Earnings Labs

MercadoLibre, Inc. (MELI)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, May 6, 2015

$1,791.99

-2.59%

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Same-Day

-2.30%

1 Week

-2.59%

1 Month

-3.93%

vs S&P

-4.14%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to MercadoLibre First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Martin de los Santos, Vice President of Finance and Head of Investor Relations. Sir, please go ahead.

Martin de los Santos - Vice President-Finance

Management

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the MercadoLibre earnings conference call for the quarter ended March 31, 2015. I am Martin de los Santos, Vice President of Finance and Head of Investor Relations for MercadoLibre. Our senior manager presenting today is Pedro Arnt, Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, Osvaldo Gimenez, Executive Vice President of Payments, will be available during today's Q&A session. This conference call is also being broadcast over the internet and is available through the Investor Relations section of our website. I remind you that management may make forward-looking statements relating to such matters as continued growth prospects for the company, industry trends and product and technology initiatives. These statements are based on currently available information under current assumptions, expectations and projections about future events. While we believe that our assumptions, expectations and projections are reasonable in view of the currently available information, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from those discussed in this call for a variety of reasons including those described in the forward-looking statements and Risk Factors sections of our 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on our Investor Relations website. Finally, I would like to remind you that during the course of this conference call we might discuss some non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures can be found in our first quarter 2015 earnings press release available on our Investor Relations website. Now let me turn the call over to Pedro. Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thanks, Martin, and welcome to all to our first results conference call for our 2015 fiscal year. We are pleased with the way 2015 has started, maintaining the strong…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Mark Miller from William Blair. Mark R. Miller - William Blair & Co. LLC: Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Pedro, we covered a lot of ground in your remarks. I guess my first question would be on the acceleration in the new confirmed users on the site, up 33%. That's the fastest in three years. Could you expand on what you think is driving that? How much of that is coming from marketing? And then on the marketing spend, my understanding is the way you're shifting that increasingly to mobile, there can be a longer payback but ultimately a higher lifetime value. So can you just tell us where we are also in that inflection point? Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. So, I think as we noted in the prepared remarks, what we've seen in the quarter are improvements in our marketing execution. No radical departures in how we're investing the money. There is an increment in terms of amount spent, but by and large it's been more solid execution. Mobile is being accretive in that sense. We've I think gotten better at SEO and also in converting registered users. So the short answer, Mark, I think is we were simply more efficient with our marketing spend. We did spend more during the Q, but not a dramatic departure. If you look at online customer acquisition investments as a percentage of revenue, there isn't any significant change there, about 10 basis points incremental versus last year. So really it's been primarily better execution. And then in terms of cohort analysis or lifetime values, we really haven't been disclosing much. We have said, as you mentioned, that it's what's been behind the incremental spend and our…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Gene Munster from Piper Jaffray. Eugene Charles Munster - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): I'll add my congratulations on the results. And, Pedro, if you could just walk through – I know you had a lot of numbers there and I might have missed some of them, but what you see are the key metrics in Brazil. And then separately, this has been a lot of different pieces that have been coming together that are adding up to these results. I guess can you talk a little bit about the sustainability of this? In other words, is there anything changing the competitive dynamic that could make you feel that we should anticipate these results continuing? And then my last question is, with the eBay spinout, does that have any impact on MercadoLibre? Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Great. So the Brazilian market obviously continues to perform very well, driven in large part by the enhanced marketplace. A couple of numbers there. Let me just start with revenues. Slight deceleration, but still very strong revenue growth in local currencies of 58%. If you take into account the ForEx headwinds, that's still 31% in U.S. dollars. When we look at total payment volume in Brazil, in local currencies it's growing at nearly 80%, 79%. That shows the strength of the payments business. We said that 60%-ish of all Brazilian GMV is already being done on credit, so that's phenomenal penetration of the credit offerings and that's been one of the key drivers behind the growth in total payment volume. The Merchant Service business in Brazil is also performing well and that also explains the growth in Pago. And then shipping in Brazil, we're rapidly approaching half…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Ross Sandler from Deutsche Bank.

Ross Sandler - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. Pedro, I just wanted to follow up on the Brazil unit growth. I think last quarter was 33% and I think you had a 3 point easier comp, if my notes are correct from a year ago. So if it was 26% this quarter, can you just talk about the macroenvironment that you're seeing in Brazil? And then of all the things you're doing with the enhanced marketplace strategy, how much of a driver is the free installment program that's happening in Brazil? I think you said it was 48% of transactions right now. Is that a meaningful driver of some of the acceleration you've seen in the last couple of quarters or at least last quarter? And then as you comp through that what do you think the growth rate might look like in Brazil? And then the last question – sorry, I know this is a lot. But I think you said the GMV growth excluding Venezuela for overall MercadoLibre was 22% in local currency in the prepared remarks. Is that correct? Just want to make sure. Thanks. Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. So first of all, units sold did decelerate in Brazil from 33% to 26% when you look at it consolidated. We've always shied away from macro explanations when the business is accelerating. And so I think that also applies to when there's some deceleration. The deceleration is probably driven primarily by the fact that although a lot of the growth is being driven by the move to the enhanced transactions, those transactions that have a credit overlay, a payments overlay, shipping overlay and all three of those continue to grow very nicely. The growth rates once these services get more and more penetrated are less steep, so that's…

Ross Sandler - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Just what was the overall growth rate for GMV excluding Venezuela in local currency? I thought you had said 22%, but you were going through a lot of numbers so I may have written that down wrong. Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Just one second. You're correct. So excluding Venezuela, gross merchandise excluding ForEx grew at 22%. If you take into account currency headwinds and the dollar has strengthened versus all of our currencies, as we mentioned, then GMV growth excluding Venezuela was 5%. So 22% ex-FX, 5% in dollar terms, as reported.

Ross Sandler - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Great. Thanks, guys. And nice quarter. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Marcelo Santos from JPMorgan.

Marcelo Santos - JPMorgan CCVM SA

Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. I actually have two questions. First, on the large retailers, the official stores, I just wanted to understand a little bit better the dynamics of competition in there. You say you're trying to attract more volume to be sold through your platform. When you do that, do you think you are taking share from the other e-commerce players or are you really convincing those players to sell more in the marketplace? That is the first question, if you could throw some light there. And the second is on the Classified business. So you said you made a revamp in the real estate offer. Do you feel that your Classified property, the portfolio is complete? Or do you still see space and need for more M&A in there? There are the two questions. Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. So in terms of the competitive pressure of the official stores, I mean, the way we've always seen it is purchases that occur online are still very small compared to offline throughout the region. It's still sub 5% even for Brazil. And so when we onboard branded merchants, branded retailers that start offering their products online, many times what you generate is a transaction that perhaps would have occurred offline and you get it to occur online. Yes, if it's occurring on MELI by definition it's not occurring on one of the other online players. So in that sense, there's a market share gain. But like we've always said, what's more relevant are the share gains that are occurring from offline commerce. So hard to do the counterfactual, to say if the purchase is occurring on MELI by definition it would have occurred otherwise on one of the online…

Marcelo Santos - JPMorgan CCVM SA

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Stephen Ju from Credit Suisse. Stephen Ju - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Yeah, thanks. So, Pedro, I just wanted to understand this correctly. So you mentioned two-thirds of GMV in Brazil is done on credit and this includes interest-free and legacy financing. And also presumably the other markets are lagging this level of adoption. So as you look over the next few years, especially given the context of interest-free financing, do you think this level becomes the new norm for the other regions as well? Also you touched on advertising in your prepared remarks. How have the conversations on how adoption among your sellers has been? Do you think it'll be an uphill battle to convince them to use this product or is the 400% in profit dollar trade-off already well apparent to them? Thanks. Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. So of the two-thirds that are done on credit, the way that breaks out is the new (56:05) the installment free really has become the lion's share of that. So slightly less than 50%, 48% is what we mentioned in the prepared remarks of GMV is free installment for buyers. So the remaining 16% to 18% is what comes from the legacy credit. Whether that's the new norm for the other countries, two years, three years, four years down the line, difficult to tell. Credit is a very relevant component to retail in the region. And so structurally I don't think there are any reasons why that couldn't become the case, but we need to continue executing and see where we get. The initial results we're seeing are quite positive although earlier stage than in Brazil and, like we said, with…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Michel Morin from Morgan Stanley. Michel Morin - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Yes, thank you. Two questions, Pedro. The first I just wanted to clarify, you mentioned growth in the financing piece in the quarter. I'm not sure I got the number, 60%-something. I wasn't sure if that was company-wide or Brazil only. Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Great. So in constant currencies or in local currencies, the growth of financing revenues was actually 100%. Michel Morin - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. And in dollars? And that includes Venezuela? Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, Venezuela doesn't have a financing product. So in this case, it's not relevant. So excluding Venezuela is also 100%. So Venezuela has no impact on that. Michel Morin - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: So, Pedro, given the kind of growth that you're seeing here, and I know historically you haven't given us a quantification of how relevant this is. Is there anything you can share with us that can better frame how relevant this has become, especially in Brazil?

Operator

Operator

Sir, does that conclude your question? Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No, no just one second. We want to give some thought on that. I think it's a relevant question. So in terms of obviously this has been growing very strongly. So when we look at the component of revenue that's coming from financing on a consolidated basis, it's in the teens of overall revenue. Brazil obviously is somewhat stronger than that, so a little bit above that, it's been growing nicely and is roughly 20% of revenues. Michel Morin - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. And if I may, just on the adjustments to net income, just to be clear, to get to your $0.78, you're adding back the FX loss in Venezuela but you're not deducting the FX gains elsewhere, like in Brazil? Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: That's correct, yes. So all we do there is assume that the devaluation in Venezuela would not have occurred. That's the only thing that we... Michel Morin - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. That's clear. Thank you. Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And that concludes our question-and-answer session for today. I would like turn the conference back to management for any closing comments. Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Great. So thank you, everyone, for your interest. Business continues to perform well and we look forward to speaking to you again in a quarter with updates on how things have evolved during the second quarter of this year. Thank you and goodbye.