MELI is a top decade pick: underpenetrated Latin American e-commerce should let it outgrow peers. Revenue rose nearly 30 times in 10 years and fintech payment volume is expected to grow. Geopolitical and short-term lending risks may pressure its multiple, but it should be bigger and more profitable in ten years.

Okay, let's move on to the second arrow. A stock I heard you talking about before, Mercado Libre. I hate to annoy our viewers by repeatedly talking about Mercado Libre, but you mentioned 2036 and I was asking myself which companies I am very confident will still be around in 2036 and will be doing better that year. Mercado Libre is at the top of my list.

Looking at the starting point, what favorable macroeconomic winds support it? First and foremost, it is a large e-commerce market . Look at Brazil. This is just one of its markets , and arguably its most important market.

But Brazil is still at approximately 10% penetration of the e-commerce market . Look at the United States, we are closer to 16% or in that range. European countries account for around 20%.

China exceeds 50%. All indicators suggest that Latin America has no option but to rise in terms of e-commerce penetration, and this directly benefits Mercado Libre, perhaps more than any other player in the market.

Yes, and I have kept the graph of their revenue displayed here. It's crazy that it's increased almost 30 times in the last 10 years, but they also have very good operating leverage.

You would like to see more of this operational leverage. I think there are some short- term issues related to lending and the like . But everything is going in the right direction for Mercado Libre.

As I said, given the markets they serve, I think there are geopolitical risks. We have seen this in those countries in the past in Latin America where a country like Brazil can say, " You know what?"

"We don't want Mercado Libre here anymore." I am not saying that this will happen, but there may be serious risks facing these companies. So, this is one of the reasons why it might not trade at the same multiples as it might in the United States, for example.

But it's hard to say there aren't many potential favorable winds over the next decade, certainly.

I think one of the things I would say works in Mercado Libre's favor is that it's a local company. It is better to overcome those risks compared to a foreign company, and there are many foreign players in the Latin American market because it is an attractive area, mostly because these are developing economies in many of them.

These are economies that are growing on an absolute basis, and on top of that, they are transforming into digital economies. If you look at banks, for example, we find that banking services have gone digital over the past ten years.

I believe that the penetration rate has now doubled compared to what it was 10 years ago , but it is still relatively small in terms of the volume of daily payments flowing through digital channels compared to cash.

Mercado Libre, I mean, 400 billion in payment volume is what they expect to achieve this year through their financial services arm . If you look at Brazil, Mexico and Argentina alone.

That's a combined GDP of five and a half trillion dollars between those three countries alone, and there are still other markets in which they operate, so there is still plenty of room for growth in their financial services arm as well, not just e-commerce .

As a final ingredient I would add to this mix, look at its ecosystem. She inherently possesses what it takes to develop other parts of the ecosystem better than anyone else in the field.

So , look at two things in particular: digital advertising and also lending, whether private or personal lending. It has a lot, a lot of consumer data , and thanks to this data it can target digital advertising very effectively, and can accurately predict who will be a good borrower and who will not , and other similar things.

So these are two relatively new businesses at Mercado Libre, and I think they have a competitive advantage thanks to the data.

Okay . Okay. I think it's a compelling case, to say the least . This is one of those companies that I think if you have a timeframe of a decade, it's probably a very good bet to become a bigger and more profitable company ten years from now than it is today.