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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to MercadoLibre Second 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, Senior Vice President of Finance and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
MP
Martin de los Santos - Vice President-Finance
Management
Hello, everyone, and welcome to MercadoLibre earnings conference call for the quarter ended June 30, 2015. I am Martin de los Santos, Senior VP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations for MercadoLibre. Our senior management presenting today is Pedro Arnt, Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, Osvaldo Gimenez, Executive Vice President-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 those 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 those measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures can be found in our second 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. Good afternoon and welcome to our second quarter conference call for 2015. MercadoLibre's results for the reporting period further demonstrated the successful execution of our enhanced marketplace strategy, as the…
OP
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. So you covered a lot there Pedro, better operating results, underlying top-line, but more investment and bigger FX headwind. On the latter two, if you can highlight the drivers of the larger investment in the enhanced marketplace and those factors that are going to continue in future quarters, and also, just try to help us understand the FX hit that you expect the rest of the year, is that going to be more or less parallel to what we're seeing now, or how is that going to shift? Thank you. Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Great, Mark. So, if we strip out the FX piece, which is what we attempted to do, and if we're looking at COGS plus OpEx, net of the FX impact on those expenses, we're saying there's about 360 basis points of margin compression, true margin compression, from investing in the business. The trends there aren't too different, in terms of where the incremental investment has been coming from. So there is the gross margin compression that's a consequence of the growth in both the payments business and the shipping business, that will add incremental payments costs and sales taxes. And then, in the OpEx line, a majority of the compression is really a consequence of incremental compensation, either as a reflection of the accelerated pace at which we're onboarding engineers, and that's primarily to be able to take on all the incremental product development we want to be able to do for the core marketplace, and also, as we highlighted, the stock has performed well over the last year, and the portion…
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Vera Rossi from Goldman Sachs. Vera R. Rossi - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thank you. My question is also about your costs and expenses and dividing between direct costs and expenses and indirect. I think the biggest increase came on the indirect costs that reached around $31 million this quarter. Could you talk about if you could quantify in U.S. dollars the amount of payment for management. And are there extra expenses that we won't see going forward? Thank you. Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure, Vera. So let me get for you. First of all, when I called out some of the more impactful line items, compensation, clearly, was one of them, as I said and a lot of that is corporate compensation, corporate IT teams, and especially, the long-term retention plan is in the indirect costs. So if we look at the call out in the script – sorry because I don't remember this off the top of my head, but let me get this for you the impact from the long-term compensation plan, a big chunk of that which is going to be in direct indirect costs was – one second, let me get that for you. If you have another question, you can throw it out as well. I get you that exact number. Vera R. Rossi - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay. We can talk about Brazil and how is the e-commerce environment in terms of moving offline to online especially during this period of macro economic crisis. So how you're seeing your, if you're seeing e-commerce as defensive or continues to grow as in the previous space. The whole e-commerce market not only MercadoLibre? Pedro Arnt - Chief…
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Michel Morin from Morgan Stanley.
Michel Morin - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thank you, good afternoon. So two quick questions. The first is, you mentioned in the release that financing fees are becoming an important – perhaps one of the most important components of non-marketplace. So Pedro, last quarter, you gave us some color around how significant that was. I don't know if you can be a little bit do the same thing again this time, in particular, in Brazil to help us understand how significant this has become and specific to Brazil. And then secondly, I think you typically have some dollar denominated cash balances in the different countries. So that creates some FX gains and I was wondering if you could just remind us, how much of that you might have had this quarter and where that's booked, because I don't seem to be able to find that? Thank you.
Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Let me start conceptually with the second one and then in the meantime, we'll try to get you percentage of revenue coming from financing readout for this quarter. So the market that has the largest U.S. dollar denominated cash reserves on its balance sheet is Brazil. We re-measure those on a Q-on-Q basis, not only Brazil, but the other markets as well, and that will generate either a ForEx gain or loss. Those flow through the ForEx line in the P&L. What we've seen for this quarter, versus the prior quarter, is that the overall Brazilian exposition to the U.S. dollar diminished versus the previous quarter. And that's the primary reason, when we look at the ForEx line, why on a Q-on-Q basis, it came in with a much smaller gain than it did the previous quarter.
Michel Morin - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: For Brazil?
Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Correct. Actually, on the consolidated, but that's driven primarily by Brazil.
Michel Morin - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay.
Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Brazil has roughly $75 million on its Brazilian balance sheet held in the U.S. in U.S. dollars. Financing revenues for the quarter totaled 15%, all MELI, and about 23% for the Brazilian business.
Michel Morin - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. And then I think last quarter, you told us those – that financing fee revenue was up about 100% year-on-year, is that still the case?
Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Financing growth for Brazil, in local currencies, Brazil financing revenues, 90% this quarter.
Michel Morin - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay, great. Thank you very much.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Stephen Ju from Credit Suisse.
Stephen D. Ju - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): All right, thanks. I just want to make sure I've grabbed the numbers correct here, so 1.8% U.S. dollar growth from marketplaces revenue, so it looks like about $93 million or so for marketplace revenues, which implies I guess around $61 million for non-marketplace. So there's some kind of modest takeaway compression sequentially for marketplaces, so presumably is this due primarily to mix? And also, 52% penetration of TPV for interest-free financing in Brazil, so is there any other type of, or even though legacy sort of buyer-paid financing, left at this point? And also, on the advertising, just wondering if you can give us any sort of color on the adoption from the sellers for this new product? Thanks.
Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So let me grab the take rate and start there, and maybe Osvaldo can answer the legacy financing, how much is left. You're correct. There is a slight take rate compression in Brazil sequentially. That's driven in part by the financing alternative, and so it will be a good segue to the second part of the question. The reason for that is, we are seeing our sellers migrate increasingly to the free finance listing and the financed options. The consolidated take rate on those listings are actually beneficial to MELI as a whole. But because of the financing portion of that revenue is booked as non-marketplace. In essence, what we're moving from, if you just look at the marketplace revenues, is from higher take rate listings for the marketplace to lower take rate listings for the marketplace, but that are higher take rate on a consolidated basis. So in this sense, it's a healthy and, if you will, planned contraction of marketplace take rate. The way it happens, to give you some more color is, the free listings have a strong ponderance (49:24) on the sort algorithm, and so they make up for the insertion fees that sellers are paying less of.
Stephen D. Ju - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Got it. And I guess whatever is – remains the incidence of the old sort of buyer paid financing on the platform in Brazil?
So, in Brazil – it's Osvaldo. In Brazil, over the last year, when we first introduced no interest installments, we have growth up to 52%, the percentage of GMV that gets paid in free installments, and this has driven out the penetration of MercadoPago to 90%. So I think most of the growth has been driven in the last year due to increased using of what we call free financing, that actually we charge to the seller. And this has happened also, it's starting to happen also in Mexico, when already 21% of the volume is driven by free installments, and it's a product that we have introduced from the start in Chile, when we launched in mid-May, still the penetration in Chile is small, but we believe that this feature will help us drive faster adoption than we've seen in other countries.
Stephen D. Ju - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): An update, or any color, on the advertising segment and the seller adoption rate?
Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, so we continue to see good growth in the advertising segment. These new product ads continue to be well adopted and successful. They continue to be "limited inventory" so because we don't serve them in core search results yet, we still serve them on the periphery of search results. And we're actually seeing very strong demand and we're beginning to explore alternative ways in which we can generate more positions and more inventory given that demand has been very strong. Advertising just to give you a order of magnitude grew roughly 200% year-over-year in local currencies. So the product is really gaining traction. It's still the small business unit, but right now, we really think we hit the right type of advertising format. And right now, we're looking to see how we can expand available inventory.
Stephen D. Ju - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Thanks. And sorry to keep asking these questions. But did you go over in your prepared remarks what the contributions from the two acquisitions were in terms of revenue?
Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, they're not very significant in terms of revenue impact for the quarter, in the range of, call it, $2 million probably.
Stephen D. Ju - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Okay thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. And this concludes our question-and-answer session for today. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing comments.
Pedro Arnt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Great. So thank you, everyone, for attending. It's been continued great I think progress on our business and our enhanced marketplace. Unfortunately, a lot of FX and certain geographies that generate I think some noise around the reported numbers. Hopefully, as you go through the script and some of the material we prepared, that becomes clearer for you and we look forward to updating you again in the quarter. Thank you very much.