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Shares of Mercado Libre closing at a record today as the company's first quarter earnings and revenue beat estimates. The Latin American e-commerce and Fintech giant reporting revenue growth of 37% year over year. Martin de los Santos, CFO of Mercado Libre is back with us. Now, it's good to see you again, Martin. Thank you so much for joining us.

Hi. Thank you very much for having me again.

So, part of your numbers were driven by an increase in Argentina. Um, and obviously you guys huge in Brazil, huge in Mexico. But talk to me about, um, perhaps how the changing macro conditions in Argentina are, are helping your business.

Yes, we have seen a significant change in macro in Argentina for the past few quarters. And last, you know, one year ago was probably the lowest point in terms of macro where we saw numbers of items decrease in the platform, which was very rare for, for ecosystem. Uh, and over time over the past few quarters, we have seen improvements. Uh, and I think in Q1, we had tremendous results. But it's not only macro that helps us, the fact that we have millions of users already interacting with our platform. Our brand in Argentina is very strong, both for Mercado Libre and Mercado Pago, which is our commerce and Fintech ecosystem. We have one of the largest money market funds in Argentina, the largest money market fund in Argentina. We're by far the largest e-commerce platform. So I think it's a combination of macro plus the user experience and all the investment and innovation that we're doing on, on our platform that enabled us to deliver very strong numbers in Argentina. Items sold in Argentina grew by 52% year on year. Our credit book grew 4x from last year, or four times. Um, and all the metrics, both on the commerce side and the Fintech side, are performing extremely well, not only in volume, but also improving profitability. So we had a, a very good quarter in, in Q1 in Argentina, and we are very optimistic about the changes that are happening in Argentina and the macro situation going forward.

What are those changes specifically, Martin, that you're optimistic about?

Well, we're seeing, you know, inflation coming down, lower interest rate that is helping our, our users finance transactions or platform take, make credit more affordable to them. The, the FX that was, there's a lot of frictions in terms of the FX market. Uh, now it's being normalized in Argentina. So a lot of, a lot of positive macro trends are pointing in the right direction. And obviously that really helps not only us and our results, but also consumption in general, which is picking up again in Argentina.

Um, Martin, every time we talk, um, I am amazed at the, just the, the leaps and bounds that are happening with your growth. And you've talked about just online adoption, that that's one of the things that are drive, is driving it. We've also talked about how you're not very exposed to tariffs directly in the US because you're not dealing in the US effectively, although you do have a warehouse in Texas. What I'm curious about is whether you're concerned in particular about the Mexican economy as a result of the trade back and forth with the United States and whether you're seeing any signs in your business about the tariff effect there and on the economy.

I think if you look at the history of Mercado Libre for the past 25 years, you know, we started the company back in 99. We became from being a startup in the garage. We became the, the most valuable company today in Latin America. And a lot of, you know, throughout the years, we've seen all type of macro situations, not only in Mexico, but in Argentina, Brazil. So we are very used to dealing with macro complex conditions, even more difficult than the conditions that we see today. I think the most important thing is people moving online. If you look at Latin America, the penetration of commerce continues to be very low at 15%. So there's plenty of room to continue growing by bringing people online, by improving the user experience, continue to working on our product, our platform, bringing more merchants to our platform, delivering faster to our users, you know, increasing our logistic infrastructure. So I think the results that you are seeing are more dependent on things that we do and our execution than actual macro factors that we're very used to dealing with. So specifically in Mexico, our GMB grew at by 20, 23% year on year. It decelerated a little bit, but still very strong growth, much faster than the, and the actual average for the market. So we continue to gain market share. On the commerce, on the Fintech side, we have millions of people still are not included financially in Mexico. Take the example of credit cards where only 15% of people in Mexico have a credit card. So there's plenty of room for us to continue growing. So I think I would say that we will adapt to the macro situations, but I think the most important thing is to continue executing, to continue to have the 18,000 developers that we have looking at the product and improving the user experience day to day, a lot more important than actual macro factors that, that we'll deal with in the different countries.