Results
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay; November 4, 2026 -- MercadoLibre, Inc. (Nasdaq: MELI) (http://www.mercadolibre.com), Latin America’s leading e-commerce and fintech company, today reported financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2026.
Net revenues & financial income of $10,750 million, up 45% YoY and 41% FX-neutral Income from operations of $676 million, with a 6.3% margin Net income of $448 million, with a 4.2% margin Total Payment Volume of $109 billion, up 53% YoY and 51% FX-neutral Gross Merchandise Volume of $23 billion, up 38% YoY and 33% FX-neutral To our Shareholders Mercado Libre delivered another quarter of strong growth in Q3'26, with net revenue and financial income of $10,750mn, up 45% YoY.
On an FX-neutral basis, growth remained solid at 41%, with Brazil continuing to deliver the strongest performance.
Beneath the growth, the signals we focus on most all moved in the right direction: we gained share in each of our three largest markets, our buyers purchased more often, our Fintech users transacted and saved more with Mercado Pago, and ecosystemic users, those who both shop and bank with us, grew faster than any other group.
Income from operations was $676mn, down 6% YoY, with a margin of 6.3%, 40bps below Q2'26, reflecting the cost of more free shipping and new fulfillment capacity added ahead of peak season, and a tactical decision to increase affiliate marketing spend in Brazil, both of which we discuss in the Financial Results section.
Over our last two letters, we explained why we are investing boldly in Latin America’s digital economy, and we showed how our ecosystem was changing the way people shop and manage their money, with engagement deepening across every metric we track.
That investment involves a trade-off, and it is a simple one: we are investing part of today’s margin to accelerate the shift of Latin America’s commerce and financial services online, and to build, at scale, the habits that form within our ecosystem.
This quarter, we show that those habits are holding, that scale is building on them, and how that scale turns into profitability over time.
1Engagement, Scale and Cost to Serve The habits we described last quarter continued to build in Q3'26, and engagement deepened again.
Growth remained elevated and we gained share in Commerce and Fintech in Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.
Our buyers now make 12 purchases a year with us, against more than 50 online purchases for consumers in more developed markets.
The gap is closing.
In Brazil, items per buyer was growing at a single-digit pace before we lowered the free shipping threshold; in Q3'26 it grew 16% YoY, still double-digit even as we fully lapped the change.
2In Fintech, our users continue to pay and transact more with Mercado Pago, with TPV per user up 34% YoY.
Ecosystemic users, those who both shop and bank with us and are most engaged, grew 33% YoY, faster than any other segment.
Those habits are worth more inside an ecosystem than outside, because we can earn from the same user more than once.
Users who shop and bank with us generate 70% more GMV than marketplace-only users, 90% more TPV than fintech-only users, and their average revenue per user is 3-4x that of single-vertical users; those uplifts held in Q3.
The same activity also feeds our advertising business and the underwriting of our credit portfolio, both of which continue to be highly profitable.
This is our unique flywheel: a better marketplace draws more users into Mercado Pago, and a better Mercado Pago makes the marketplace more appealing.
Each side generates interactions for the other, so the ecosystem grows faster than either business could alone, and that growth is what builds our scale.
The more our users do with us, the more efficiently we serve them.
3In Fintech, our platform is digital from the ground up, so our users can do much more with us for the same cost: the cost to serve an active user is around $1 per month, a figure that has been broadly flat since Q1'25 while transactions, products and revenue per user have all grown strongly.
In Commerce, the same dynamic shows in our logistics network, where cost per shipment is the clearest read on how efficiently it is running.
In Brazil, our cost per shipment in Q3'26 was 5% lower YoY in local currency and 14% lower than in Q1'25, the last full quarter before we lowered the free MercadoLibre, Inc. Letter to Shareholders MercadoLibre Letter to Shareholders 1 Q3’26 Results
shipping threshold (as shown on the chart below).
This is despite higher energy prices in Q2 and Q3, and the cost of new capacity that came online in Q3 ahead of peak season.
Our ecosystem generates scale, and scale generates efficiency.
Lowering the free shipping threshold resulted in growth accelerating sharply while we gave up revenue as fewer users were charged for shipping.
As a result, our cost per shipment improved with scale – as shown by the chart above – but our net shipping margin (shipping charges net of shipping costs) fell by around 200bps as a percentage of GMV since Q1'25.
As intended when we lowered the threshold, growth was led by lower-priced items that stimulate frequency and online buying habits but generate less revenue per item sold.
And with free shipping easier to access, buyers put fewer items in each basket, so the same items generate more shipments, each with its own cost.
These two effects largely explain the contraction in our shipping margin, and that is the price of the habit we set out to build.
The habit itself is visible: buyers purchasing more often, cohorts who joined since the change retaining at higher rates than those before, sold items in Brazil growing more than 40% YoY for five consecutive quarters, and market share gains throughout.
The mix effects above are the consequence of a step change in behavior, and they should diminish over time as that behavior settles.
Cost per shipment is where we have the most control and, over time, we should lower it in two ways.
The first is scale.
Every additional order helps dilute the fixed costs of our network.
The clearest evidence is in the economics of free & slow shipments in the R$19-79 range in Brazil: in September, the range as a whole was variable contribution-positive for the first time.
The second is productivity: more shipments through each facility, fuller vehicles on every route, and fewer kilometers per shipment.
Shipments per route reached a new high in Q3'26.
Our network is becoming more regional, with the 13 Metro fulfillment centers opened over the last 12 months bringing inventory closer to where demand is densest.
Automation is moving faster still: we have more than doubled the number of sorters and robots in our network over the same period, with robotics now live in Mexico as well as Brazil, delivering productivity gains of 70% against manual processes in picking operations where robotics has been deployed.
Progress will not be linear, because new capacity carries costs before the volume that fills it, but over time, as scale grows and productivity rises, lower cost per shipment should flow through into lower shipping costs as a percentage of GMV and revenue.
Across Commerce and Fintech, the pattern is the same.
Our users are doing more with us, and the cost of serving each of them is falling or holding flat.
That efficiency creates a choice: how much to reinvest in the value proposition, and how much to let through to the bottom line.
Today, we are choosing to invest, because the habits we are building are worth more than the margin we are forgoing in the short term to build them.
That is the trade-off.
As those habits set and the market matures, that balance will shift.
This is one of the reasons we remain confident in our long-term margin trajectory.
MercadoLibre Letter to Shareholders 2 Q3’26 Results
Commerce In Brazil, growth remained elevated as we fully lapped the lower free shipping threshold.
FX-neutral GMV grew 36% YoY in Q3'26 and sold items grew 45%, with the two-year growth rate accelerating on both metrics, further evidence that expanding free shipping has an enduring impact.
We continued to gain share in a competitive environment that remains intense but stable.
Daily active users grew faster than monthly active users once again, and buyers are purchasing more often across more categories.
In Argentina, FX-neutral GMV grew 40% YoY and items sold 19%, against a consumption backdrop that remains soft, in which we continued to gain share from physical retail.
In September, we extended free & fast shipping on lower-priced items for MELI+ members to all delivery methods within our managed network (previously fulfillment only).
This means the vast majority of items are now eligible for members.
As a result, free shipping penetration reached levels similar to Brazil and Mexico, and purchase frequency hit a record high in September.
Growth accelerated most in the country's interior, where ecommerce penetration lags Buenos Aires and the benefit of free shipping is more valued.
Members are also buying more frequently in mid- to high-ASPs.
The habits we are building in Brazil are forming in Argentina too, and because the investment is focused on MELI+, the near-term margin cost is real but limited.
In Mexico, FX-neutral GMV grew 21% YoY and items sold 25%, a slower pace than in recent quarters, as the tax reform we flagged earlier this year and a weaker consumption environment continued to weigh on demand.
4Even so, we gained market share QoQ and YoY, and unique active buyer growth remained broadly stable at 21%, so the shift of consumers to our platform from physical retail continued even as growth in their spending slowed.
Advertising revenue grew 51% YoY on an FX-neutral basis (58% in USD), well ahead of the market, with slower growth in Argentina and Mexico.
Most of this remains retail media, meaning ads on our marketplace, which continues to grow rapidly.
AI is now central to how we sell ads.
Better relevance, retrieval and click-through models lifted revenue across the quarter, and ad load is moving from fixed slots to dynamic decisions, so the number of ads on a page adjusts to the quality of the match for each search.
Our AI advisor now manages campaigns for 56,000 sellers, almost 4x the number three months ago.
And in branding, we launched Engage+, which uses AI to predict from our purchase data which users are most likely to buy in a brand’s category, and directs spend toward the ones who go on to engage with it.
In testing against conventional reach campaigns, it reached significantly more engaged users at a fraction of the cost per engaged user.
It is now live across six sites.
Beyond the marketplace, we are building what we call commerce media: using our marketplace data and measurement wherever a brand’s audience is.
We can show a brand’s ad on a streaming platform or a social network and then see whether the person who saw it searched for the product, added it to their cart or bought it.
That turns awareness spend, which has always been hard to measure, into spend with a visible return.
What makes it compelling is the scale and depth of the data behind it: the more of Latin America’s purchases that happen on our platform, the better attribution we can give to a brand.
5In October, we announced a partnership with Netflix, which will join Disney, Roku and HBO Max on our connected TV offering from early 2027, further expanding our reach among audiences that brands want to target.
Fintech Services Fintech Services reached 93mn MAUs in Q3'26, up 29% YoY.
Our ecosystem underpins our leadership: our marketplace brings users to Mercado Pago at low cost and provides the data that helps us underwrite them.
This is an advantage that compounds as both sides of the ecosystem grow.
As a result, in Mexico we are the largest digital bank by active users, with more than 18mn MAUs, growing above 40% YoY, and we also have the largest credit portfolio among fintechs.
6In Argentina, almost 80% of the adult population is now a Mercado Pago active user, so our opportunity there is deepening the relationship with our users, particularly in lending.
In Brazil, where our value proposition is most advanced, we outperform every competitor on NPS, with a significant lead over the incumbent banks.
7That is helping us to grow our MAUs above 35% YoY, faster than any other player of scale.
Credit is where the depth of these relationships shows most clearly, and it is how a large, engaged user base becomes a profitable one.
8Our credit portfolio reached almost $18bn in Q3'26, up 62% YoY.
NIMAL was 20.1%, 1ppt lower YoY, reflecting the mix shift MercadoLibre Letter to Shareholders 3 Q3’26 Results
toward the credit card, which now accounts for 47% of the portfolio, up from 44% a year ago.
Asset quality remained robust, with the 15–90 day NPL of 7.0% for the portfolio broadly stable YoY and QoQ and close to all-time lows, despite industry-wide weakness in Argentina and Brazil.
The credit card remains our largest investment in Fintech, which has totaled almost $450mn over the past 12 months.
This is a feature of how a card portfolio grows.
When we issue a card, the balance builds over its first months as the user starts to spend, and we provision for expected losses upfront, on every dollar of that balance as soon as it is drawn.
Interest income, by contrast, comes only from the users who revolve a balance or pay it off over several months; most cardholders pay on time and in full, so the interest-earning population forms gradually.
Together, these factors mean a cohort’s NIMAL starts negative and turns positive as it matures.
The card’s NIMAL at any point reflects the balance between cohorts in that early, loss-making phase and those that have matured and become profitable: the faster we issue relative to the size of the mature book, the larger the near-term cost, even when the economics of each cohort are sound.
Brazil, where we have issued cards the longest, shows the full pattern today: the cohorts issued between 2021 and 2024 are NIMAL positive and account for more than half of the Brazilian card portfolio; the 2025 cohort is roughly NIMAL breakeven in its second year; and the 2026 cohort is in its early, loss-making phase.
Credit card NIMAL improved sequentially in Q3'26.
In Brazil, the maturation of existing cohorts helped offset the dilution from new issuance, even though issuance reached a record.
The card continued to perform well in Mexico, and we are pleased with the early signs in Argentina, a year after launch.
Acquiring Acquiring TPV grew 40% YoY on an FX-neutral basis, with growth broadly stable across our markets: 31% in Brazil, 43% in Mexico, and 55% in Argentina.
We continued to gain share in each, and in Mexico, Instore remains our fastest-growing channel as we lead the shift from cash to digital payments.
Acquiring is one part of a broader relationship with merchants: our aim is to be the digital financial partner for Latin America’s merchants, with payments, banking and credit in one place.
In August we launched Cuenta de Negocios in Mexico, a business account tailored to merchants’ needs, which is already available in Brazil.
Merchants are also deepening their relationship with us through credit: our merchant portfolio grew 15% QoQ, faster than the credit portfolio as a whole, with delinquency stable.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Our investment in AI grew by almost $30mn QoQ.
Usage is growing much faster than our spend, because we are becoming increasingly efficient in two ways: we are getting better at choosing which model to use for each task, and we are lowering the cost of each model we use.
This includes significantly expanding our use of open-source models, which we expect to be a large part of our mix over the medium to long term.
The result is a cost per token that is much lower than a year ago, and fell again this quarter.
We have built many tools, but the bigger picture is that we are organizing our work, across the entire company, around AI.
The returns come through several channels: revenue uplift, better user experience, cost avoidance and productivity, each with its own yardstick.
Some of these returns we can measure precisely, and we do.
The revenue uplift from deploying AI in search, for example, more than offsets the incremental cost of the models behind it.
In customer support, we handle today’s volume with around 7,000 representatives; without AI in those processes, we estimate we would need a multiple of that, so the ROI is clearly positive.
And in user experience, Mago, our Fintech AI assistant, held 19mn conversations in September alone.
In productivity, the output of our technology teams has doubled over the past year, and the gains extend across the company: in Finance, AI has freed up almost 20% of hours worked.
Above all, AI is accelerating the secular shifts we were built to capture, applied to an organization with technology in its DNA, and that is how it multiplies our capacity to create value.
Consolidated Financial Results Net revenue and financial income of $10,750mn grew 45% YoY.
Currency movements acted as a tailwind – albeit to a lesser extent than in Q2'26 – to YoY growth of 50% in Brazil and 47% in Mexico, and acted as a headwind to Argentina’s 26% YoY growth.
FX- MercadoLibre Letter to Shareholders 4 Q3’26 Results
neutral growth remained broadly stable in Brazil at 41%, and in Mexico at 36%, while slowing to 42% in Argentina.
Commerce revenue growth was stable at 41% on an FX-neutral basis (47% in USD), while Fintech decelerated to 40% (42% in USD).
Income from operations was $676mn, down 6% YoY, with a margin of 6.3%, 40bps below Q2'26.
Two factors contributed to the sequential decline: a net shipping headwind of 60bps, split between gross margin (40bps) and G&A (20bps), and higher sales & marketing spend (40bps).
Shipping compressed gross margin by 40bps, with a 60bps increase in shipping charges only partially offsetting a 100bps increase in costs.
Even though cost per shipment fell QoQ in Brazil and Mexico, shipping acted as a headwind to margin for three reasons.
The first, as discussed earlier, is less revenue per shipment due to more free shipping and lower average order values (AOVs), which is a near-term price of the habits we set out to build; the second is higher energy prices, which raised transportation costs; and the third is the expansion of our shipping network, which added almost 20% to our fulfillment square meters QoQ.
Adding capacity ahead of peak season is a pattern we repeat every year; the scale of this year’s additions reflects our growth momentum across the region and our confidence in what lies ahead.
In addition to the compression in cost of revenue, the expansion of our shipping network added 20bps to G&A QoQ due to the associated recruitment costs.
These costs are uneven from one quarter to the next, and this quarter’s increase does not change the longer-term trend of G&A diluting as we grow: it has fallen by 3ppts as a percentage of net revenue over the past five years.
The second source of pressure was sales & marketing, which rose 40bps QoQ to 11.6% of net revenue, within the range in which we have operated in recent years.
We calibrate this spend quarter by quarter, and in Q3 we made a tactical decision to invest more in our affiliates program in Brazil as we continue developing it.
This is an increasingly important channel for customer acquisition, and we now operate it at scale with a growing share of campaigns co-funded by sellers.
Operating leverage was visible once again in product development expenses, despite higher investment in AI.
Elsewhere, in cost of revenue, the POS device restocking that weighed on Q2 reversed, adding around 30bps QoQ, but this was fully offset by higher hosting costs related to AI and strong growth in traffic across our ecosystem.
Net income of $448mn rose 6% YoY in Q3'26, with the decline in income from operations more than offset by a lower tax rate and smaller FX losses of $72mn (versus $102mn in Q3'25).
Adjusted free cash flow was $285mn, even after $503mn of capex and $2.1bn of investment in the expansion of our credit portfolio (partially offset by $1.5bn of fintech funding).
In September, we successfully concluded our second investment grade bond issue, raising $1bn to reinforce our already strong liquidity position.
Looking ahead Ecommerce penetration in Latin America is rising at the fastest pace since 2020, and at twice the pace of 2019 in percentage points added each year.
This is a critical moment in the market’s development, and the engagement we capture now will define our scale and our leadership for years to come.
That acceleration brings new users to Mercado Pago too, where the opportunity is just as large, and Mercado Pago also strengthens Commerce by deepening users’ engagement with our ecosystem.
Investing in Fintech is therefore also investing in our leadership in Commerce.
As more of the region’s economy moves online, our goal is to ensure that more of it moves through our ecosystem.
That goal is the thread through our last three letters: why we are investing, how our ecosystem is changing the way people shop and manage their money, and now how that engagement is improving our cost to serve.
The results give us confidence in that sequence.
Growth remains strong.
Engagement is deepening as the habits we set out to build take hold across our markets.
And our cost to serve is falling in Commerce and flat in Fintech, even as users do more with us.
This is the foundation of our future earnings power.
It reaches our reported margins gradually, as our investments mature and their cost is diluted.
The structural drivers of our profitability – lower cost per shipment, operating leverage in product development, and a credit portfolio that continues to scale profitably – improved again this quarter.
For Mercado Libre and Latin America, the best is coming.
MercadoLibre Letter to Shareholders 5 Q3’26 Results
The following table summarizes certain key performance metrics for the nine and three-month periods ended September 30, 2026 and 2025: (1) Growth calculations based on this table may not total due to rounding.
Year-over-year USD Growth Rates by Quarter Consolidated net revenues and financial income Q3’25 Q4’25 Q1’26 Q2’26 Q3’26 Brazil 38 % 48 % 55 % 59 % 50 % Mexico 44 % 56 % 62 % 55 % 47 % Argentina 39 % 23 % 23 % 20 % 26 % Commerce 33 % 40 % 47 % 50 % 47 % Fintech 49 % 51 % 51 % 49 % 42 % Total MELI 39 % 45 % 49 % 50 % 45 % Gross merchandise volume Q3’25 Q4’25 Q1’26 Q2’26 Q3’26 Brazil 36 % 46 % 54 % 57 % 44 % Mexico 36 % 49 % 48 % 42 % 31 % Argentina 2 % (1) % 5 % 13 % 24 % Total MELI 28 % 37 % 42 % 44 % 38 % Total payment volume Q3’25 Q4’25 Q1’26 Q2’26 Q3’26 TPV Total 41 % 42 % 50 % 56 % 53 % TPV Acquiring 32 % 33 % 39 % 44 % 43 % MercadoLibre Letter to Shareholders 6 Nine Months Ended September 30, Three Months Ended September 30, (IN MILLIONS, except %) (1) 2026 2025 2026 2025 Fintech monthly active users 93 72 93 72 Unique active buyers 128 107 94 77 Gross merchandise volume 63,694 45,131 22,818 16,543 Number of items sold 2,384 1,677 867 635 Total payment volume 296,939 194,129 108,801 71,224 Acquiring total payment volume 188,351 132,394 68,279 47,712 Total payment transactions 15,477 10,964 5,656 4,013 NIMAL 19.7 % 22.0 % 20.1 % 21.0 % Capital expenditures 1,215 900 503 357 Depreciation and amortization 844 580 306 209 Q3’26 Results
Year-over-year FX-neutral Growth Rates by Quarter Consolidated net revenues and financial income Q3’25 Q4’25 Q1’26 Q2’26 Q3’26 Brazil 35 % 37 % 39 % 42 % 41 % Mexico 42 % 41 % 39 % 38 % 36 % Argentina 97 % 77 % 65 % 48 % 42 % Commerce 38 % 37 % 39 % 40 % 41 % Fintech 65 % 61 % 54 % 47 % 40 % Total MELI 49 % 47 % 46 % 43 % 41 % Gross merchandise volume Q3’25 Q4’25 Q1’26 Q2’26 Q3’26 Brazil 34 % 35 % 38 % 39 % 36 % Mexico 34 % 35 % 28 % 26 % 21 % Argentina 44 % 42 % 41 % 38 % 40 % Total MELI 35 % 37 % 36 % 36 % 33 % Total payment volume Q3’25 Q4’25 Q1’26 Q2’26 Q3’26 TPV Total 54 % 53 % 55 % 56 % 51 % TPV Acquiring 45 % 40 % 41 % 42 % 40 % MercadoLibre Letter to Shareholders 7 Q3’26 Results
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