Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the MercadoLibre 4th Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants on the phone are in a listen only mode. After our prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session and instructions will follow at that time. And as a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to the company management.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to MercadoLibre Earnings Conference Call for the quarter ended December 31, 2013. My name is Martin Rosantos, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations for North Carolina. Our senior manager presenting today is Pedro Arndt, Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, Marcos Alperini, Chief Executive Officer and Eduardo Gimenez, Executive Vice President of Payments, will be available during today's Q and A session. This conference call is also being broadcast over the Internet and is available through the Investor Relations section of our website.
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 and technology initiatives. These statements are based on currently available information and our 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, we are cautioned not to place undue reliance on those forward looking statements. Our observed results might differ materially from those discussed in this call for a variety of reasons, including those described in the forward looking statements and risk factors sections of our 10 ks and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on 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 in our Q4 2013 earnings press release available on our Investor Relations website. Now let me turn the call over to Pedro.
Welcome everyone to our earnings call for the Q4 of 2013. Wrapping up another successful year for Latin America's leading e commerce ecosystem, I'd like to recap some of our strategic priorities, financial results and key initiatives for the upcoming year. We ended the year on a good note with solid performance across our marketplace and payments businesses, both closing the 4th quarter with accelerating revenues despite FX headwinds that continue to impact our consolidated results. Revenues in local currencies also accelerated across our largest countries, showing a trend across the board that was led by our largest market, Brazil. I'd like to start us off by taking a step back and briefly looking at the full year, so as to recap the advances we have made during the past 4 quarters.
During 2013, registered users on our platform grew by 22%. Items sold grew 23%. Gross merchandise volume grew 44% in local currencies and 28% in U. S. Dollars.
Total payment transactions grew by 34% and total payment volume grew 60% in local currencies and 40% in We believe these growth rates directly results from our execution against the set of ongoing strategic objectives, which we've identified and stated for our business over the past quarters. These broadly involve the promotion of our payments and shipping solutions as strategic facilitators for e commerce, helping to eliminate friction points and enhance our user experience on and off our platform. The ongoing development of mobile and vertical category specific capabilities that allow for ubiquitous and customized trading, trends that are both in their early stages in our region and represent huge upside potential going forward. The promotion of our open platform, making our services increasingly accessible to 3rd parties, be they outside developers building new solutions or retailers requiring technological integration and support for their businesses. Through this approach, we strive to be the technological partner of choice for anyone looking to trade online in Latin America.
And finally, all of this necessarily is underpinned by our ongoing efforts to deliver a consistently improving overall customer experience. We are devoted to innovation on this front, coming up with new solutions for the growing functionalities and features that we offer and anticipating rather than reacting to the needs of our users through investments in our technology products and customer service operations. With e commerce still accounting for less than 3% of Latin America's total retail volume, we think these are the key areas of focus, which will help us accelerate the pace at which online retail penetrates offline retail, thus accelerating the rate of growth of our own business. We have built our key business plans around these priorities and will continue to do so during the upcoming year. Let me therefore walk you through the progress we have made on each of these throughout the past year starting with payments.
Total payment volume closed the year reaching 35% of gross merchandise volume as MercadoPago extended its benefits, including financing options and a comprehensive buyer protection program to a growing number of buyers. Brazil and Argentina each saw more than 10 percentage points of on platform penetration growth December to December, while off platform payments accelerated in the same period, maintaining the highest growth of all our businesses. Financing volume also accelerated, obviously benefiting by payments growth on both of these fronts and a growing segment of the region's population that is willing and able to buy on credit. We have also made important strides with our initial forays into shipping and logistics. Our MercadoEnvios program went live exactly a year ago, growing at an accelerating pace throughout 2013 as we released it to a broader base of sellers during the year.
Our initial success with trial users encouraged us to rapidly expand beyond Brazil with a quick rollout to Argentina in the Q1 of 2013 and subsequent plans to extend the program to Mexico soon. Recapping a very successful 1st year for this initiative, in 2013, we grew shipping penetration significantly, shipping over 5% of our Brazilian and Argentine combined sold items in the final quarter of the year and exiting the year with more than 10% of sold units in Brazil already being shipped through our MercadoEnvios platform. Let's move on to mobile, another fast paced initiative that has definitely surpassed our expectations this year, topping 12% of our GMV by year end. Android followed by iPhone account for more than half of total downloads and we are closing in on 10,000,000 native app downloads across all countries. More impressively, mobile keeps expanding its share of our new users ending the 4th quarter at 15% of total new registrations.
This rate rises to above 20% in certain countries, while mobile adoption is more advanced than in other parts, bolstered by better infrastructure and cheaper connectivity costs. Our vertical and open platform initiatives ran hand in hand in 2013. With continued positive trends on both of these fronts, MercadoLibre keeps consolidating its position as a virtual shopping mall with the most varied selection. Categories such as apparel and sports grew more than twice as fast as average GMV in the year, resulting from our doom approach of offering vertical formats to all sellers and attracting big brands to sell directly through our platform. Brazil and Argentina added a total of 17 new official stores from brands and branded retailers in the 4th quarter alone, underscoring the growing presence of large retail on our marketplaces.
With the volumes from these preferred partners on the rise, we are working on rolling out more official stores throughout the upcoming quarters, significantly improving the depth and quality of selection of items available to our users. Finally, our work on customer experience has also paid off during 2013 with healthy metrics indicating we are responding faster and more efficiently to customer needs, resulting in positive evolution of our Net Promoter Score throughout the year. 4th quarter NPS ended at the highest level of the year, both for the marketplace and payments businesses. In the meantime, we are constantly looking for ways to innovate, currently trying out new customer service tools and channels that will allow us greater ubiquity and faster resolution times. Wrapping up these initiatives, despite all that we have accomplished in the year, we still believe that this is the tip of the iceberg for most of these projects and we expect sustained solid advances and increasing adoption of each one during 2014.
We will achieve these advances by continuing to drive payments growth through product and technology innovation and by leveraging our increasingly recognized payments brand both on and off our marketplace. Alongside payments, we will accompany the considerable secular trends pushing our mobile and vertical initiatives by further deploying mobile apps and category specific features that allow shoppers the best possible shopping experience whatever the product and whatever the screen. On the logistics front, we will continue to drive penetration of our new shipping platform in our major markets and also continue to get more involved with other aspects of the fulfillment chain so as to better serve our buyers' and sellers' needs on this front. Our open technology will continue to provide a bridge to large retail and outside development, while we accelerate the pace at which we partner with integrators or brands requiring a nexus to the online world. We will be greatly aided in these efforts by our growing track record and portfolio of brands that have already been onboarded to our platform.
And finally, we will continue to invest in our product development and customer service efforts, so as to sustain the cycle of removing as much friction from our trading platforms as possible. We trust these efforts will be reflected in continued improvements to our net promoter scores and other user satisfaction indexes. It's clear to us that MercadoLibre exhibits a business model that is increasingly more than the sum of its parts. All of the initiatives covered have the common theme of expanding our reach and ubiquity as well as perfecting the value we bring to all users. They are all transformative, turning us into an e commerce operating system of sorts on top of a marketplace, which is already unmatched in product value and selection.
We look forward to keeping you updated as our ecosystem grows to new levels throughout the upcoming quarters. With that, let's now take a detailed look at our 4th quarter results, beginning with our consolidated highlights for the quarter. All growths I mentioned are year on year unless I specify otherwise. In the Q4 of 2013, units sold grew 20%. Gross merchandise volume grew 49 percent in local currencies and 30% in U.
S. Dollars. Total payment transactions grew by 34% and total payment volume grew 66% in local currencies and 42% in U. S. Dollars.
All this resulted in solid financials
for which
I will now break out the highlights, additionally quoting growth rates that exclude Venezuela for our main P and L lines. We're also providing additional disclosures on Venezuela in our 10 ks, allowing for a better understanding of how different scenarios and exchange rates for that country might continue to affect our financials. Additionally, certain of these scenarios are calculated using the new CCAD exchange rate in Venezuela. It is our current understanding that this new floating rate currently at 11.8 bolivares to the dollar will be the rate we will use for remeasuring our bolivar denominated costs, revenues and balance sheet positions as of January 24, 2014. To relay a sense of the one time impact of such devaluation, we have estimated that had such a devaluation occurred on December 31, 2013, we would have incurred a ForEx loss of between $1,500,000 to 2 point
liabilities.
Moving on. For the Q4, net revenues were $134,600,000 dollars accelerating in local currencies and also in U. S. Dollars despite foreign exchange headwinds. Revenues grew 50% in local currencies and 30% in U.
S. Dollars. Excluding Venezuela, net revenues also accelerated to 39% growth in local currencies and 22% in dollars. Income from operations was $52,100,000 33% growth and 56% growth in local currencies. Excluding Venezuela, income from Excluding Venezuela, income from operations grew 36% in local currencies and 18% in dollars.
Net income before income and asset tax expenses were $55,800,000 growing 32% in U. S. Dollars and 55% in local currencies. Net income was $40,800,000 for the quarter, growing 35% year on year and 58% in local currencies. Excluding Venezuela, net income grew 42% in local currencies and 23% in dollars.
All this resulted in earnings per share of $0.93 for the quarter. With that, let me now dive into our top line growth quarter. Marketplace revenues saw solid performance, practically in line with sales volume growth. Most operations continue to see similar unit growth to last quarters with the exception of Venezuela, where sold items decelerated to 12% year on year impacted by political challenges in that country. Brazil, our largest market, on the other hand, posted very solid unit growth of 28% year on year for the 4th quarter, with marketplace revenues in local currencies slightly outpacing that on improved monetization.
Non marketplace revenues accelerated to a growth rate of 47% year on year in local currencies. Very solid performance from our payments business drove this acceleration and compensated for what was actually slower growth in our classifieds and advertising businesses during the quarter. Looking at classifieds specifically, revenues from real estate and services saw some deceleration across our top countries, though still posting solid double digit growth. Revenues from vehicle co classifieds, however, were practically flat year on year, mainly due to lower listing volumes in Venezuela sequentially and also year on year. With regard to our payment business unit, revenues accelerated as I just mentioned on 2 key drivers.
Off platform transactions posted a strong sequential jump, total payment volume accelerating to 55% year on year growth as key accounts are performing well and have led to larger average transactions than a year ago. Financing volume also saw an important bump up this quarter. Lower spreads than a year ago were more than offset by growth in installment purchases, which even outpaced our total payments volume growth. This means that a higher share of users opted to purchase on financing versus a year ago as our terms have remained very competitive despite higher interest rates. On the basis of these revenue streams, consolidated net revenues accelerated in the 4th quarter also on a per country basis.
Local currency revenue growth during the 4th quarter year on year was 29% for Brazil, 69% for Argentina, 20% for Mexico and 104% for Venezuela. Revenue acceleration responds to the performance of the underlying business metrics in all of these countries except for Venezuela, where inflation obviously offset the deceleration in unit volume that I have already mentioned. This is a good moment to remind you that our Venezuelan operation remains profitable and more importantly self sustaining requiring no investments from abroad. It is a business that primarily earns and spends in local currencies while leveraging the same centralized product development and customer service operations that we run for the rest of our businesses. In this context, we continue to manage our Venezuelan business for the long run, confident that in a more favorable future, our commitment to that market will offer the right returns despite the current challenging conditions.
Advancing down our P and L. Gross profit grew 29% in the 4th quarter to $98,400,000 Our gross profit margin was 73.1 percent of revenues versus 73.6% during the Q4 of 2012 and 72.3% in the last quarter. Year on year, higher payments processing fees resulting from growth in MercadoPago account for approximately 90 basis points of margin contraction And another contraction of 45 basis points result from our investments in our fraud prevention efforts. Both of these are offset by approximately 90 basis points of scale primarily in customer experience, hosting costs and certain efficiencies on taxes. Operating expenses for the period totaled 46,300,000 24% higher than in the same period of 2012.
Operating expenses as a percentage of revenues were 34.4% in the 4th quarter versus 35.9% in the same quarter last year and 41.9% in the Q3 of this year. The end of last year saw particularly good scale, but this year's Q4 surpassed it. Let's review this line item by line item. Sales and marketing, which remains our largest expense line, grew 21% to $23,100,000 or 17.2 percent of revenues versus 18.5% for the same period last year. Improvements in fraud loss provisions on the Caropago transactions were the most noteworthy positive effect, explaining 130 basis points of improved margins as our fraud prevention team managed to bring chargebacks as a percentage of credit card volume substantially lower year on year.
Sales and marketing compensation costs also scaled by 54 basis points, though this was offset by online marketing expenses and the residual effect from our offline branding campaign, which ended early in Q4. Product development expenses grew 40% to 9,700,000 representing 7.2 percent of revenues in the 4th quarter versus 6.7% in the same period last year as ongoing investments in this crucial aspect of our business were partially offset by scale in compensation paid to engineers. Finally, G and A grew 21% year over year to $13,500,000 in the 4th quarter or 10% of revenues versus 10.7% year over year. Salaries scaled 100 basis points in G and A and this was partially offset by higher fees paid for outside services. As a result, operating income margin for the quarter was 38.7% versus 37.7% in the Q4 of 2012.
Below operating income, we benefited from $2,300,000 of interest income, down 20% year on year as a result of lower yields on our invested assets versus the prior year period. We saw a $2,300,000 gain in our ForEx line from the increase in both amount and appreciation in value of U. S. Dollar balances held by our subsidiaries versus 488,000 dollars for the same concept last year. During the Q4, income tax expense was $50,000,000 resulting in a blended tax rate of 26.8 percent versus 28.4% in the Q4 of 2012.
Consequently, net income margin was 30.3% for the 4th quarter versus 29.2% for the same quarter of 2012, resulting in a basic net income per common share of $0.93 Purchases of property, equipment and intangible assets during the quarter totaled $37,900,000 driven by the purchase of commercial real estate mainly in Venezuela as a strategy to preserve the value of our assets there. Consequently, for the period ended December 2013, free cash flow was negative $18,700,000 versus positive $51,100,000 last year. Cash, short term investments and long term investments at the end of the quarter totaled $262,600,000 This wraps up our financial review for the last quarter of 2013, which ended the year on a note of solid top line growth, benefited from scale to our business and consequently delivered what we believe continue to be industry leading profits and prospects for sustained future financial health. We are very pleased with this accomplishment of growing both our top and bottom lines consistently, particularly when we consider how we are achieving it, which is by investing in the creation of long term value for our users, all while preserving strong profitability in our business. This is not a minor point in the competitive markets where we operate, where top line growth often comes at the expense of profit generation.
Furthermore, we are confident in our ability to continue delivering profitable growth such as the financial model and network externalities of the unique e commerce ecosystem we are building. During 2014, we will continue constructing this ecosystem, innovating on our key initiatives and striving to offer our users a consistently improving user experience. I look forward to keeping you updated over the next few quarters on our progress. And with that, we will take your questions. Operator?
Thank And our first question in queue is from Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon and thanks. Real quick, I guess we're just about 2 months into the Q1 of 2014 and I was wondering if you could give us some color on some of the trends we're seeing specifically from Brazil and also from Venezuela as any of the turmoil impacted transactions there?
Hi. So I think we've always said that we'd rather comment on the existing quarter when we give the results to the quarter and we'd rather focus we can talk at length on Q1
Brazil and Venezuela once we've
released the numbers for that quarter in May.
Okay, thanks. And then I guess just real quickly, you talked a lot about some of the OpEx improvements that we saw during the quarter. I'm just wondering, is there any way that you can kind of quantify how some of that was impacted by currency by some of the currency weakness in Argentina? Did that have any impact on some of the OpEx improvements?
Yes. So as we've always said, we have a significant portion of our OpEx in Argentina. And so any devaluation in Argentina does help. However, it would be misleading to assume that the scale is coming primarily from the deval. I think if you run the numbers, there's much more that's actually coming from operational improvements and not just from the devaluation of the peso.
So it's less than 100 basis points are actually coming from currency and the rest is simply scale in the business year over year.
Great. And our next question in queue is from Jordan Rohan of Stifel. Your line is open.
Thanks guys. I have two questions. The first is on the translation of revenues within Venezuela back to U. S. Dollars for the purposes of reporting.
Are you still or did you still use the 6.3% rate in the financials that you've given us today? I believe the answer is yes. 2nd, so just clarify that and how you think about it. It's the parallel rate on Venezuela and perhaps this is not all that helpful, but since it's well over 80, maybe closer to 90. Even if percent BCAD rate, how do you expect to translate those revenues back to U.
S. Dollars in the future? And then finally, without the foreign currency gains on U. S. Dollars held within non Venezuela subsidiaries, what was your earnings update?
I think I heard $2,500,000 was the extent of that upside, is that right? Thanks.
Great. So, let's see. First one, thanks for asking, so we can make sure we're crystal clear on this. The 4th quarter still is reported at the official rate of 6.4 bolivares to the dollar. Subsequent events in Venezuela have led us to disclose that we will use a new official rate that has been announced, which is the CICAD rate, which is a floating rate, which currently at the last auction that determines that rate was 11.8 dollars delivers to the dollar and that will start occurring as of January 24 of this year.
And so when you look at Q1 numbers, the rate will be this new floating rate. And then the third point is if you look at the disclosures in the 10 ks that we've just pointed investors to, we run a couple of sensitivities analysis to give people a sense of what the Venezuelan P and L looks like. 1 of the sensitivity analysis that we run uses a rate that is closer to what we believe is the implicit exchange rate of the actual transactions that occur on our platform. And then there are some other sensitivities. So there's a lot of additional disclosure to get a sense of how exchange rates are playing out with our Venezuelan numbers.
As we've always said, the rate of nearly 90 is a rate that's illegal, illiquid and obviously because of that also has significant distortions built into it just as the official rate, one could argue had leading up to this new FX gains, ForEx impact, we just called out that the ForEx gains generated by our subsidiaries holding of U. S. Dollars were $2,300,000 That's standard U. S. GAAP accounting to remeasure and book those gains in the ForEx line.
Great. And I don't know if you had a third question, but
I think that's it. Thanks, Chris.
Thank you. And our next question in queue is from Ross Sandler of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Thanks guys. It looked like Pago was a real bright spot again in the quarter. Can you Pedro or Marcos talk about off Meli, Pago, what categories do you feel like you're well penetrated in? Which ones represent a good future opportunity? And then as we kind of go out a couple of years and look at the strategy for MobilePago, How does Mobilepago work in tandem with carrier based billing systems?
And then a follow-up just on Venezuela. I hate to kind of keep going back, but it looked like the unit growth has been very elevated 26 percent last quarter, I think 12% you said this quarter. So it feels like we're kind of stabilizing. Where do you think of that unit growth? Are we at the point of macro concerns are equal with under penetration of e commerce?
Or do you think that that's still a couple more quarters out? Thanks.
Hi. So let me take this one. With respect to Pago, it's growing off platform very strongly as well. So we're very happy with the way Pago is evolving overall with very healthy improvement in our approval rates and our chargeback rates. So we're seeing very strong growth both on platform and off platform.
Clearly, we believe mobile payments is a huge trend and is one of the opportunities that we see for Pago going forward. So we look forward to providing greater details of this opportunity as we continue as we go along and continue to for both for Mercado Pago and for Mercado Libre. And we will be probably announcing more stuff this year around mobile payments. And with respect to Venezuela, obviously, with all the events that occurred in Q4, the growth in units was impacted. And we continue to have a very healthy operation there.
Obviously, when there are massive events and people are not going to work, etcetera, that is impacted and that happened during certain extended periods of Q4. As situation gets back to relative normalcy, we see again good growth rates. And when that doesn't happen, again, our operation is impacted. So I think that's what we have been seeing going forward. We prefer to talk about that after the fact.
Our next question in queue is from Mark Miller of William Blair. Your line is open.
Hi. I think a strong quarter overall. I guess the one number that kind of jumps out though in terms of not as robust as the unit growth. So part of that's coming from the deceleration in Venezuela. Can you give us the overall unit growth for the enterprise 3rd quarter and 4th quarter without Venezuela?
Because you were also lapping an easier comparison there.
Hi, Mark. So if we look at the quarter excluding Venezuela, the 4th quarter, it would have given us slightly higher number of 21% unit growth excluding Venezuela. I don't think we disclosed that for the previous quarters. I don't have that off the top of my head right now.
Let me comment a little different way. Do you have any sense for what the growth in items sold just across Latin America e commerce? I mean, what's your confidence level that you're gaining share of unit volumes?
So if we look at annual growth for units, right, and again units is a metric that we've pointed a lot to because it strips out any currency or ASP issues. So the usefulness of excluding Venezuela when looking at units is somewhat more dubious than if you're looking at numbers. If we look at unit growth for the year, we did about we did exactly 23%. I think our overall sense of general e commerce growth in the region, we've always said is somewhere in the mid to low 20s for the year. So I think what we've been characterizing the unit growth is at market growth for our marketplace business.
When you tack on the growth in the payments business and you tack on the other businesses and you look at revenue growth for the year, we would believe that the revenue growth numbers are coming in slightly above what the overall e commerce numbers are coming in. But so in units, that's probably in line with somewhere around where the market is low 20s. Peter, that's helpful. On the shipping solution, it sounds
like you're getting nice traction from this. Can you give us further perspective around the benefits of the organization? I mean, what the profitability of those transactions is, for example, and the customer feedback or loss rates? It seems like those would be positive, but any more you can share on that?
So shipping for us is a strategic initiative. That's a long term initiative. When I mean long term is 5 to 10 years initiative. We are in the early stages. We're very happy to have ended the quarter with over 10% of the units in Brazil using our shipping product.
And the reason why we're happy is because these transactions have a lower contact grade, have a higher NPS. Overall, it provides a better experience to both buyers and sellers. Sellers have lower shipping costs. Buyers have more clear and unified shipping cost across products. And we have a better information of what is going on with the transaction in general.
And we also have a better information about handling times, etcetera. But this is just the first step. This is a multi step process. And we look forward to continuing to make progress in terms of adoption of our shipping solution and also getting deeper into fulfillment and logistics. So this is just the beginning of a long term process.
And from a financial aspect, just for clarity, what I would compliment there is because what we are running is an agent or a marketplace model, where we are joining the demand providers and carriers. The way that we book that providers and carriers. The way that we book that business is net of cost. So if we are able to negotiate prices because of our aggregate demand of 100 and the actual cost to us of that is 100 then we would be booking 0 revenue. If the cost is 90, we would be booking 10.
So it's net of the pass through cost. And so as Marcos was saying, because this is a strategic initiative right now, we're essentially trying to run this as close to breakeven as possible and passing on all the savings that are coming from the demand aggregation back to our users, which is the ultimate goal right now, better and cheaper shipping across the platform. So the financial impact should be easy to manage. Okay.
That makes sense. That seems pretty important for the long run. A final question for me. Could you give us a rough sense of the category sales mix just to help us understand the changes taking place with verticalization, so CE, apparel, sporting goods, whatever you'd be comfortable talking about? Thanks.
Sure. So we've continued to see the trend that is in large part by design as we've gotten consistently better at verticalizing certain key categories such as apparel, sports, sports apparel and apparel, auto parts, home and garden. And those categories have been growing at above average rates. And obviously, the average is very much influenced by consumer electronics. I think overall, mainly we're at a point where the apparel category plus sports apparel is closing in on 10 percent of GMV already.
Some of the other categories I just mentioned are slightly below that, but in that range, consumer electronics continue to trend downwards into the low 40s now. If we had looked at that number last year, that was in the mid-40s to high 40s and 2 to 3 years ago was closer to 55%. So the trend continues to be consistent and that's also part of what has been driving our ASP down in some of these countries.
That's helpful. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question in queue is from Bob Ford of Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.
Thank you and good day everybody. Pedro, I was hoping you guys could comment on the regulatory developments for e commerce in Venezuela and Argentina. But before that, I just wanted to go back to the FX, because there's the CCAD-one and soon the CCAD-two. And my understanding is that not too many corporates are able to access the CCAD-one at 11 or the 16.80 FX rate. And the CCAD-two is expected to be the more liquid FX market.
Which one do you expect to use between because now we've got 4 FX rates, right? We've got the 630, we've got the 1, we've got the 2, we've got the border rate, which is ludicrous. But I was curious, if the CCAT II turns out to be the more liquid of the 2 CCAT rates, is that the one that you use for reporting and translation
purposes? Right. Great, Bob. So right now what we need is we need to have a fair amount of confidence in the sustained reporting of the rate by the government so as to move towards that rate. And then obviously, if any of those rates become more liquid or liquid enough that we can access it, then that would obviously be the rate that we would be using.
Under the current conditions, the rate that has been consistently reported on greater frequency has been CCAD-one. We have not accessed CKAD-one or CKAD-two. So under current thinking, CKAD-one, the 11.8, last time I I don't know if there was an auction today, I don't think so, would be the one we would be using for the Q1.
Yes, I think you're accurate in anticipating that if CCAD-two for
Yes, I think you're accurate in anticipating that if CCAD II for whatever reason is more liquid or more in line with the rate that we would be able to access and we could go in that direction. But just to be very, very clear here, under current thinking and understanding, the rate being used for the Q1 is cicad 1. So the one that at the last auction was 11.8. It's obviously a fluid reality in Venezuela. I think an additional CCAD rate with greater liquidity that would actually allow us to access hard currency would be very welcome.
But let's wait and see for that to actually happen.
And for power sellers as well. And then with respect to Argentina, just to confirm the comment earlier, you're suggesting that your contribution margins for Argentina would go up in the event of greater vessel weakness. Is that correct?
I think the comment earlier was actually in terms of looking at the overall cost distribution of the company. I think what we've said consistently is total costs, Argentina has roughly 40 plus percent of total costs. Most of those Argentine costs are peso denominated. And so a further weakening of the Argentine peso actually dilutes our cost basis more than it does our revenue base because Argentina is only mid-twenty percent of revenues over periods of time. And so the comment and we've consistently so because they dilute more cost than they do revenue.
And so our exposure to a peso devaluation is somewhat hedged by that allocation of cost.
Got it. And then there have been some regulatory developments in Argentina and Venezuela in terms of e commerce. Now in terms of some of the cross border things, the limitations in terms of hard currency for Argentine buyers as well as some of the listings for classifieds in automotive that I'm aware of. And I was wondering if it was limited to that or if there's more behind it. And then maybe if you could expand a little bit on how much of your business in Argentina is maybe or how much of the platform is cross border that might be affected by the constraints around Argentina?
So not much of our platform today is cross border. We have just started to experiment with some cross border trade where we see a lot of potential moving forward. But currently, it's insignificant on our business. So we don't see these changes in regulations affecting our business at all.
And with respect to Venezuela Macos, the listings changes or the classified changes appear to be related to price controls for cars. And I was curious if there are other categories or maybe power sellers that might be at risk to price controls. There was not too long ago the nationalization of a small consumer electronics and wide lines retailer in the country that made the press here. And I was curious if you see additional risks to some of those categories of goods.
Well, I don't want to speculate about the what can or cannot happen in general and particularly in Venezuela. But this was related to cars that you mentioned. It's a category where the government is very, very focused and there were official prices for cars. And obviously, there were no cars at the official prices. So there was a lot of control about cars being sold at unofficial prices.
So in a marketplace as big as Tucaro and Mercadure combined, which basically dominate classifieds in the country, it was very hard for us to understand exactly what price each different model had to have. So it was easier basically to scrap away the prices from our site and therefore not run the risk of having any particular car or any particular model not being listed at the official price.
Good for you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
You're welcome.
Thank you. Our next question is from Marcelo Santos of JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Two questions actually. First, I'd like to understand a little better the sequential gross margin improvement. So you talk about the year over year, but when you see the Q3 versus the Q4, gross margins improved nicely. So just want some color on that, if possible. And the second question is if you could comment your perceptions on competition in Brazilian e commerce.
So if has changed, how it has changed? So anything would help. Thank you.
Great, Marcelo. So sequentially, we've obviously also seen a very strong gross margin improvement. I think a few drivers on that to point out. The first one is, 4th quarter obviously has top line strength and traditionally is a strong quarter. On top of that, if you look at this year specifically, we had been running an Open TV, cable TV campaign during the 1st 3 quarters of the year, primarily focused in the 2nd and third quarter.
We typically don't do television in the 4th quarter where the ROIs and the rates because the rates go up change significantly. And so there's some significant marketing leverage that occurs from the suspension of the Open TV campaign. In general, beyond that, there has been some significant scale around compensation costs. We called that out in the prepared remarks. Some of that is associated to the way we accrue for the long term retention plan, which is tied to capital market performance.
So salaries and wages also scaled nicely. And then probably the 3rd area is, as we mentioned, fraud loss provisions that both on a year on year basis, but also on a sequential base, generated some additional leverage.
Sorry. Yes. You completely had the second question.
Yes. With respect to competition in Brazil, I would say competition in Brazil continues to be very strong. We have lots of players willing to spend very large amounts of money in media and it continues to be a very intensely competitive market and we expect that to remain the case for the foreseeable future. It's a market that is growing very healthily. We continue to have a leading position there and we grew transactions at 29% year on year.
So we are happy the way our business is evolving and we see many opportunities ahead.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you. Our next question in queue is from Mikael or Michel Morin of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Thank you. Pedro, I was wondering if you can expand a little bit on your comment about the Argentine cost structure and the fact that you have 40% of your costs in pesos, because I guess the expectation is that following a devaluation inflation would likely accelerate. So I was wondering if you could parse out for us kind of the big categories of costs and how quickly some of those costs could potentially adjust to a different FX environment?
Yes, sure. So, correct in your point. I think when we look at Argentina, what we're looking at is what is the actual devaluation ex inflation. What we had been seeing in Argentina over the previous, I would say, 2 years had been a country where inflation had certainly been beating the rate at which the peso was devaluing. And so implicitly, we were exporting some of that Argentine inflation to our overall cost structure.
Over the last few periods, we've seen a reversal of that where obviously with the acceleration in the rate of devaluation of the peso and that is significantly because of that devaluation. The largest cost item is particularly for the Argentina case are salaries and wages. So I think if you look at that game, a bit of game of catch and mouse, but we do not adjust salaries on a monthly basis. We typically do that on an annual basis with some minor adjustments at a 6 month period. And so there is a significant lag there in terms of the salary and wage costs actually catching up to the devaluation.
So that works to our advantage. And then most of the other costs probably go in line with the overall rate of devaluation of inflation in Argentina. And again, what we're seeing right now is devaluation outpacing inflation. And so the comments stand that we would believe that the current devaluation of the Argentine peso is actually pretty well hedged and it dilutes enough cost that it's at the margin actually accretive to earnings.
Okay. Great. And on just a change of topic. I think you mentioned in your prepared remarks that you've seen the pickup in financing as your lower spreads have been enticing more activity. With interest rates rising still, especially in Brazil, how much more are you prepared to take in terms of spreads narrowing?
Does there come a point where you're prepared to start increasing those spreads or protecting them?
So the theoretical answer is obviously there could come a point where the interest rate increases begin to sap out enough profitability of the business that we choose to pass on some of those additional costs of capital to consumers. That hasn't been the case so far and it isn't in our current thinking. So we're prioritizing access to attractive credit that also has the additional benefit of driving more volume through the marketplace platform, albeit at a tighter spread for us. So, there hasn't been any pricing on what we're charging our consumers for financing despite the fact that our spreads have been tightening because obviously we're paying somewhat more for that capital.
Right. Okay. And then finally for me on Venezuela, There was also a comment of the government capping profit margins at 30%. Have you has there been any more communication on that? And how do you see that impacting your business there?
Yes. So there has been more communication and that the
understand
exactly understand exactly how that plays out. I think there isn't any level of clarity yet within Venezuela. It seems to be a law that really isn't very thought out for service companies. So we'll comment more on that, I think, once there's greater clarity on exactly how that plays out.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next question in queue is from Chad Bartley of Pacific Crest. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks very much. Last couple of quarters, we've seen an acceleration in GMV and revenue if you adjust for currency. So some of that was a function of easy year over year comps. So looking forward, when comparisons get a little bit more difficult, I was hoping you guys could share your thoughts or give us some color on maybe how growth trends might play out this year, I think similar to comments you made back in early 2012?
So as you know, we'll be very happy to talk about our growth rates in 2014 after we close each one of the quarters. So right now, we feel comfortable talking about our growth rates during 2013 and prior to that.
Okay. Yes, I just thought I'd ask because you had talked about the difficult comparison of the New World Order platform and the impact it would have on growth in the back half of 'twelve. So that's the context of the question, but I understand if you don't
want to. No. So I think fair enough. I think the way I would say that is we had a significant comparison issue that impacted our business as you just
And so that generated a significant step function
in our growth rate. So that generated a significant step function in our growth rates that impacted the readouts on the business for the 2 ensuing periods. I think we're at a point now where we haven't had any sort of step function since then. And so I think we're at a much more normalized pace of growth if you look at the last few quarters. And so I think the whole issue of the difficult comps or tough comps becomes much more normal and less relevant than it was 3 years ago when we saw spikes of plus 20% in our growth rates from 1 quarter to the other.
Okay. That's helpful, Pedro. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question in queue is from Stephen Ju of Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
Hi. So did you guys want any listings promotions during the 4th quarter to help you on the item sold growth at all? And also can you summarize how much you've spent on commercial real estate in Venezuela during all of 2013, so we could pull apart CapEx in the normal course of business versus extraordinary? Thanks.
So when you ask about listings, promotions, specifically, what type of promotions you have in mind?
Like what you did in the Q2 of this year that accelerated your volume?
What we had in Q4 was Cyber Monday and Black Friday, which were very successful as large retailers and branded stores have increased their listings on our platform. We saw relative to prior years stronger growth in those specific dates. So that's the only thing that I would single out in Q4 with respect to special promotions.
In terms of the investments in commercial real estate, just a very quick recap. Venezuela is, as we said, a profitable and strong business for us. It generates cash. It's also a hyperinflationary country and so and one that has capital controls. And so because we are unable to pursue our standard treasury policy, which is to remit cash generation from our Latin American operations into U.
S. Dollars, into U. S. Bank accounts. In the case of Venezuela, what we've had to pursue is investment in alternative assets that best preserve value against inflation and also against devaluations.
And the choice there that we've been pursuing and most U. S. Companies that have operations in Venezuela have to an extent followed suit is to buy commercial real estate. We bought roughly 450,000,000 bolivares worth of commercial real estate last year. So at the official exchange rate, that's about $75,000,000 of property, plant and equipment on our Venezuelan balance sheet.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from Luis Carvalho of Tree Capital. Your line is open.
Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. So in your recent so in the numbers you just published, you mentioned U. S.
Denominated assets in Venezuela. So can you please just give us a little bit more color as to what you mean by U. S. Denominated assets in Venezuela? That's the first question.
The second dollar growth going forward? Yes. So, I think, I think, I think, I think, dollar growth going forward?
Great. So the first one is, again, once again standard U. S. GAAP. Venezuela is a hyperinflationary regime.
Therefore, the functional currency is the U. S. Dollar. When we purchase commercial real estate that goes into the balance sheet, the balance sheet is in dollars and therefore that's what we refer to by U. S.
Dollar denominated assets in Venezuela. It's essentially the commercial real estate. In terms of the impact of the devaluation on revenues, that's fairly straightforward calculation. It's grabbing the reported local currency revenues and discounting it by whatever the devaluatory amount was to get to dollar. So that's just a straightforward impact, whatever your assumption of further devaluation for those two countries is.
Just to go back to the Argentina case and that's why the issue of cost comes up is because Argentina is 25% of revenues, but 40 plus percent of total cost, that means that you are devaluing more cost percentage than revenue percentage and that builds in an implicit natural hedge to earnings of any devaluation of the Argentine peso. That's not the case for Venezuela. Venezuela obviously doesn't have nearly as much cost as Argentina does. Okay. Okay.
Thanks. Thank you.
Thank you. And with that, I'm showing no further questions in queue. We'd like to thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining today's conference call, the MercadoLibre 4th Quarter 2013 Earnings. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.