MercadoLibre: Cheapest In Years (Ticker: MELI)

Increasing competition and increasing opportunities.

Next three weeks: Gambling.com Group (quarterly update), Kraken Robotics (quarterly update), and Interactive Brokers (quarterly update).

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Another MeracdoLibre report? Yes, another MercadoLibre report. While this is the first time I have written about the company in detail, there are approximately 8,000 newsletter write-ups on the “Amazon of Latin America,” circling around the internet.

My philosophy at Emerging Moats is to provide readers with value they cannot find elsewhere. If a stock is covered ad nauseam (Nvidia, for example), I generally do not want to cover it unless there is novel analysis to provide. There’s nothing unique for me to say about Alphabet. It is much easier to provide useful analysis for readers by looking at undercovered stocks like Kraken Robotics or Gambling.com Group.

MercadoLibre is an exception this week. One, I currently own the stock, and feel the need to write my full reasons why for subscribers. Second, MeracdoLibre is trading at its lowest earnings multiple in years (chart below). Three, I believe investors are overstating the heightened competitive intensity in Mexico and Brazil and, in fact, expect this to lead to a widening of MercadoLibre’s moat over the next five years. Four, I find that most reports on the stock just summarize its huge list of products/services, call it an Amazon clone, and hit publish (thank you, AI bots, for increasing this slop by 10x). Understanding the business from an emerging moats perspective should be viewed through a different lens, which I will try to articulate below.

This report may be slightly longer than usual, but I believe it will give any reader a full understanding of what matters to MercadoLibre’s business, my thoughts on management, and why I decided to allocate 9% of my long portfolio to it as of April 3rd, 2026.

Given each region’s idiosyncrasies, I will analyze MercadoLibre by country (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Other) rather than by business segment. Then, we will put everything back together to fully understand the big picture.

Thank you to the writer of CapexAndChill for helping me with edits on this one.

I will cover:

• An evolving business model (history and overview)

• Brazil

• Mexico

• Argentina

• Other countries

• Advertising potential?

• Opinion on management

• Financial model and valuation

• Is there an emerging moat?

• My investment decision

An evolving business model