Hello, everyone, and welcome to the MercadoLibre Earnings Conference Call for the Quarter Ended September 30, 2020. I am Federico Sandler, Investor Relations Officer for MercadoLibre. Our Senior Manager presenting today is Pedro Arndt, Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, Osvaldo Jimenez, CEO of Mercado Pago will be available during today's Q and A session. I remind you that management may make forward looking statements relating to such matters as continued growth prospects for the company, industry trends and product technology initiatives.
These statements are based on currently available information and are on current assumptions, expectations and projections about future events. While we believe that our assumptions, expectations and projections are reasonable in view of the currently available information, you're cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from those discussed in this call for a variety of reasons, including those described in the forward looking statements risk factors sections of our 10 ks for the year ended December 31, 2019, Item 1A, Risk Factors, in Part 2 of our Form 10 Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2020, and on any of MercadoLibre Inc. Other applicable filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available in our Investor Relations website. Finally, I would like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, we may discuss some non GAAP measures.
A reconciliation of those measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures can be found on our Q3 2020 earnings press available on our Investor Relations website. Now,
let me turn
the call over to Pedro.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to our Q3 2020 earnings conference call. Before we begin, I'd like to express our continued thoughts and well wishes to those affected by COVID-nineteen, both at our company and everywhere. We particularly extend our immense gratitude, appreciation and recognition to those who continue to help us combat this unprecedented global health crisis. Getting to our results, MercadoLibre recorded another strong quarter, driven by high demand for e commerce and FinTech Services. Brazil, Chile and Colombia delivered very strong results in both Let me dive deeper starting with the 3rd quarter e commerce progress report.
Increased demand continued during the Q3 despite the gradual reopening of physical retail throughout the region. We attribute this to improved service levels and the incremental depth of assortment with which we served millions of buyers during the quarter. In this particular regard, during the quarter, we surpassed the $300,000,000 milestone in live listings, reaching $304,000,000 Since the beginning of the pandemic, we've observed that buyers have diversified their purchases across a wider range of verticals on our platform. This in turn activates and engages them in a greater number of services and increases overall purchase frequency. This step up in online purchasing has been stable across all sites in the region.
MercadoLibre's consolidated gross merchandise volume growth accelerated to 117% year on year on an FX neutral basis. At the regional level, Brazil and Argentina accelerated to 74% and 2 42% year on year on an FX neutral basis respectively. Mexico's performance is notable given how COVID-nineteen impacted the region, delivering yet another quarter of GMV growth above 100% year on year, also on an FX neutral basis. The growth of our Mexican business has been remarkable over the past few quarters. In fact, if we were to adjust our GMV growth for the blue chip exchange rate in Argentina rather than the official exchange rate, our Mexican business is already at a size comparable to that of Argentina.
This is a clear indicator of not only the phenomenal execution we've delivered, but the large opportunity that still lies ahead for us in Mexico. Brazil's excellent performance can be explained by our ability to identify and act on opportunities for improvement in overall execution, product development and commercial initiatives that involve the selection and value proposition on subcategories where we had lower market share. During the quarter, these initiatives resulted in the launch of pricing per category, renewed focus on underrepresented subcategories, growth in official store mix, improved rebate programs for merchants, increases in payment approval rates and post sale service enhancements for sellers and buyers. Fundamentally, we also continue to drive penetration on our managed network, which is the key pillar to generate better customer satisfaction and stickiness. Consequently, these initiatives have translated into market share gains across Brazilian e commerce as well as gains across key consumer electronics categories.
Additionally, we also improved our Net Promoter Score by offering buyers some of the fastest delivery times in Brazil when items are shipped from our fulfillment centers. Countries in the Andean region continue to outperform well above year opening expectations, particularly Chile, but also the case for Colombia. During the quarter, we launched a few important product initiatives that we believe will help us scale faster while improving the end to end shopping experience in those countries. And on the logistics front, we continued expanding our services. Our Flex app is now available in Chile and Colombia, while we continue to scale our fulfillment services in parallel.
These are important initiatives within our ecosystem that we believe will help bridge the gap in terms of delivery times and position MercadoLibre extremely well in those markets. Looking ahead, we will continue deploying our ecosystemic solutions in the Andean region in line with the offerings already available in other main countries as we move into Q4 and 2021. On the commerce demand side, unique buyers reached an all time high of $35,000,000 during the Q3 of 2020. This growth year on year in unique buyers was achieved not only by being able to successfully retain existing users, but also by maintaining momentum in the growth of new buyers. During the quarter, we added 2,000,000 unique buyers in Brazil.
Retention of early cohorts also continues to improve. On a category basis, looking at consumers electronics, a key vertical for us, we observed acceleration to approximately 100% year on year growth on a consolidated basis during the 3rd quarter. Specifically in Brazil, the performance improvement in this vertical can be explained in part by greater corporate focus and execution, the rollout of dynamic pricing structure and greater investment in performance marketing to reposition our platform as a go to destination for this specific vertical. Another key vertical for us, consumer packaged goods, grew at a robust 181% year on year on a consolidated basis during the Q3 of 2020. For all our top geos within the CPG vertical, product launches, product enhancements and partnerships were a key theme during the quarter.
In our Brazilian supermarket vertical within CPG, we implemented navigation improvements such as a progress bar to reach free shipping thresholds along with new commercial promotional dates, the relaunch of the Supermercado and specials in some categories and also continued working to deepen assortment. In Mexico, the 3rd quarter, we've entered into agreements with JBP, Diageo and Grupo Modelo ABI in order to further develop these categories within our platform, while also promoting responsible consumption. Additionally, to promote this category, beginning in the Q4, we've waived flat fees for our sellers and brands for products that are delivered from our fulfillment centers. Staying on e commerce, but turning now to marketing. During the Q3, we reignited marketing spend after an atypical 2nd quarter, doubling the size of our marketing investments in our marketplace on an absolute basis compared to the prior quarter.
With that said, we are still investing at a lower rate than our original pre COVID plan due to the pandemic's continued impact in driving consumers online and because we are still generating robust organic traffic growth. In the Andean region, we've accelerated the pace of marketing investments versus prior quarters, both in absolute values and as a percentage of GMV. This increase was particularly notable in Chile and Colombia, where we reinforced branding campaigns and invested in special dates and performance marketing campaigns with solid results. Most notably, our Chilean operations now lead the top of mind measurements that we carry out in that country for the first time. Let me now turn over to logistics, a key enabler of growth for our Commerce business.
Our logistics operations have been instrumental in helping us navigate through these trying times and its powerful synergies with our e commerce business have unlocked meaningful value. Not only has helped us drive higher Net Promoter Scores and customer satisfaction, but it is increasingly becoming a competitive advantage in multiple countries. Our MercadoEnvios managed network continued gaining penetration during the Q3 reaching 64% on a consolidated basis exiting the quarter at 74% overall adoption. Brazil, Mexico and Argentina reached 68%, 56% and 84% respectively. Fulfillment in Brazil reached 22% of total shipments, while in Mexico it has already surpassed 55% share of shipments.
As a result, we've been able to deliver faster and more efficiently. In Brazil, we managed to improve delivery times and lower costs despite the Correo strike, which lasted for approximately 6 weeks this year. However, since we successfully migrated significant shipping volumes on to our managed network, we've been able to not only almost double the amount of items we've delivered versus last year, but also significantly enhanced service levels recording a 20 percentage point improvement in shipments being delivered in less than 48 hours. The growth of our MELI Logistics proprietary technology within the managed network combined with the addition of Flex in the Greater Sao Paulo area, helped scale our managed network, resulting in lower shipping costs and delivery times improvements versus last quarter. Another development in Brazil was the reduction of our free shipping threshold to BRL 99 during the quarter.
This had 2 key benefits. 1st, it broadened what was an already comprehensive free shipping program in Brazil. 2nd, it enabled us to cover a greater share of our marketplace GMV within the free shipping program. In Mexico, the incorporation of cross docking to our Mexican managed network is part of our expansion plan in order to reduce our dependence on commercial carriers, enabling us to find more capacity to accompany our increasing volumes and growth in that country. And finally on logistics, we are happy to report that Colombia and Chile continue to gain penetration of our managed network, ramping at a very fast clip reaching 14% and 15% respectively, an almost 10 percentage point improvement versus last quarter.
Execution and logistics has been stellar across multiple geos. During the quarter, as I've just called out, we simultaneously shifted volume into our own managed network while continuing to invest and expand the build out of our logistics infrastructure despite trying circumstances. We are confident that the increased pace of execution in this expansion will enable us to be amongst the best in class in terms of service levels and continue to gain efficiencies in shipping costs going forward. With that, let's now move on to FinTech side of the business, another central building block of our ecosystem strategy and value proposition. MercadoPago reached almost 60,000,000 unique payers during the quarter, adding 7,500,000 payers, mainly attributable to Brazil.
FX neutral consolidated total TPV grew by 161% year over year during the quarter. Our off platform payments business accelerated sequentially to 197% year on year on an FX neutral basis, not only with a robust performance of online payments, but also an improvement in our in store payment solution, particularly mobile point of sale devices. We have observed that some segments that had not been heavily impacted during the quarantine regimes have now began to recover. The transportation segment we serve is one example of hard hit segments that are now beginning to recover. Off platform unique payers reached 36,000,000 with Brazil reaching almost 20,000,000 Specifically, in Brazil, we reached an all time high of unique payers added adding almost $4,200,000 over the prior quarter.
On the collectors front, we reached almost 11,000,000 active collectors with Brazil leading on the merchant acquisition front. Starting with online payments, consolidated TPV accelerated to 204% year on year on an FX neutral basis during the quarter, with growth having been led by performances in Argentina and Brazil. For Brazil, we saw solid online payments growth, especially in the long tail and social seller segments, setting new records for seller acquisition, more than tripling the number of active sellers. The growth in Brazil's online merchant base is the result of a series of actions we took focused on the acquisition of sellers, especially those that started selling online for the first time. In line with that, we also relaunched marketing campaigns with healthy seller acquisition costs and shorter payback periods.
We also expanded our cross sell actions with other MercadoPago verticals, especially with POINT and QR. Additionally, we launched incentive programs in conjunction with the main e commerce platforms to facilitate the onboarding of new sellers to the online world. And in Argentina, the other strong performer, online payments accelerated sequentially, mainly attributable to promotional dates, social sellers and an improved checkout. Social sellers monthly acquisition reached an average of 113,000 in September versus the historical average of 33,000, where our main focus was to generate better cross sell capabilities and optimization of marketing initiatives. Our MPOS business has delivered solid execution as governments begin to ease quarantine measures.
In Brazil, TPV accelerated 14 percentage points versus last quarter, almost reaching pre COVID levels of growth. The pace at which we are selling devices was also a positive surprise with more than 1,300,000 devices sold across LatAm during the quarter. And staying on Brazil, MPOS, 3rd quarter TPV cohorts are incorporating more TPV compared to January cohorts, which shows a robust acceleration in the cadence of MPOS growth. This is in line with the sales levels of devices, which also grew at a faster pace if we compare September to January. In Brazil, we launched PointSmart, our top of the line device focused on businesses that require a simple, fast and modern terminal.
This device should enable better cross sell for marketplace merchants who have physical stores and now are able to cater to their in store payment needs given the new device we are offering. And in the case of Argentina, during the quarter, we grew 129% year on year on an FX neutral basis. One important highlight from our MPOS business there is that as we evolved to multi product with the launch of our Point Plus device, such rollout has been very well received. Moving on to our mobile wallet, another key vector in our ecosystem. Our wallet TPV growth continued to accelerated on a consolidated and FX neutral basis to 3 81% year over year.
The share of payments once again skewed towards P2P transactions, utilities payments and cell phone top ups as a consequence of COVID-nineteen. Per our last call, the Q2 represented an important milestone in terms of product migration and adoption of payment flows from the physical world to the digital world. And during the Q3, we've been able to maintain the payment volume reached in the prior quarter and continue growing. We focused on minimizing churn in order to retain digitized users gained and acquired during the pandemic. P2P payments continue to gain share of payments within the wallet.
This trend was evident across the region. The large pickup in peer to peer during the quarter was not only driven by quarantines and shift to digital, but also by the launch of a new product experience and new free pricing for all transfers made with account money and debit card when P2P transactions. Finally on wallet, during the Q3, we were able to grow the active payers to almost $14,000,000 on a consolidated basis. In Brazil, we added a record high number of unique payers for a single quarter. We also have made inroads on the opposite end of the wallet as our collector network continues to grow at a healthy pace reaching 5,500,000 active wallet collectors on a consolidated basis, an all time high on this front more than doubling versus the prior quarter.
Let me now move on to our credit business. Mercado Credito had a record 3rd quarter with an all time high in terms of originations growing 157 percent q on q, while our loan portfolio also reached an all time high of $284,000,000 as we've been able to originate more loans with lower NPLs. During the quarter, we had increased the APRs as we calibrated for higher delinquency rates. However, as the quarter progressed, we observed that defaults were in fact improving, resulting in better profitability profiles. In Brazil, we extended terms for online merchants up to 18 months and increased caps while also improving lifetime values.
On consumer credit and express money users, we made our policies more flexible by lowering caps. Additionally, we've been able to enhance adoption of our credit products by leveraging artificial intelligence methods that enable us to do a credit offer at a point in the user journey where there is a greater tendency for adoption. Originations on consumer credits accelerated 140% versus last quarter. Within our credit products, MPOS, in store merchant originations almost doubled, while our express money credit product more than tripled its volume versus last quarter. Originations to merchants on our marketplace grew a solid 172% versus last quarter.
Additionally, we launched our micro credits offering now representing about 15% of consumer credits in terms of originations. With that, let's now move on to our financial progress report for the quarter. Let's start with the review of our P and L with comments on consolidated net revenues. For the Q3, they reached $1,116,000,000 surpassing the $1,000,000,000 mark for the time in a quarter and representing a year on year increase of 85% in U. S.
Dollars and 149% on an FX neutral basis, mainly attributable to Commerce net revenues that continued accelerating and reached their highest historical growth rate. Gross profit for the 3rd quarter was a 480,000,000 with a margin of 43% compared to 47% during the Q3 of 2019. The decrease in gross profit margin resulted primarily from an increase in shipping operation costs as a percentage of net revenues. In the slides accompanying this presentation, we've included as we always do a detailed breakdown of these as well as the OpEx margin evolutions that I'll cover quickly now. Operating expenses were $397,000,000 an increase of 8.4% year on year in dollars.
As a percentage of revenues, operating expenses were 35.6% compared to 60.7% during the Q3 of 2019. The increase is primarily a consequence of marketing expenditure efficiencies representing over 1500 basis points improvement that we achieved as a result of the growth in organic demand brought about by the effects of the COVID-nineteen pandemic on consumer behavior. Moving down the P and L, the company incurred $24,500,000 in financing expenses this quarter, mainly attributable to financial loans entered into during the Q3 of 2020, primarily in Brazil and Argentina and interest expenses from our trusts related to the factoring of our credit card receivables in Argentina. During the quarter, we also had a foreign exchange loss of $30,400,000 mainly related to the difference of the Argentine official exchange rate and the blue chip swap rate at which we effectively carry out stock repurchases in Argentine pesos. We also believe this operation presents an added benefit of generating greater transparency around FX rate distortions that arise as a consequence of Argentina's multiple exchange rates.
Interest income was $24,600,000 a 13.7% decrease year over year as a result of lower interest rates in our investments as a consequence of the pandemic, mainly offset by higher interest income in Argentina as our float grows. As a result of this, net income for the 3rd quarter was $15,000,000 Wrapping up today's call, we want to reinforce our commitment to the democratization of commerce and money. The opportunity ahead of us remains sizable and we feel increasingly confident that we can capitalize on it. Thanks everyone as always for joining the conference call and we look forward to keeping you updated on our progress report next quarter. With that, we can now take your questions.
Thank you. Our first question comes from Stephen Ju of Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.
Okay. Thank you. So, Pedro, in your prepared remarks, you talked about consumer electronics growing at, I think 100% year over year. I know it's probably hard to tell given the circumstances, but do you think that is a supply led acceleration due to the change of the commission rate? Or is there like a price elasticity factor there as well as merchants adjust to the new rates?
And also in regards to the CPG effort, you talked about I guess a deeper assortment there also. Is that mostly through 3rd party sellers that you're getting the deeper assortment right now? Or have you started to form, I guess, larger and deeper relationships with the brands directly?
Great, Steven. So on consumer electronics, what we highlighted was that we've really focused on some of these categories that we had identified as categories where we were lagging in fair share compared to our overall expectations for market share. And we've really began to execute better on those categories. So it's a combination of product improvement, new pricing, very strong execution on the commercial front to source better deals with OEMs that are coming across and then a more aggressive pricing and rebate policy also on price points at which we sell. So to get that kind of a turnaround, it really takes, I think, concerted execution across the board.
On consumer practical goods, we continue to have a growing 1P presence, but that business is still primarily 3P. And again, we're just sourcing well from existing marketplace vendors. And really that's one of the areas where if you look at the user experience over the last few months, we've been perhaps more innovative than in many other places in terms of supermarket navigation and really improving the purchase of consumer packaged goods. And then obviously assisted by the overall pandemic and a very strong shift of demand online in those categories, probably growing more than any other throughout the pandemic.
Thank you.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Angie Rubin of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.
Hey, great. Thanks for the question. So we've seen a big pickup in your managed network penetration again this quarter. So I'm just curious for the quarter itself, how the Kireo strike impacted the figures and your short term strategy? And then thinking longer term, any update on where the managed network penetration could reach over time?
Thank you.
Yes. So counter intuitively, I think the strikes that we face end up being an incredible positive for us long run because a, they reinforce our commitment to moving volume onto our own managed marketplace at an accelerated pace. But it also gives our merchants a very strong incentive to migrate volume onto the managed marketplace. So not only is Brazil driving that increase in managed marketplace volume shift, that's happening in other key markets as well with very positive results in terms of delivery times and delivery costs. But yes, the strike in Brazil accelerates that move.
And we see this as a one way door. So once merchants have moved on to our fulfillment cross docking and places operations, they tend to stay and we make all the efforts for them to stay on the managed network. And so our aspirations are to continue moving volume onto the managed marketplace because we see the significant positive impact it has on delivery time, cost and net promoter scores. I don't think we give specific near term or long term objectives. Suffice to say that the more we move to the managed network, the better it is for our consumers and for our merchants.
Yes. That makes sense. Thank you.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Amar Sagaraj of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. In your opening remarks in the press release, you made a comment about that you're starting to strive for the highest segments of the merchant pyramid. Can you just expand a little bit on any specific measures that you're taking that you'd call out for FinTech and e commerce on that front?
Thank you.
So I'll quickly start with Commerce since I've already mentioned some of it. We clearly are seeing incremental traction in our efforts to complement the historic core base of SMEs that sell on our marketplace with a growing number of flagship stores and official stores across multiple categories. And so this is somewhat driven by rapid consumer demand online that is forcing many of these brands and OEMs to engage more constructively with online channels like our marketplace, but also as we improve our product and we improve our ability to sell into enterprises, we are able to onboard a growing number of companies that sell direct through us. We mentioned some of them in the CPG category in the prepared remarks and there are others across consumer electronics. Samsung is rapidly becoming one of the largest marketplace sellers in many countries and a slew of others.
And Iva, with regards to FinTech, on the EOS front, as you know, in the past, we concentrated mostly on individuals. A few quarters ago, we launched our Point Pro, which is a device with a printer on it. And what we saw was that the average volume of sales per device was over twice what we had on the MPOS segment. And now more recently, we launched a smart POS. And again, we have seen a step up with TPV, which is roughly 40% higher than the one we already had with the Point Pro.
So we continue to see increased volumes per device and we are starting to be able to penetrate SMBs,
which in
the past were out of our scope.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Bob Ford of Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Good evening everybody and congratulations on the quarter. Pedro, can you talk a little bit about your use of air cargo? There seems to be a lot going on besides the dedicated aircraft in Brazil. And I'm curious in terms of what the implications of excess passenger capacity means for freighter availability and your costs and whether or not this has implications for network design and your build out priorities?
And how should we think about other markets when it comes to air cargo?
So the overriding objective is how can we increase the number of parcels delivered in less than 2 days and then eventually continue to shorten that time. And for that, especially in the larger geos like Brazil and Mexico, air is a critical piece of this. We started with Air, as you mentioned, using excess capacity on commercial carriers. And as we understood that part of the business better and the volume began to ramp up, we've continued to sort of integrate in that value chain and we now start having freight only 3PLs that provide exclusive routes and exclusive claims for us and the news yesterday of the yellow livered MercadoLibre Air airplanes. And then that will be a growing part of our network design as we strive to go faster.
Importantly, there's no CapEx involved in that. These are 3rd party logistics air providers. And when we look at unit costs, we're trying to be selective in terms of routes where we have enough scale, where the overall negative impact on unit costs is manageable, yet the acceleration in delivery times is impactful. And no, it's not just a Brazil thing, it already happens in Mexico. And I assume that as the networks grow in other markets, we will also look into it.
Makes perfect sense. And just one other question, if I might. Can you talk a little bit about app usage year on year in terms of engagement, conversion rates, improved navigation, impacts for client acquisition costs? And then is there a reason to maintain separate Mercado and Paco Labs? Or is there an opportunity that we should be considering longer term?
So we continue to see traffic and volume migrate increasingly obviously to mobile. I think we're already above 80% of volume is mobile and 2 thirds is already app volume. And obviously that's a consequence of a combination of consumer demand shift, but also our continued focus on improving those app experiences. In terms of number of downloads, not always an ideal metric because our cadence of investment in downloads may vary Q on Q, but we continue to grow that base and we believe that our installed base of both Mele apps and MIPE apps continue to be one of our strongest competitive advantages across the region.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Gustavo Oliver of UBS. Your line is now open.
Hi Pedro, good afternoon. I have two questions. The first one is I would like to understand a little bit better the impact of the on gross margins and perhaps on overall operating profit margin coming from the elevated penetration of 1P in the business. I think in one of the charts you show here, there is a 210 bps impact coming from cost of sales of goods. I wonder whether this is already coming from the increase in 1P penetration.
So if you could explore that a little bit. And the second question is with respect to the growth of platform unique payers in Brazil, the 4,200,000 new unique payers that you had in this quarter. What are the drivers of this growth? Is this related to kind of any of your efforts associated with peaks and making sure that that's probably helping your growing unique payers base or there are other drivers behind that?
Gustavo, let me start with the second question, the one regarding the acceleration of platform payers in mostly in Brazil. And I would say PIKS did not yet have an effect on that. But what was a significant catalyst for that was Auxilio Emergency, the emergency payments made in Brazil. And we saw a significant ramp up in the number of people connecting their Caix account with their Mercado account to be able to access those funds and to make payments afterwards using Macao Paulo. And so we saw a spike in terms of downloads and of accounts being funded and then the statements made in Brazil driven by Oxygen Emergency Health.
Okay. Yes. And then on the 1P business, Gustavo, this is
a business that we are investing behind. We think that it has a key role to play going forward in terms of being able to step in with 1P offerings where there are inventory breakage or inventory gaps from our marketplace. It allows us to be very competitive versus other 1P competitors in terms of promotional calendar and pricing. And so this is an important part of our strategy going forward. In the early years, it's a business that has less scale than what it will have in the future.
And so when you look at current pure product margins and the overall P and L, it does compress gross margins. I think the important thing here is to understand that we're investing into it because we trust that as it scales and grows, there will be leverage on PPM on down and that business longer term isn't necessarily going to be as much of a drag on gross margins as it is in the very early phases.
Currently Pedro, what's the penetration of 1P in your total GMV?
Hello?
Hello, Pedro. I think we can hear you.
I'm not sure if we got cut off. I think the last part of the answer was that we don't Yes, Sorry. So we were saying that we don't disclose what the percentage 1P is, but it's growing nicely and it's still relatively small in the single
So the first one is, given that your electronics GMV is growing nicely, is there a change in the way you think about like the big holiday sales like Black Friday, etcetera, in terms of promotions and things like that? And the second one was more on the Andean region. That has obviously been growing nicely. And when you look at the revenue split, it's still under indexed quite a bit. Maybe some color around what exactly do you want to focus on in Chile, Colombia in terms of whether it's going to be CPG, electronics?
Is it going to be logistics that's going to drive a lot of or is it going to be the payments and the loyalty together? So some color on what exactly are your main focus for the Andean region, that will be
helpful. Let me start with the Andean region answer. I think this goes to show the enormous opportunity that exists in those markets once we begin to have enough resources to continue to aggressively invest in Brazil and Mexico, but also investing more aggressively in those markets. And by investing aggressively, I don't necessarily mean spend. Those markets were actually profitable during the quarter.
But I do mean having greater and greater human capital, primarily engineering resources to be able to take the user experience and the technology in those markets to the level that Brazil and Mexico are at. And so there is no different strategy for those markets. It's all of the things you mentioned that have allowed us to be successful in the other markets. Yes, logistics is already a big piece of the acceleration. We have, as you know, warehouse in Chile operational, one in Colombia on the way and a growing managed network in those markets.
We have a strong CPG business. So in a way, they as we have more and more resources, we can focus on those markets and they have the benefit of being able to leapfrog some things because they can benefit from a lot of the innovation that's occurring in Brazil and Mexico that maybe wasn't present in those markets when they had the size that Colombia, Mexico sorry, Colombia and Chile now have. So similar strategy, greater ability to invest behind them. The demand and the market opportunity, we believe, was always there, and we're now beginning to capture that. And going forward, we continue to expect solid growth from those markets.
That's helpful. And on the holiday events like Black Friday, do you see any change in your thought process?
I think in previous years, we had been quite willing to stay on the sidelines in some of these near end promotions that typically were dominated by 1P retailers. As we improved both our 1P capabilities, but in our general sourcing and execution across some of these key categories, I think we believe we can invest somewhat more aggressively because the user experience and the price competitiveness is there on our marketplace. And so you will see us, I think, be less on the sidelines during the Q4 critical promotional period.
That's helpful, Pedro. Thank you so much.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Edward Yruma of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Good evening. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess first on Mexico, I know you kind of highlighted the share opportunity there. I guess as you think in the medium term, what kind of investments are necessary to kind of continue to propel growth in Mexico?
And then second, on Brazil credit, nice to see you leaning into that. I know it was maybe about a year, year and a half ago that you had some issues in Brazil. What are you doing this time around to ensure that delinquencies in charge offs don't tick up, knowing that I think you mentioned using AI more as a tool? Thank you.
Okay. So I think recapitulating on our Mexico story, if we look back over the last 4 years, where, as you know, we've invested very aggressively, certainly, that was the right strategy. We look at Mexico and the growth it's had, the competitive position we continue to maintain in that market and the incredible advances we've made in terms of the user experience we're able to offer. This is exactly how we want to manage our business, which is to take a long term view and invest behind the kind of things that we know generate long term value. And obviously, the logistics network there is the first one that comes to mind, but there are other things we've been doing.
So that will continue to be the case in Mexico. We're not going to take a short term view on that market. We continue to take a long term view in a very competitive market. Having said that, as you all know, there are scale benefits to our business. And so if you look at the level of losses and the margin structure, despite us continue to be extremely aggressive in absolute dollar terms, that's also continued has improved consistently over time.
And so I think Mexico has been playing out very positively, and we will continue to pursue the long game investing, but also understanding that scale benefits will come to our P and L as we continue to grow that business. And it's a business that continues to double year on year.
And with regards to the pressure in Brazil, with regards to pressure in Brazil, I have taken in the Q2, we took a cautious approach as the pandemic was just starting. We're not sure how both our merchant and and consumers would react to that. Nonetheless, the industry is uptime. We continue improving our model, collecting more data and improving our collection efforts. So we felt very comfortable during the Q3, and we were able both on the consumer and merchant side to triple the number of loans we offer.
And so that's why we see an increase on the one hand of the on the side of the portfolio and at the same time, a decrease in non non loans.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Tagalog Marques of ITAU. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Thank you for taking my question. Pedro, we've seen several players endeavoring into fresh goods and foodservice categories, especially here in Brazil, in an attempt to generate traffic and decrease customer acquisition costs. Do you think you guys will play a part in those 2 categories as well? I would like to understand what are the pros and cons of doing that.
And regarding PIX, there is clearly an impact here in the money in and out of digital wallets in the country. I'm curious to hear what other opportunities you believe can come from the launching of this payment tool in Brazil this month. Thank you, guys.
Yes. Look, I think we aim to be able to supply whatever our consumers want from us and where demand pockets are. We don't comment on future category developments or where we might be going. But we look to be the stop and the online solution that our consumers go to for all the things that it makes sense for us to sell. So clearly, category expansion is a part of our growth story as we continue to aim to gain share of wallet of consumers.
But we'd rather comment on specific category expansion once we launch something rather than in advance.
Thiago, we would have to take it's still very early, but we are excited by the initial restart. So now I would say the last time Central Bank published data, we were second in the number of big AVP registered. And yesterday, started also the top launch and our users are already able to receive payment. So far, our guests are going on track. And according to our plan, the ramp up will be in the next couple of weeks on November 16, 30, theoretically, all closed and to be live for offline.
And we believe it will have an impact.
I guess.
On the one hand, we believe that it will have an impact in terms of transfers of stock and debt transfers for P2P and then also for P2P merchants. In that case, nonetheless, we believe that the fact that fixed support installment probably make it less popular than it could be. But definitely, we have developed the features in a quarter to allow fixed segmenting in all of our flows.
All right. Thank you very much, guys.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Deepak Mathivanan at Barclays. Your line is now open.
Hi. It's Trevor on for Deepak. On the commerce side, can you talk about how cohort level trends over the last 3 months have evolved? Are you seeing active buyers that came to the platform in April May still continue to exhibit similar frequency and spend? And how about on the new customer trends, are cohort sizes still similar?
And lastly, any commentary on active buyer growth coming from like truly new customers versus existing customers that were dormant kind of reactivating? Thank
you.
Yes. So cohort performance has continued to be very strong and improved sequentially across most key metrics. If we look at the quarterly evolution of new buyers acquired during the growth of online demand because of COVID. So users who we acquired over the last few months at a very rapid rapid pace have continued to remain engaged and the overall cohort performance has actually improved sequentially quarter after quarter. In terms of the new cohorts, I would say the last quarter was in line with the previous pandemic cohort, perhaps slightly below in terms of their initial performance, but still historically strong compared to any other prior quarter we could have.
Great. Thank you.
Thank
you. And our next question comes Marcelo Santos of JPMorgan. Your line is now open.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. The first question is in the post regarding the post office strike. So was there a negative impact in the end in terms of growth? And could you help to for us to have a feeling or the migration to Managed Logistics in the end help to offset completely that?
And the second question is about EBITDA margin, EBIT margin. So profitability also came quite strong again this quarter. Are you reaching a point where you should kind of keep a more positive profitability as the more mature businesses like generate results, as you mentioned last year, like the more mature ones should build more results? Or should you still ramp up more investments and end up doing more the trade off in terms of growth? These are the two questions.
Yes. So, Correios, like I tried to transmit, we believe long term is something or the Correios strike, sorry, is something that ends up being very beneficial to us. We migrated thousands of incremental large merchants away from the dropship model onto our managed network as a consequence of the strike. Short term, it's still a headwind. So I think we calculated anywhere between mid to high single digits of growth that we lost because during the strike, delivery parcels took longer to arrive at doorsteps.
So again, it's short term, it's negative. Mid to long term, it's positive because it gives us incremental arguments with merchants to move them on to the managed network. And we saw that significant increase in sellers now fulfilling through us or using our network for pickup and then injection into our own logistics network. In terms of profitability profile, as you know, we don't guide. But I think, conceptually, the way you've laid out the question is accurate, our more mature businesses and the larger, more mature geos, have strong natural scale in them.
And so they should continue to be able to drive some operational leverage. Now don't forget that this is a highly competitive market. And again, we will continue to take the long road. So if we need to on the side of remaining aggressive on our investments and driving growth and market share, that continues to be our one priority. If we're able to accomplish that and also take advantage of economies of scale, fantastic.
And then there are newer business units and newer initiatives that we've launched, CPG, 1P, InsurTech that could be very, very large opportunities and that we will invest behind.
Perfect. Thank you very much for the answers.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Jamie Friedman of Susquehanna. Your line is now open.
Pedro, do you have any view about the impact of the corona vouchers, the stimulus program, any way to detect how much that may have helped your TPV?
I'd say, I'd say, I definitely have an impact in numbers of payers in this quarter, so funders in the account. In terms of TPV, I think there is a number we can refer to because there were many different uses in case with the Corona purchase, but definitely had impacted certain number of
Okay. Thanks for that as well. And then do you happen to have any update on the PayPal operating agreement? What are you guys doing together? What do you have operationalized in the market at this point?
And what are your future plans?
So, Jimmy, what we have already launched is for the ability for safer payers to pay cross border in Cabo Libre, Brazil and Mexico and also for the CPaa payers to pay in any merchant side that accepts Matau Valo in these two countries. And now we are working on the other two tracks. One of them is for MercadoLibre payers to be able to pay on global PayPal Merchant. And the third one is to focus on remittances from the U. S.
To Mexico, driven by some of the state apartheid and our distribution network in Mexico. But those 2 are still working on them and
comes from John Colanto of Jefferies. Your line is now open.
Hey, thanks for the question. Can you talk about how efforts across the Brazil retail landscape to spread out sales events this holiday season could impact overall promotional spending this year? And related to that dynamic, I'm curious whether you're seeing any signs that competitors with large physical store footprints are putting even more effort into driving sales to their e commerce offerings, given the impact the pandemic may have on consumers' desire to shop in store? Thanks.
Yes. I think I feel more comfortable recapping how Q4 plays out once we've actually gone through the quarter and anticipate how competitors might play and what might happen. Like I said, I think we're focused on our own Q4 execution. You should see us be less on the sidelines than in previous years. We feel that we are better equipped, to participate aggressively in those promotional activities and let's see how it plays out.
And then in terms of where consumer affinity for online is for physical store purchases. I think as we've seen a gradual reopening of retail, we are seeing foot traffic rising that we see primarily in the gradual rebound of our NBOS business and our in store QR businesses in Fintech. So I do think that slowly consumers are beginning to return to physical stores.
Thank you.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Kunal Madhukar of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.
Hi, thanks. Thanks for taking my questions. A couple, if I could. One with regard to the recent Amazon Prime Day and the awareness that it could have generated for e commerce in general. Typically, what we see in the U.
S. Is a lot of other retailers, competitors to Amazon kind of report like higher growth, higher trading volumes around those days. I was curious what you saw. And then again picking up on what Amazon is doing in the U. S.
In terms of Amazon Flex where they actually helped finance trucks and trailers and what have you advanced for last mile delivery. Is that something which could be an option for you guys in Brazil as a way to kind of get around the Couriers bottleneck?
So let me attempt an answer. I think first of all, Prime Day was we had some initiatives that we think blunted the value proposition. We increased our free shipping offering during those weeks, and we saw good results on our end during those weeks. And then in terms of network design and what they're doing, I think my only thought is we've historically always tried to understand very well what's happening in the global e commerce landscape. And if there are things that are applicable or things that are worth emulating, I think we've always been very adept doing so and adapting it to whatever the local reality is.
And our network is a case in point in that. We firmly believe that we are building out the most efficient network in the region across multiple geographies, not just in Brazil or just Mexico. And that obviously requires hiring the right people, investing aggressively, but also learning what others are doing globally and replicating what happens.
Thank you. Great. Thank you, Chris.
Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude our question and answer session. Thank you for participating on today's conference call and you may now disconnect.