Latin America’s e-commerce king says MercadoLibre has huge room for growth

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By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Marcos Galperin, chief executive of Latin American e-commerce giant MercadoLibre Inc - already the region's most valuable listed firm - says the company is just getting started.

He wants to triple the number of users, expand online payments, leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and use drones to reach more shoppers. The company is increasingly pushing loans to consumers and sellers on its platform, in turn driving sales.

"We have a lot of room to continue growing in e-commerce," Galperin told Reuters at the firm's offices in Buenos Aires, saying he wanted to boost users from around 100 million now to 300 million, without giving a specific time frame.

"On our FinTech platform, Mercado Pago, we're really just scratching the surface of all that we can do. I think Mercado Pago has enormous opportunities ahead."

MercadoLibre, Latin America's answer to Amazon or China's Alibaba, has already become the most valuable listed company in the region, with a market cap over $100 billion. Its share price is up some 1,600% in ten years and 26% this year.

Galperin, however, said he was not "losing much sleep" over the stock price, but focusing on growing the business in the key markets of Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and increasingly Chile. He wanted to expand organically rather than through acquisitions.

"We don't like buying market share, we like building market share," he said. MercadoLibre doubled its profits in the last quarter from a year earlier, which helped to propel its valuation past Brazilian state energy producer Petrobras in August.

ARGENTINA ECONOMY 'TURNING AROUND'

MercadoLibre's headquarters are in an industrial district of Buenos Aires only a few blocks from the original garage where Galperin, now a dotcom billionaire and one of the region's most influential entrepreneurs, co-founded the company 25 years ago.

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The country, however, has struggled through repeat economic crises, with rampant inflation - now over 250% - periods of capital controls, sovereign defaults, and regular recessions weighing down the domestic market.

Galperin, though, said he had renewed optimism, citing market-oriented policies brought in by new libertarian President Javier Milei, who last week visited the firm to mark a new $75 million logistics center investment.

"We are optimistic about the economy in Argentina in the medium term. So that has led us to invest again," he said, citing a surge in credit and slowing monthly inflation helping boost consumer sentiment and sales.

"In Q2 we saw growth in terms of transactions and items sold. So the economy is turning around," he said, though adding that the recovery would take time.

Analysts have pointed to concerns over credit quality as fintech unit Mercado Pago has issued more loans and uncertainty builds over potential interest rate hikes in Brazil. Non-performing loans in Q2 were down but still at a high 18.5%.

Galperin, however, said he was "very happy" with the way the firm was managing risk in Brazil and around the region, as it taps into the millions of unbanked Latin Americans.

"As long as the non-performing loans are under control, and they have been, I think we're going to be OK."

(Reporting by Lucinda Elliott; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Chizu Nomiyama)

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