-through.

Salaries in Argentina are in Argentine pesos. Obviously, Argentina is a high inflationary country because of the consistent devaluation of its currency, but a devaluation probably actually generates a benefit in terms of IT costs, at least in the midterm.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Marcelo, with regards to the credit card in Brazil, I would say that as you recall, during the second half of last year, we were more conservative in terms of issuing credits, given the macro environment. We made good use of that time to rebuild our business models, and we are very happy with how they have been evolving. Therefore, I would say from the last quarter of last year until now, we nearly tripled, we more than tripled the number of cards we issued in a given quarter. We are excited about the results we are seeing. It's marginally, the new cohorts are creative, but it's still very early on in the game, and we need to continue to continue growing.

Just to understand, marginal accretive means that they are generating positive EBIT. Just wanted to understand if the contribution is positive or negative? Instead of EBIT, let's say marginal contribution. The marginal contribution is, is, is positive of the last cohorts we, we have issued. Still, this is a, a small number.

Marcelo Santos (Vice President and Equity Research Analyst)

Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you, all.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Deepak Mathivanan of Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

Zach Evans (Analyst)

Great, thanks. This is Zach on for Deepak. Just to follow up on the last line question, just, you know, in, in specifically on the Argentina macro, obviously, it's, you know, very challenging. The unit growth is holding up relatively well, just decelerated slightly. Just curious about how you're thinking about kind of going forward, the investments specifically in this country, in, in this area, and, and how to think about kind of staffing levels. Is this, you know, an area where you're thinking, you're reevaluating kind of the investment in staffing levels, currently? Are you kind of happy with where things stand? Then also just, you know, touching base on the inflationary trends, specifically on the logistics side in Brazil. Kind of noted that you're passing through some of these costs on to consumers.

Is that inflation pressure primarily on the labor or the partner side or, or both perhaps? How should we think about the kind of pace of inflation, kind of into the back half of the year? Is it accelerating, decelerating, or is it kind of relatively stable, and kind of expect the kind of pass-throughs to kind of continue, going forward? Thanks.

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

Let me take the last one first. I think you're better off asking a macroeconomist on inflationary expectations for the back half of the year. On Argentina, we continue to see tremendous potential in that market. If you look at what we've built in Pago, it's phenomenal. Our commerce position from a competitive position is extremely strong. If anything, there is a greater possibility now than maybe two or three years ago, that Argentina midterm might course correct. We're definitely not considering anything like scaling down our commitment to the country or pulling out. If anything, we have a sense that that might be one of the areas where we can lean into it a little bit more in the back half of the year and accelerate unit growth even more.

I think unit growth, if you compare to historical levels in Argentina, has actually been anemic. Mexico, Brazil, Chile, have been outperforming Argentina, and so there might be an opportunity there to reaccelerate unit growth on the commerce side. On the fintech side, it's been absolutely firing on all cylinders.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Regarding the first part of your second question, I would say inflation is coming from both. It's, it's on the one hand, coming from, from salaries, from operations, but it's also diesel and, and distribution inflation. Typically, across every country in LATAM, we see logistics inflation being higher than average inflation in the country, and that has been the case in the past half of the year, I would say.

Zach Evans (Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Ju of Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Stephen Ju (Analyst)

Great. Thank you so much. It's really nice to see this meaningful jump in your first party GMV here, even on a sequential basis. You know, can you talk about the halo effect that you may hopefully be seeing in terms of the shopping behavior in the consumer? Secondarily, I mean, today it's consumer electronics, but, you know, where else can you look to plug some of the assortment gaps that you might have right now? You know, if you can also talk about how has your thinking evolved in terms of greater or lower willingness to expand this business, given the competitive environment. Thank you.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Hey, Stephen, Ariel here. Yeah, we definitely see this acceleration as a consequence of all the investments that we have been putting into the business for several years. Our logistics improvement, the user experience and our investments in technology, the assortment and selection expansion, our retail business, our efforts to assure, ensure price competitiveness. I guess, all the levels combined, are driving user behavior and more transactions in our platform, which links to the brand performance and the way we think our customers love MercadoLibre, are definitely generating the numbers that you see. In terms of assortment experience, I guess we'll continue to in trying to build the biggest available selection in the market. That's part of our essence, and we'll continue doing so in the near future.

Stephen Ju (Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Maria Clara Infantozzi of Itaú BBA. Please proceed with your question.

Maria Clara Infantozzi (Equity Research Associate)

Hello, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. My question relates to the 1P operation. You showed consistent growth in this quarter, with improving profitability trend, but also still diluted show margins. I'd like you to please elaborate on more details about when should we expect an improvement with better contributive margins for the 1P operation? Also, If possible, it would be like to hear your perceptions about the competitive landscape here in Brazil and in Mexico. Thank you.

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

Okay. On margin structure, 1P has actually been playing out very much in line with the way we had anticipated, in that as we gain scale, as we improve operational efficiencies and build out the organization, we actually see very significant margin improvement year-over-year and even sequentially. It's still not profitable, and that's a function of the fact that it's still subscale versus some of our competitors. We need to continue to invest behind growing the business, and the natural operational leverage will continue to kick in. When we can turn that business positive is probably not over the next few quarters. It's more of a midterm objective of ours. Again, very pleased with the results this quarter, not only from a top-line perspective, but also how margins are improving as the business grows. On competition, I can hand it over to Ari.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Yeah. I, I think Latin America has become one of the most intense competitive scenarios in the world, probably. We have the big American player investing heavily in the region. We have Asian players, we have local players trying to defend their position. I guess we are all trying to serve the customers in, in different ways. Luckily for us, I think our strategy has played well. If you were to, to look at third-party data, it seems that the case that we have been gaining market share, both in Mexico and in Brazil, even in this tough environment. We hope to continue doing so, investing behind the business and, and trying to make the maximum out of the investments that we have been putting together over the last few years.

Maria Clara Infantozzi (Equity Research Associate)

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Kaio Prato of UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Kaio Prato (Equity Analyst)

Hello, everyone. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. I have two on my side, please. The 1st is on the Net Interest Margin After Losses from the credit business. This quarter, you disclosed the NIM, which included the funding costs, and I was interested to see that even including the funding cost, the NIM remains high. If you compare the Q1, your NIM was like 31%, while only looking to NIM, it was 37%. It seems that your funding cost is not that high. Just would like to understand how you calculate the funding costs here, if you include all funding costs and third-party funding costs or just one of them, and how could that be that low, please? Then I will follow up with my 2nd question.

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

Sure, Kaio. The funding cost is the blended average of the underlying cost on the credit book. It's the cost of the FIDCs, and it's the cost of the debt that we take on to fund that and our equity participation.

Kaio Prato (Equity Analyst)

Okay, thank you. This includes the third-party funding costs as well, right? And then the-

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

It does.

Kaio Prato (Equity Analyst)

-

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

Yeah, it includes the costs of third-party funding as well. Indeed.

Kaio Prato (Equity Analyst)

Okay. Okay, thank you. The second question is on the take rate of the Fintech business as well. Excluding the credit business, the take rate had a reduction of more than 10 basis points, quarter-over-quarter. We know slightly you can see a part of this is related to finance fees, but in a quarter-over-quarter basis, we basically didn't see major change in interest rates. I just would like to understand what were the main drivers here, if this was related to lower prices as well, and what can we expect going forward, especially in light of the policy cuts expected especially in the future?

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

A couple of the key drivers on the compression of the Fintech take rate, they're. They're fairly even distributed among these three drivers. There's compression on Argentine financing revenues, where we've had less financed TPV as a percentage of overall revenues. As the reference rates in Argentina have been going up, that's also tightened some of the profitability on Argentine financing. In Argentina, the wallet business, which continues to perform incredibly well, but also saw some decrease in take rates through mix shift in the different monetizations on QR and the other transactional fees that we have in Argentina. And then the mPOS business in Brazil also drove roughly also a third of the take rate compression in Fintech. That's primarily less devices sold as we move more and more upmarket into larger merchants.

We have merchants with higher TPV per merchant, but-... obviously, they purchase less machines, and so the revenues on the sales of machines as net new machine sales decelerates, is the third driver of compression on the fintech take rate. Like I said, roughly, each one of these three drivers have a similar magnitude on the fintech compression.

Osvaldo Gimenez (President, Fintech)

and very in mind, Kyle, that for the last point Pedro mentioned, these machines are always sold at a loss, so lower revenues, but also lower costs.

Kaio Prato (Equity Analyst)

Okay, thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Geoffrey Elliott of Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Geoffrey Elliott (Director of Research)

Well, hello, thanks very much for taking the question. Could we talk a bit more about credit in Mexico? Clearly, a very different market from Brazil in terms of the credit penetration of the, the consumer, the amount of existing credit relationships they're likely to have. How does that feed into the underwriting that you do? What opportunities does that create? What are the, what are the potential pitfalls of lending to people who've got less experience of taking credit before? Thank you.

Osvaldo Gimenez (President, Fintech)

Hi, Geoffrey. Definitely, as you say, we see a huge opportunity in Mexico to start with for our buy now, pay later products within our platform. Mexico is the one country where we, by far, the highest penetration. Beyond that, overall in consumer originations, Mexico is already higher than the rest of the country. This stands for the first time ever. Mexico is higher than other countries for the first time ever. It's our largest consumer book for the Q3 in a row and continues to be the largest portfolio. We are very excited overall with the opportunity. Our NPLs continue to be very good and continue to decrease. What we see is an opportunity beyond our transactions on MercadoLibre and beyond consumer credit. That's why we just got into credit card.

We launched our credit card product for, for friends and family earlier this year, and then we started to expand it. It's still very small, but we believe that we have a huge opportunity and that we can leverage our ecosystem, serve many of our users who, as opposed to, to other countries, have, in general, less penetration of credit products. Some, some of them are not in, in, in credit scores growth, and therefore, we believe we have an opportunity to serve them very well.

Geoffrey Elliott (Director of Research)

Thank you. Any pitfalls with lending to people who just don't have as much of a credit history because credit's not been available to them before?

Osvaldo Gimenez (President, Fintech)

Well, we believe that it's our opportunity. As you know, our loans are typically very small to start with, and we have the information of transactions they have done on MercadoLibre. I think that it's been working very well since we started, and we are to continue growing this.

Geoffrey Elliott (Director of Research)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Marvin Fong of BTIG. Please proceed with your question.

Marvin Fong (Director and E-commerce Analyst)

Great. Good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. Two questions for me. I think it's just begun, and that Brazil is in the process of a debt renegotiation program. I think it's already released some encouraging statistics. My question is, you know, what's sort of your view about this program? Do you think it could, you know, unlock new opportunities for credit and extending credit to more people? Do you have any specific plans to target prospective borrowers as this program evolves? The second question, you mentioned, you've launched a new loyalty program. I was just curious, you know, what were...

What are some of the new features of the program, and can you share any, you know, metrics about how, how more productive people in the loyalty program are versus users that are not in the loyalty program? Thank you.

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

Great. On, on the Brazilian program to ease the burden of credit on consumers, I think we began to see the first flow-through to our own user base. It's probably early to tell, whether through open banking initiatives and other areas, we'll be able to target those users or not. In general, the conceptual answer is, if it helps deleverage consumers in general, it probably generates a healthier consumer lending backdrop in a whole, but not too many deep insights to share with you at this point. On loyalty, looking to announce changes to the program, simplified understanding of how the program works, continuous efforts to improve content that we can offer, and to continue to sign more partnerships that give access... to MercadoLibre loyalty users more and more benefits.

We think that the fact that we straddle both your financial life and your commercial life, gives us a unique opportunity to build a very differentiated loyalty program. We have some really strong content partnerships and content overlays that now have gotten complemented with Meli Play. We are continuing to focus on building out the loyalty program. The numbers of paid loyal users, so users who haven't necessarily been earning their way into the loyalty program, but are actually willing to pay for the program so that they can gain those benefits, has been growing consistently quarter-and-quarter, which we think validates that we're building a very compelling user proposition. The data around the lift that we get in our users after they sign up for the program continues to be positive. We've shared some of those in previous calls. Stay tuned.

You'll see a relaunch of the loyalty program soon, and it's a continuous effort to really turn that into a competitive advantage.

Marvin Fong (Director and E-commerce Analyst)

Great! Thanks, Pedro.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Neha Agarwala of HSBC. Please proceed with your question.

Neha Agarwala (SVP)

Hi, thank you for taking my question. My first question is regarding the Brazil GMV growth, which remains strong. It decelerated a bit sequentially, but it continued to remain strong. What are the main drivers behind that? Do you continue to see some market share gain after Americanas? In general, do you think your value proposition and the assortment is benefiting the GMV growth and helping you to gain market share? That's my first question. My second question is regarding the average yield of your loan book. If we do not consider the provisions, if we just see the yield on your loan book, that went up from, in my calculation, 73% in last quarter, annualized to 76%.

This is despite the strong growth that we've seen in credit cards, which are dilutive to the short-term interest income. What has led to this increase in the yield? Has there been some repricing or growth in more consumer loans that has led to this increase in yield? If you could elaborate a bit on that. My last question is on customer deposits. Have you, are you already taking customer deposits in Brazil and Mexico, or what is the strategy there? Is that something that you think could you would like to do in the future? Thank you so much.

Ariel Szarfsztejn (EVP)

Hey, Neha, Ariel here. Today is MercadoLibre's 24th birthday, and I'd like to think that the market share gains and the acceleration in growth that we are seeing in the business today is basically a consequence of everything we've been doing over these last 24 years. We think, and we like to think that we have the best value proposition and customer experience available in the market, and we'll continue putting our efforts behind building so in the near future.

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

Great! Happy birthday, MercadoLibre. It is 24 years since Marco started it in a garage, as everyone knows. On, on yields, Neha, two things, I think you kind of hit on it. We've continued to be fairly selective on who we're extending credit to. We haven't expanded into higher risk segments, but we have slightly started to move into mid-risk segments. We've also seen some upward pressures in terms of funding costs in some of our markets, that's also led to higher APRs. The combination of those yield improvements and significant improvements in bad debt is what has been driving the improvement in NIMAs on a sequential basis.

Osvaldo Gimenez (President, Fintech)

With regards to, to taking deposits, we do offer accounts which are remunerated in each of the three main markets in Brazil, in Mexico, and Argentina. What we pay users is typically what we are able to get from those funds. For example, in Brazil, it's close to, to, to CDI, which is close to 14%. In Mexico, it's in the order of 10%, and Argentina is, at this point, 80%. This compares in many cases to savings accounts from banks, which pay 0. As a consequence of that, these, these deposits, assets under management, have been growing a lot in the last year. The growth for Brazil has been very high single digits. Sorry, very high double digits, not triple digits, but very high double digits.

In the case in Argentina, it's well into the triple digits. Part of that is inflation, but even if you take inflation out of the question, we have seen growth of 80% in terms of number of users using our remunerating accounts in Argentina. In Mexico, it's also a very good and very competitive product. I think we are paying the higher rates in the market, but it's still rather fairly new as compared to the one in Brazil or Argentina, so the volumes are not as high. We do take deposits in all three countries with different formats, depending on what regulation permits.

In the case of Argentina, for example, and in, in the case of, of Mexico, many of those deposits are, are at them, at a money market fund run by, by a third party.

Neha Agarwala (SVP)

How much of your loan book would you say is now backed by customer deposits, roughly?

Osvaldo Gimenez (President, Fintech)

In the only country where we can use the deposit to back credits is in Brazil. It's something that we do marginally, and we do it marginally because we have this strategy at this stage to grow the assets under management, therefore, we are passing through most of the, with nearly all of the returns we get from, from those deposits. It's, I'll say at this stage, it's marginal, only do it when we take CDBs, which is our equivalent of CDs in the US.

Neha Agarwala (SVP)

Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. My next question comes from the line of John Colantuoni of Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Chris Wood (Analyst)

Hi, this is Chris on for John. Thanks for taking our question. Can you give us some more color on how the credit book performed by region in the Q2, and then in terms of your plans to expand it, are you still feeling most comfortable with expanding primarily in Mexico and Argentina, or have you seen any green shoots in Brazil that would get you more comfortable with expanding beyond the credit card product there? Thank you.

Osvaldo Gimenez (President, Fintech)

Hi, John. I think that the credit books continues to perform very well across the board. We continue to see good NIMALs, which have improved. I think that we raised rates in expectation of higher default rates, and these were lower, so we have probably record high NIMALs. We have been able to grow the volume, both, as you mentioned, in Argentina and in Mexico. In Brazil, we are still below a year ago, which was probably our peak origination on Q2 of last year. We have been growing sequentially our portfolio for the last several quarters, and default rates continue to come down. I think we are excited with the results and willing to continue growing the volume.

If you were to look at bad debt as a percentage of our portfolio, it has come down for last one, two, three, four, five quarters in a row. Since the Q2 of last year, for last five quarters, we have been reducing the bad debt in the last quarters, increasing the size of the portfolio. Although, as I mentioned, in the case of Brazil, it's still below what it was a year ago.

Chris Wood (Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. I am showing no further questions at this time, I would like to turn the conference back to Pedro Arnt, MercadoLibre's Chief Financial Officer, for closing remarks.

Pedro Arnt (CFO)

Thanks, everyone. great start of the year, phenomenal first half, continue to gain share, showing the power of our operational model, and to top it all off, 24 years of working, clearly paying off. Thanks for the interest, and we look forward to updating you in a quarter.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.