Marcos Galperin founded Mercado Libre in 1999; the company exceeds US $ 21,500 million in stock valuation; received investments from the American PayPal and Dragoneer fund to expand in the financial business
Mercado Libre adds fresh funds from abroad to finance its expansion in Argentina and the region. E-commerce and its financial business are two of the foci that the company founded by Marcos Galperin seek to underpin with this operation, which has as participants PayPal, a leading company in the global fintech segment, and the Dragoneer fund, and involves an injection of US $ 1,850 million.
“We had the opportunity to raise an amount of interesting capital in the markets to expand and the possibility arose for other firms to make investments in the company.It is a historical amount for the history of Latin America,” enthuses Sean Summers, CMO of Mercado Free.
Specialization in ecommerce
Specifically, the company specializing in electronic commerce will make a capital increase by issuing shares in the market. As confirmed by the company, there will be US $ 1000 million issued on the New York Stock Exchange, where it has been listed since 2007. “The public offer was published last night and possibly closed in 48 hours,” said Summers, adding that for 30 days there will be options to add another US $ 150 million.
The Mercado Libre distribution center in Ezeiza will initially have 38,000 square meters.
The operation is completed with purchases of shares by PayPal, which will disburse US $ 750 million, and the American venture capital fund Dragoneer Investment Group, will allocate another US $ 100 million.
“Last year we issued a convertible bond, this year we saw that there was an appetite in the market and that we could access funds to accelerate our growth, our performance is positive and I think the investment community sees the same as we do,” Summers said. reference to the moment chosen to carry out the operation.
Although it recorded losses of US $ 36.6 million in 2018, attributed to “changes in the structure of shipping costs in Brazil,” the company reported an increase of 18% in its 2018 balance (US $ 1,439.7 million). ). In business terms, it registered a 23.9% growth in the number of items sold on its platform.
That dynamic boosted the company’s price on Wall Street. In the last month, the value of the shares grew almost 30% and raised the market value of the company to US $ 21,500 million.
The investment of PayPal, which was founded in 1998 and today is owned by eBay, reflects the commitment of the firm of Galperin in its expansion by the financial business, with the processing of collections, payments and other types of alternatives that compete with banks traditional In 2018, Mercado Pago registered a 68.2% increase in the number of operations carried out, which exceeded US $ 18,000 million.
Also published on Medium.