Earnings Labs

MercadoLibre, Inc. (MELI)

Q4 2018 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 26, 2019

$1,744.07

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Transcript

Federico Sandler

Management

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the MercadoLibre Earnings Conference Call for the Quarter Ended December 31, 2018. I am Federico Sandler, Head of Investor Relations for MercadoLibre. Our senior manager presenting today is Pedro Arnt, Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, Marcos Galperin, Chief Executive Officer; and Osvaldo Giménez, Executive VP of Payment, will be available during today's Q&A session. This conference call is also being broadcasted 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 and in our 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 may discuss some non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of those measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures can be found in our fourth quarter 2018 earnings press release available on our Investor Relations website. Now, let me turn the call over to Pedro.

Pedro Arnt

Management

Thanks Federico. Let's kick off today's call by doing a quick, high level recap of the year that has just ended. We've closed out a challenging year that has combined a few significant challenges with transformative positive initiatives. On the more challenging front, changes in our logistics cost structure in Brazil forced us to claw back our free shipping initiatives and to introduce a flat fee structure that negatively impacted vibrancy on our marketplace. These changes in free shipping combined with year-over-year comps that already lapped the launch of free shipping during the prior year led to deceleration in our marketplace business as the year progressed, despite two-year average growth rates that have remained fairly stable and still above market. On the flip side, 2018 was also a year of significant positive developments that set us up extremely well for the long run. During last year we launched and have begun to scale our own logistics network that will in time allow us to deliver better service levels at lower costs in both Mexico and Brazil. We've expanded our installed base of MPOS devices in Brazil and Argentina with strong results in terms of devices sold and total Payments volume, which in Mexico we are beginning to gain traction. We also successfully launched our wallet and QR initiatives in Argentina and are already replicating those initiatives in Brazil and Mexico. And finally, we redesigned our pricing and incentive programs by meaningfully optimizing investments so as to consistently improve EBITDA and accelerate constant currencies net revenue growth during the fourth quarters of the prior year. It is with this positive second half momentum that we move into the first quarter of 2019 and beyond. Our efforts going forward will continue to be centered on capitalizing on the adoption of e-commerce in…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Mike Olson from Piper Jaffray. Your line is open.

Mike Olson

Analyst

Hey good afternoon. You reported kind of an interesting set of metrics through Q4 with accelerating revenue growth. Profitability was better, but then decelerating GMV growth and it seems like some or all this impact on GMV was self-inflicted, but just going forward should we expect GMV and revenue growth to kind of more closely aligned with each other or continue to diverge? And then a second question I had is just on the competitive environment there's obviously been some media chatter in the past couple of months of some larger e-commerce players potentially getting more aggressive in Brazil, I'm just wondering if you see anything on your end? Thanks.

Pedro Arnt

Management

Hi Mike. So there is a balancing act between growth and profitability and that's the balancing act that we've been carrying out throughout the back half of last year after the changes in our pricing structure and shipping in Brazil. And part of that is just the underlying business nature of finding the right level of incentives to find the right equilibrium between growth and profitability. The other piece is just an accounting manner that sense a significant portion of our shipping subsidies flow through the P&L as contra revenue as we optimize those, it's natural to see an acceleration in net revenues. I think going forward, certainly the comps will get progressively easier as we move into 2019 on the GMV front and that's probably the key trajectory we're comfortable commenting on in terms of forward-looking statements. Competitively, I think we've always said we look at all our competitors. We try to understand what others are doing. Brazil has always been a very competitive market. We continue to deliver above market growth this quarter. If you look at the two-year stock I would say significantly above market growth to account for the tough comp from last year. I think there are quarters where certain smaller players potentially grow more than us. But if we look over longer terms, our trend in terms of market share has been very solid and continues to be encouraging and we need to continue focusing on our users. We need to continue building out our logistics network, rolling out our ecosystem of Payments and that will give us what we believe is the most robust platform play to continue to grow both our retailing and fintech initiatives for the long run.

Mike Olson

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Edward Yruma from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Edward Yruma

Analyst

Hi, good afternoon guys. A couple of quick questions on the proprietary logistics network. Obviously you're seeing some strong results to date. Help us understand the capacity outlook and how much slack do you have in as usage of this grows and how should we think about your build out capabilities as we think about '19? Thank you.

Pedro Arnt

Management

Great. So I think the way that we're approaching future be that in long-term capacity is by ensuring that this network that we're building has multiple sources of delivery capacity whether that be first mile, last mile, long-haul, whatever. So it's a combination of large established carriers of smaller regional carriers and even in more localized small and midsize businesses that can do deliveries for us as well as independent truck drivers. And we're trying to stitch this all together through our technology, so that that ensures that we are able to scale that logistic demand that we will have from multiple sources. So it's not unlike what we're seeing being built by certain large e-commerce players in the U.S. where the volume is not entirely done by the large scale carriers, but it's a combination of multiple sources. So, so far we haven't really hit capacity constraints and I think we continue to build out these different sources of future delivery capacity so as to avoid capacity constraints. This is one of the reasons we've always felt that we believe that building out the logistics network off balance sheet through 3PL is what makes the most sense, is it allows us to scale quickly and guarantees long term capacity.

Edward Yruma

Analyst

Got it. And one other follow up off if I may. It seems like the MPOS market is getting increasingly competitive. I guess how do you think about pricing on the devices and kind of the current competitive environment and how that may change adoption option rate? Thank you. Osvaldo Giménez: Hi Edwards, this is Osvaldo, hello. It is getting more competitive, but so far most of the competition we're seeing in Brazil has been related to device prices. We have been able to limit the discount we gave recently and continue to grow the number of devices we are selling. And we have not yet seen competition in the upfront, what the fee the fees charged to the merchants we have seen so far we are very confident and we'll be able to continue delivering growth in this business in Brazil.

Edward Yruma

Analyst

Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Irma Sgarz from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Irma Sgarz

Analyst

Yes, hi good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Firstly, I think if I looked at the numbers correctly the confirmed user growth actually on the margin accelerated a little bit. So I was wondering if you could impressively consistent growth over the last decade or so and with growth rates in the mid 20s. So I wanted to just understand the margin, like what are you seeing and what are the big sources of growth whether it's geographies or customer cohorts? And then the second question, just in terms of the as a growth that you've seen on the one hand side it seems to be two different trends between GMV growth on the one hand side being really driven by the ASP or the average ticket whereas in TPV we see some different trends where it's really mostly the number of transactions or entirely the number of transactions that's been growing - that's been driving the growth. So if you could just sort of parse out specifically on the TPV front what we should be expecting going forward and whether that's just basically a reflection of the multiple initiatives that you have specifically in the off platform space? Thank you.

Pedro Arnt

Management

Hi Irma. So let me start with the marketplace and Payments units versus volume question. So on the marketplace as you know we've launched a series of initiatives recently that have affected the units sold of low ticket items, we've introduced a flat fee and we've also capped the possibility to sell very cheap items on the website, so as to weed out a lot of the stuff that really wasn't worth being sold on the platform and that's generated an increase in average tickets and a significant deceleration entirely focused on these very low average selling price units on the marketplace. So that's the explanation for Marketplace. On Payments I would say, on Payments it's a very different story as your question I think posed market payments right now has multiple use cases that are being attacked both online to offline and also online with very different average ticket prices, something like a cell phone top up, obviously will have a lower ASP than in store QR, utility and service Payments will have high ASPs, and so in Payments I think growth should be robust on both fronts and the number of transactions we process as we go after more and more use cases, both offline, through our wallet and QR initiatives and MPOS and also online as we continue to grow the merchant service business. So I think they have underlying growth trends that are very different and that's why I think in Payments you can see both, TPB and TBN [ph] growing very nicely and in marketplace we've seen a deceleration in units sold. In terms of user growth, although there is an acceleration in confirmed registered users, I think really what we've seen is buyers, it's a metric that I would say in the quarter is not necessarily one that we are particularly pleased with and I think there's a lot of focus on re-accelerating buyer and new buyer growth as we also disclose. Obviously, we're still in the early stages of the Internet. There are still millions and millions of users who don't use our services and who we continue to focus on attracting and bringing on to the marketplace. So I think we should continue to see solid growth from new users, but also more importantly with the large existing base of users we have and whose engagement has continued to trend positively when we look at GMV per user or orders per user that should also be a significant driver of growth just the higher engagement of existing users.

Irma Sgarz

Analyst

Great, thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Robert Ford from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Robert Ford

Analyst

Thank you and good evening everybody. Pedro, you haven't spoken about merchant loans in a while. Now that you're recalibrating, could you talk a little bit about your comfort levels in terms of pricing and sizing risk across different risk cohorts and how you see that business scaling both on and offline?

Pedro Arnt

Management

Yes, so we took a pause in the middle of last year as we were allowing the models to get better and recalibrate some of the loan loss provisions. What we've seen is a reacceleration in originations because we've also seen improvements in loan loss provisions and the margin and profitability profits from the credit books have improved. And so, I continue to think that we're managing in the right way which is when we're comfortable with the loan loss provisions and the margins that we're getting out of the credit business we will step on the gas a little bit more and when for whatever reason we're a little bit more skittish we will slow down originations, so prudent management of that. The opportunity continues to be extremely large, and I think over time continuing in this cautious manner, we should see the size of the book and the amount we originate continue to grow into the foreseeable future. This is a business that we continue to be very, very encouraged and excited about.

Robert Ford

Analyst

And your deployments of capital so far, they've been across wide spectrums of riskiness or have you, are you going gradually incrementally into cohorts that are incrementally more risky?

Pedro Arnt

Management

So I think, again this is so early stage that it's not just about growth from riskier cohorts. As our fintech ecosystem grows we begin to have more and more channels of customer acquisition that we can cross-sell the loan portfolio. So it's not that we're necessarily moving only into riskier cohorts on the marketplace, we're now extending loans to MPOS users, eventually we can move into Yelp and wallet users, QR in-store users. So there is still plenty, plenty of room to grow the loan book within user cohorts that are still attractive and who we feel comfortable managing the risk line and then there's also geographical growth.

Robert Ford

Analyst

Of course, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from James Friedman from Susquehanna. Your line is open.

James Friedman

Analyst

Hi it's Jamie at Susquehanna. Thanks for taking my questions. Great results here. Pedro, I was just going ask a couple on the Payments and then one on the marketplace, so I want talk about on the dynamic between off-platform and on-platform TPV. It looked like it was above $7 billion on the off-platform. I guess when can we anticipate off-platform potentially eclipsing on-platform? And I know you don’t like to make before projections, but is that too specific a question, just what are some of the dynamics there as off-platform gets so much traction now?

Operator

Operator

Pardon me speaker, please take yourself off mute.

Pedro Arnt

Management

Yes, sorry about that. I'll answer now with the mute button turned off. So the growth opportunity in off-platform is obviously significantly larger than on-platform. To your question, last quarter was the first quarter that in terms of transactions we've already begun to see in TPN for the first time in our history off-platform away from the marketplace being larger than on-marketplace. And when we look at growth venues obviously on-platform we'll continue to grow driven by the growth of our marketplace business. When we look at everything we're doing off-platform, there are significantly more markets that we're attacking and opportunity for growth. So I think in the not too distant future we will see TPV also being larger off-platform than on-platform. And as we've always said we still aspire for that to be multiple times larger than on marketplace and we can see that with the divergent growth rates already between Payments and GMV and also if you were to look at off-platform and on-platform TPV, off-platform TPV is growing significantly faster.

James Friedman

Analyst

Got it and if I could just switch gears, thank you for that. So, where are we in the assets, light versus assets heavy journey on the logistics side, how should we be thinking about that, because your previous answer seemed like it was emphasizing asset light, but then we know, you've described the warehouse build-out strategy in North and South et cetera. Yes, it is in general like how should we be thinking about that process over time?

Pedro Arnt

Management

Okay. So, I think, and this happens a lot in these industries that evolve. I'm not so sure how useful asset light or non asset light is becoming within retail if you look at the way e-commerce logistics are evolving. So when we look, when we talk about warehouses, if we talk about last mile, first mile, long-haul, airfreight, none of those vehicles, airplanes or warehouses are on our balance sheet and in that sense it's asset light. Now if you were to look at the level of operational control and operational design that we exert over those third party logistics operators it’s continuously increasing as we try to inject more and more efficiency in the operations, improve service levels and lower cost. So obviously, we are way beyond, I would say waist deep in logistics capabilities within the company, hiring out logistics people and having significant oversight over the design and quality of our logistics network, but we don't necessarily own most of those assets for now. And I think for the short term we haven't signaled any change in that design. And as always longer term we will do what gets us the best results for our users in terms of if it makes sense moving those things away from OpEx to CapEx and bringing them on balance sheet. But I think that's more of a longer term decision. Right now we're focused on continuing to build out the logistics in the different countries, primarily by using 3PLs.

James Friedman

Analyst

Thanks for the color.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Marcelo Santos from JP. Morgan. Your line is open.

Marcelo Santos

Analyst

Hi, thanks for taking the question. So the first is Pedro, could you conceptually break down the profitability of your various business and I'm not asking for a specific number, but what is above LatAm and what kind of level, like you have the MPOS business, you have wallets business, you have the credits business. So how could we think about the components of the profitability right now? This is the first question. And on the second question and more specific to the wallet, what is the plan to bring features like money indirectly from accounts, users being able to receive salaries to do bank transfers, what is the outlook for these kind of services to be incorporated into the wallet in several countries, because this could potentially make the wallet a competitor to more traditional banking services.

Pedro Arnt

Management

Okay, so always remember that we don't want to unnecessarily handover competitive information and so therefore, I'll give you a general sense of how we think about the different businesses right now. But we don't disclose specific margin structures. So right now obviously our marketplace business is a business that is both one that we are investing aggressively behind in the short term, in terms of shipping subsidies, build out of the logistics. And it's also a tremendous distribution platform for everything else we do. And so, we're running that one at a positive margin but a low margin. I think of that business longer term given the scalability it has simply from top line growth and OpEx scale it's a business that we firmly believe over the long term will deliver improving margins as it gains leverage. And then with Payments it's a combination of things. The point business now that the installed base has gotten to a nice scale is the business that begins to deliver positive EBIT and should contribute more and more EBIT if there aren't significant changes to pricing or cost. Credit is also a business that we see as a generator of high margins that we can reinvest. Obviously the wallet QR in in-store business are ones that we are investing aggressively in right now as we build out this alternative Payments network. So I would say for the foreseeable future we continue to be more in growth and investment mode, but all of these businesses are businesses that are at the right scale, obviously have leverage and margin gains that we will be able to deliver once we build out the scale size behind these businesses? Osvaldo Giménez: With regards to the second point, with regards to the wallet and the money in…

Marcelo Santos

Analyst

Perfect, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Deepak Mathivanan from Barclays. Your line is open.

Mario Lu

Analyst

Hi, this is Mario Lu on for Deepak. I have a couple of questions. On the Payments business, now that you see multiple cohorts on the consumer wallet and have four times more mobile users than last year, any user trends you can call out in terms of stickiness, usage, spending levels compared to traditional credit cards? And secondly, CRAIOS has increased shipping rates multiple times over the past few years. Can you just give us an update whether you expect to see any this year? Thanks. Osvaldo Giménez: So, we'll get to the wallet. We are starting to see a cohort with a little more of dating, but keep in mind that only Argentina which was the first country where we launched in-store Payments, we launched that end of May last year. So we only have seen pretty much half a year of results. What we're seeing is increased use of multiple products so it's people who sometimes start by ramping up the mobile phone, they start paying utilities and then using QR code payment. So we are seeing increase in the number of people use, have used and multiple use cases. And I think, we feel that the majority of growth is coming from new users that is because it's a new product and was started recently and we are growing 4x year-on-year. So when you look at all these numbers, the total number of use cases for each year is still probably flat and but it is mostly related to the growth number of users and even during the holiday we continued to receive more.

Pedro Arnt

Management

In terms of CRAIOS, I think we do expect increases in price much more in line with what had occurred in other years, unlike last year where really a change in pricing was absolutely unforecast and we believe something that we really were not expecting. That's not what's going to happen this year. I think we have a good sense of what the increase will be. And as we continue to move volume away from CRAIOS and optimize our subsidies and free shipping initiatives. We don't even think that we necessarily we will have to pass the full cost of the price increase onto users, but only a portion of that. So this should be a fairly manageable price increase given all the conversations we've had.

Mario Lu

Analyst

Great, it's very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ravi Jain from HSBC. Your line is open.

Ravi Jain

Analyst

Hi, good afternoon. I have a couple of quick questions. One is on the selection on the product selection and how are you going to kind of broaden that out especially given the competitive environment in Brazil and perhaps in Mexico as well? Could you give us some color on maybe your thoughts and initiatives for consumer packaged goods or is it cross-border e-commerce. And the second question is on the Payments I mean the Mexican Central Bank is now pushing the banks to adopt their payment system Cody. Does that mean you need to accelerate the roll out of the asset management ecosystem in Mexico? Do you see Mexico as getting more attractive Payments country? Thank you. Osvaldo Giménez: Let me start with the second one regarding Cody in Mexico. So I think that our first impression we took a look at it and we did not come out very impressed with the product, but so far the Bank of Mexico is mandating these for bank regulated institutions. At this point we are not a regulated institution yet, so we would not be able to participate in it. However, as I was saying we were not very encouraged about the resource in that the product we had in Argentina is significantly better that. So we are comfortable with sticking to our plan. Also it remains to be seen how willing are the banks to encourage these [indiscernible] networks because it would cannibalize their debit card fees. So we will continue with our plan to replicate what we're doing in Argentina.

Pedro Arnt

Management

Great, and consumer packaged goods and cross-border trade, just to put in perspective first of all, I think combined those two marketplace lines still represent less than 5% of GMV between 3% and 5%. So glass half full is that there is significant room for product mix shift as we grow into those categories, but they're still small. Most of our efforts over the last few quarters there have been around product, features that are tailored for those two different products, improving the logistics of international sales for sellers that are sourcing from the U.S. or from China in our cross-border offerings and more recently allowing sellers to send bulk inventory that we manage from them in our fulfillment centers for cross border trade and in CPG stocking up on skews on SKU count. I think we've crossed the 5000 SKU count. The next objective is to get to roughly 10,000 SKUs but that also shows that it's relatively early on in our CPG efforts and this year will be an important year for us as we continue to focus on making both those business a more meaningful overall portion of our GMV, and I think both really have a lot of upside potential for us.

Ravi Jain

Analyst

Thank you. That's helpful.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Marvin Fong from BTIG. Your line is open.

Marvin Fong

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just a quick one on I was very impressed with the QR Payments reaching 40% of digital wallet TPV in Argentina. I'm curious on your thoughts on what's driven that rapid rate of adoption and if you think Brazil might follow a similar trajectory or is there something structural about the countries that might have a different adoption rate? And then just as a follow up, could you disclose what the Payments revenue in the quarter was? Thank you. Osvaldo Giménez: Yes, let me start with a, start and let the financial question to Pedro. And we are very excited with our [indiscernible] of QR code payments in Argentina. We have been able to bring in many large merchants such as McDonald's, Burger King, the major gas stations and coffee shops in the country and they have been a huge drive to adopt QR code payments and that has been a huge driver of growth for monthly active payers. And I'd say that the 40% after all from top up is one of the most popular use cases in the countries. Now I think we are still in the early days. Integrations are a little more complex in Brazil because you need to integrate with the ERP with point-of-sale using machine and that's why it will take us a little bit longer to bring in the larger merchants. We have started with Shell with the major gas stations, but it's still very early days and we cannot comment on numbers. So we expect to have more information in the coming quarters.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Richard Cathcart from Bradesco. Your line is open.

Richard Cathcart

Analyst

Hi. Good evening. Just a quick question on the on the proprietary shipping in Brazil. I think you mentioned that 17% of GMV was going for in Brazil and I think a pretty big increase from where we were previously. So a couple of questions on that, first of all kind of are you beginning to see kind of better buy in from the sellers, are they more enthusiastic about the advantages of working through the proprietary shipping solution? And then the second question just on cost, given that you're now a 17% is beginning to scale are you beginning to see some improvements in unit costs of products that are being shipped through the propriety solutions? Thanks. Osvaldo Giménez: Okay. So let me start with the second piece which is the one around unit economics. The first thing is that, I think we've always said that our primary focus is on building out the logistics network first and ensuring that we have a network that allows us to deliver best-in-class delivery time or at least competitive with what anyone else might build because that's really the competitive advantage that we need to make sure that we don't hand over to someone else, and then eventually over time with scale and as the network gets more complex driving down unit costs would be something we could be able to do. So having said that, what we see now is from an overall network perspective, items that are fulfilled by us obviously do have a lower cost because they eliminate first mile altogether. Our cross-docking efforts don't necessarily lower costs. They do allow for a better service on many routes and give us greater control over the screen experience. Remember that when you look at our dropship network and Piraeus [ph] they are by far the largest player in Brazil and therefore are cost competitive given their scale and size. So yes, fulfillment is cheaper, cross docking is not. We are fairly confident that over time once we're able to build out the full network with its scale and ability to determine who we send volume to driving down unit costs will be something that we'll be able to achieve. And then in terms of sellers, I would say it's still early. Obviously conversions are better when we fulfill the items because we give it preference in search ranking orders and we drive greater volume to those listings because they have a better user experience, but I think before we can give you feedback on overall sort of what seller feedback is on that we need more data and more time. Net Promoter Scores on items that go through more [indiscernible] and that are fulfilled are better than those that don't and that's something that over time should continue to improve.

Richard Cathcart

Analyst

Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kunal Madhukar from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Kunal Madhukar

Analyst

Hi thanks for taking my question. With regard to a certain multi-national e-commerce provider that just about stepped up investment in Brazil, how much of the…

Pedro Arnt

Management

Can you try to speak a little bit louder, we can barely hear you?

Kunal Madhukar

Analyst

I'm sorry, is this better.

Pedro Arnt

Management

Yes. Better.

Kunal Madhukar

Analyst

Okay great. With regard to the certain multinational e-commerce that just entered Brazil or just stepped up investment in Brazil, in terms their focus markets, the markets that they're targeting with like and what have you, how much of your GMV is in those markets, the upper income demographic kind of lives in those areas?

Pedro Arnt

Management

Sorry, we're having a little bit of trouble getting, it somewhat cut off. Can you run that by us again?

Kunal Madhukar

Analyst

Sure. So for the e-commerce provider that just stepped up investment in Brazil, in terms of the footprint that they're targeting, the active footprint that they're targeting, how much of the GMV or retail sales in Brazil is in those areas, and how much has been the upper income demographic, what proportion of Brazil's upper income demographic lives in those areas?

Pedro Arnt

Management

So I don't want to comment on potentially what competitors are targeting, because I might misspeak regarding their strategy. I think one of the attractive things about Brazil and e-commerce and one of the reasons we think it's such a relevant market going forward is that it's a market where we've seen more than in any of the other markets in the region, e-commerce permeate beyond the higher income demographic portions of the population. Consequently Brazil does have the highest penetration of e-commerce as a percentage of overall retail. So I think the winning proposition in Brazil is not if you try to focus only on high income individuals, it's a market where we should have much greater e-commerce penetration as smartphones grow significantly their installed base and most Brazilians will be in or already are being equipped with a combination of a smartphone and decent broadband connectivity. I think that's what we remain focused on and should give us tailwinds and growth from that secular trend for lots of quarters going forward.

Kunal Madhukar

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Gustavo Oliveira from UBS. Your line is open.

Gustavo Oliveira

Analyst

Hi Pedro. Thank you for taking my question. I want to understand at the beginning of the call you mentioned that GMV in Brazil decelerated perhaps by self-inflicted adjustments. You made an indent in the platform, but when you look forward, what do you think matters most? It seems to me that you're talking about the success you're having and the logistics build-out, you're getting efficiency and so on. Does it allowed you to remove some of your shipping subsidies to invest in other levers of your platform such as credit to consumers and to sellers or investments in the Official Stores. Well, I know there is no silver bullet, but how do you reallocate your resources in 2019-2020 versus from your allocation 2017-2018 which was primarily focused on shipping subsidies and logistics?

Pedro Arnt

Management

Hi Gustavo. So a few from that. First of all, a lot of the reallocation is actually within the shipping subsidies. So I think we're moving from subsidizing very low ticket items that had challenging unit economics for us and they were right for that moment we were generating a vibrancy on the platform. Users were associating our brand with free or cheap shipping. But I think from a P&L perspective it was challenging because the cost of shipping an item obviously doesn't decrease linearly as the ASP goes down. So most of the capital reallocation is actually within the shipping program where we now are freeing up more subsidies for higher ticket items for routes that we had shut down like the north and northeast and we could more intelligently now start offering subsidies to start targeting those consumers as well. We do look at our P&L as a whole, so insofar as we're freeing up some profit that might help us reinvest it across other business lines, but I would say in general we are in full out investment mode. When you look at our revenue number and our projected revenue number and the fact that we continue to target a profitable, but relatively low margin profile for 2019, I think that gives you a sense of how aggressively we're investing across the board. And we feel comfortable with that level of investment to help us carry out the strategic plan we have. So we're investing everywhere we think it makes sense to invest and we're optimizing how we allocate the shipping subsidies to just make it more intelligent.

Gustavo Oliveira

Analyst

Very clear. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And that does conclude our question-and-answer session for today's conference. I'd now like to turn the call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Pedro Arnt

Management

Great. So thank you everyone for the questions. I think those were lots of questions and good questions. I hope we've given you a clear answer. I think the answer around Payments s revenue got lost along the way. We'll make sure to reach out to give you the number. Thank you and we look forward to updating you on Q1 which is the beginning of 2019 in a year where we have lots of things in store, so thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Everyone have a wonderful day.