MercadoLibre, Inc. (MELI) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

EBIT question, Irma asked and try a little bit differently. There are obviously seasonal headwinds in 1Q from credit business, you know, that partly eases off through the year. But are you now ramping investments in certain areas that's incremental, you know, that the seasonal effects are somewhat masked and we should expect EBIT margin for the year to be around 1Q levels? Any additional color you can provide that would be super helpful. Thank you so much. Hey, Deepak. Ariel here. So let me take some time to address the first point on competitive intensity. So Brazil is one of the most attractive e-commerce markets in the world, so it's natural that it's getting more and more intense, as that has been the case for many years. While competition is intense, I would highlight a couple of things about the way we are thinking. about this, and perhaps this might be a bit different from how the market is thinking. So first, we thrive in competitive environments, right? Competition makes us stronger. It pushes us to evolve, to continue innovating, and that's exactly what we have been doing over the last few years, actually for 26 years, but it's been doing for the last few years as well. Every single engagement metric you look in MercadoLibre Brasil is strengthening frequency, multiple category shopping, retention. So all those are structural gains in our value proposition. Those are not short-term gains or growth that we are buying. So, once again, satisfied with that, as we are satisfied with reaching new records of MPS that really show how strong our value proposition is in the country. Our conversion rate in Brazil has increased one percentage point year over year. That's a huge increase when you think about conversions. And all these feeds into the rapid growth that we ...