MercadoLibre looks to raise $1.85B in equity offerings

LatAm List – Latin America’s e-commerce leader recently announced that they plan to raise up to $1B in common stock offerings. As a part of the agreement, PayPal also agreed to invest a further $750M in common stock and Dragoneer will purchase $100M in Series A perpetual convertible preferred stock. These investments are contingent on the close of the public offering.

MercadoLibre will use the funding to expand its e-commerce platform, improve logistics, and to invest in new tech solutions that will establish the firm as the region’s leader in end-to-end financial technology and payments solutions.

“Over the past 20 years, we have heavily invested in developing the preeminent e-commerce and FinTech ecosystem in Latin America,” said Marcos Galperin, CEO of Mercado Libre in a press release. “We are excited to welcome these investments which will allow us to significantly accelerate our growth. We look forward to accelerating our leadership in ecommerce and payments and foster financial inclusion in Latin America as a result of our alliance with a global leader in the industry such as PayPal.”

MercadoLibre processed over $12B in gross merchandise volume in 2018 and its payments system, MercadoPago, grew by 70% in the past year. MercadoPago is one of the region’s largest digital payments platforms and continues to innovate through a QR code payment systems that debuted this year.

As e-commerce grows in the region, MercadoLibre looks to maintain its hold as Latin America’s online retail leader, competing with recent interest from Amazon and Alibaba in the region.

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