If you invested $10,000 in Mercado Libre 10 years ago, here’s how much you’d have today

MercadoLibre (MELI 0.85%) is often referred to as “Amazon.com Latin America” due to the dominance of e-commerce in key markets such as Brazil and Argentina. But this business is much more than that. In addition to the e-commerce marketplace, MercadoLibre also has the massive payment platform Mercado Pago, logistics platform Mercado Envios, a fast-growing lending company, and more.

The company has evolved and grown rapidly over the years, and investors have been rewarded handsomely. You may be surprised by how well MercadoLibre stock is performing, but it’s well deserved.

How much would a $10,000 investment increase?

I won’t keep you in suspense. If you invested $10,000 in MercadoLibre in May 2014, it would be worth about $204,000 today. That’s right – over the last decade, MercadoLibre has grown investors’ money more than 20 times, which is a 35% annual rate of return.

This sounds like an incredible stock performance (and it is), but when you consider what a great job MercadoLibre’s management has done with the company’s growth strategy, you’ll understand why it has delivered such stellar returns. Here are some key points:

• In the first quarter of 2014, the MercadoLibre platform generated gross merchandise volume of $1.8 billion with 21.7 million items sold. In the first quarter of 2024, these numbers were $11.4 billion and 385.1 million units, respectively.
• In the first quarter of 2014, the turnover on the payment platform amounted to USD 664 million. In the last quarter, Mercado Pago’s total payment volume was $40.7 billion – approx. 61 times level from a decade ago.
• Ten years ago, Mercado Envios was just starting up and Mercado Credito did not exist.
• Overall, MercadoLibre’s first-quarter 2024 revenues were $4.3 billion, up 3,626% from the $115.4 million generated 10 years ago.

You could argue that MercadoLibre was surprising Just 20 workers in the last decade. With tremendous opportunities ahead in e-commerce, payments, logistics, credit and more, it will be exciting to watch the next chapters in its growth story.