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EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT
EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT 2021 - Q3
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Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to MercadoLibre Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session.

[Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Lisa Schreurs, Investor Relations Officer..

Lisa Schreurs

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the MercadoLibre Earnings Conference Call for the quarter ended September 30, 2021. I am Lisa Schreurs, Investor Relations Officer for MercadoLibre. Our Chief Financial Officer, Pedro Arnt, will be leading today's prepared remarks.

Joining him on the line is Chief Executive Officer of MercadoPago, Osvaldo Gimenez, who will be available during today's Q&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 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, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

Our actual results may differ materially from those included in this conference call for a variety of reasons, including those described in the forward-looking statements and Risk Factors sections of our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, Item 1A-Risk Factors in Part II of the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2021, and any of MercadoLibre Inc.'s other applicable filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on our Investor Relations website.

I will now turn the call over to Pedro. .

Pedro Arnt

personal loans and credits for purchases on our platforms. While credits for purchases is still the main product, personal loans for possible uses outside of our platform are accelerating and achieving a greater presence in the consumer credit book. At a country level, our consumer credit book is growing at high triple digits across all countries.

Overall, we have reached almost 36 million consumers with pre-approved credit lines at their disposal, up from 27 million in the second quarter. In the merchant credit portfolio for both online and offline merchants, we see continued expansion in our merchant base opting for a credit line.

We've made improvements to the product interface and collection processes that create a seamless and effective experience for our merchants. We developed repayment methods so that merchants can now settle their loans on either a fixed installment over time or opt to settle through a percentage of their transacted volume with us.

At the country level, we saw a spiked increase in credit loans in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Considering our full credit portfolio, non-performing loans are stable compared to the previous quarter.

Overall and at the individual portfolio level, we are encouraged to see our ability to score and manage risk as we extend more credit lines to our users and all of our credit books were profitable during the third quarter.

Building on our credit capabilities and our ambition to extend the services attached to the digital account, we are excited by the first waves of implementation of our credit card -- for now only rolled out in Brazil.

We expect the credit card to be one of the key features of our digital account to unlock future payment volume growth, as well as a means to increase user engagement and retention. In Q3, we were focused on new features for the credit card product and understanding our user behavior better.

There are several encouraging signs that we are headed in the right direction for the credit card. Net promoter scores for MercadoPago credit card holders trended significantly above our MercadoPago averages during the third quarter.

Secondly, over half of the credit card transactions are occurring outside of our marketplace and payment platforms, which is significant in our road map to drive the principality of our digital account.

We also have a long waiting list of users, demonstrating interest in accessing our credit card, which we will begin to score and unlock in the coming months. By stitching together our credit products with our payment and commerce services, our ecosystem is becoming increasingly more robust.

We are seeing greater depth in our relationships with merchants and users that begin to engage with several touch points throughout our ecosystem. The credit business has the ability to fuel these increased connections between consumers and merchants, unlocking higher conversion rates and overall, more financial inclusion.

With that overview, now let's go over our financial results for the third quarter quickly. We had a record achievement in quarterly revenues, surpassing $1.8 billion on a consolidated basis, growing 66.5% in U.S. dollars and 72.9% on an FX-neutral basis.

In Brazil, revenues grew 69% on an FX-neutral basis, while Argentina and Mexico posted even higher FX-neutral growth rates, with 83% and almost 76% respectively.

Revenue growth is driven by consistent growth in our third-party and first-party merchandise as well as payment volumes and the expansion of our credit business while maintaining the consistent monetization levels seen in the previous quarter.

These strong results occurred despite revenues being negatively impacted by continuous rises of interest rates in Brazil, which compress spreads on our financing businesses that are reported net of funding costs.

During the quarter, we were able to partially offset this impact by implementing initiatives that diversify funding sources and through pricing. For the third quarter, gross profit was almost $807 million at a margin of 43.4%, very similar to the 43% margin in Q3 2020 and to the average of the first half of the year.

We face some bottom-line headwinds as we expand our first-party business and incur more operational costs while expanding our own logistics network, but these effects are partially offset by cost reductions on our payment collection fees and leveraging our customer service costs as we reach scale.

As we do every quarter, we've included a detailed breakdown of these margin effects in the slides accompanying this presentation, as well as the OPEX margin evolution.

Regarding our operating expenses, which represented 34.8% of revenues, we see sustained operating leverage from the scale and efficiencies over the last year and an improvement of 80 basis points on a year-over-year comparison.

Operating expenses were $646 million, with higher bad debt expenses as we grow our credit book that are offset by efficiencies in other marketing initiatives and G&A expenses. Consequently, we booked $160 million in EBIT in the third quarter, at a margin of 8.6%.

It's important to note that at this quarter, our Argentine subsidiary's eligibility under the knowledge-based economy promotional regime was approved, which we have described further in our 10-Q filing. The tax benefits granted under the promotional regime are retroactive to January 2020 and will also apply to our future results.

We have recognized this retroactive effect in full in our Q3 financial results. In terms of net income, in Q3, we reached over $95 million at a margin of 5.1%, including these one-off impacts. On an adjusted basis, correcting for savings that are non-recurring in nature, net income margin would have been closer to 2% for the quarter.

Before my final comments, one announcement I'd like to make on our leadership structure. We'd like to share the news that after 22 years working with us, Stelleo Tolda has decided to leave his full-time role as President, Commerce Business, effective on April 1 of next year.

Stelleo has been a key executive at Mercado Libre from the beginning of our journey, having had multiple roles during these years. Words really fail to describe the impact that Stelleo has had during this time. We are all incredibly lucky and grateful to have been able to count on him over the years.

Fortunately, Stelleo will remain closely linked to Mercado Libre as a formal advisor to the company and its Board of Directors, allowing us to continue to benefit from his continued advice in the future.

As we previously stipulated in our company's executive succession planning process, we are also very pleased to announce that Ariel Szarfsztejn will take on the role of Executive Vice President, Commerce.

Many of you already know Ari from his time leading our Strategy and Corporate Development teams, and more recently, he has been the driving force behind the build out of our logistics network -- a key differentiating aspect of our business today.

Ariel has been working closely with Stelleo for the past few years and will continue to do so in the future. This is a bittersweet feeling that I have making the announcement.

But on behalf of everyone at Mercado Libre, we will miss having Stelleo involved in day-to-day operations and are at the same time pleased we can transition this leadership position through an in-house process, highlighting the depth of internal talent we have at the organization.

We are all very confident that under Ariel's leadership, our commerce operations will continue to thrive.

In closing, I'd like to reiterate that our mission to democratize commerce and financial services in Latin America remains at the forefront of our minds, even as we begin to see positive indications that we are exiting the gravest part of the pandemic throughout the region.

We continue to include and care for the communities around us through the expansion of our business. We had another quarter of consistent, robust results and in parallel, we continue to plant seeds for our next growth avenues across the business and geographies where we are present.

We are excited about the opportunities we have in front of us that will allow us to both build upon our current accomplishments and further innovate as we focus on our long-term growth strategy.

And finally, I'd like to mention that we have 27,000 employees that are making all these achievements possible along with our increasingly connected network of partners. I'm grateful to see the consistent level of execution and coordination within this ever-growing group of talents.

And I am also very proud that despite the hard work we demand of them, they continue to rank us highly as an employer, having ranked us among the Top 25 Best Employers Globally according to Great Place to Work.

Thanks everyone for joining us on the quarterly conference call to follow our progress and as always we are now happy to take your questions..

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Bob Ford with Bank of America. Please, go ahead..

Robert Ford

Thanks very much. Congratulations on the quarter and thank you for taking my question.

Pedro, how big is your exposure to PACS? Or how much did it impact payments in the quarter, if at all? Or I guess, how is it impacting payments day-to-day and how are you solving for that? And are chip shortages resulting in any scarcity of replacement MPOS units? And just with respect to supply chain issues as well, are you seeing any impact on platform inventory going into year-end? Thank you very much.

.

Osvaldo Giménez

Hi, Bob, this is Osvaldo. So, with regard to PAC, one of our five suppliers for POS and so far, we have not found anything to be concerned about the POS that we sell or the smart devices we sell. So we continue to work with them normally. And then with regard to chip shortages, I'd say, so far, we have been able to continue selling all of our devices.

We do have some concerns around smart POSs, there is some shortage there. But our expectation is that we will sell less devices than we will be able to sell it, There was no shortage, but at that point, we would not be able to continue selling devices. So I'll say that will be our concern. .

Pedro Arnt

On inventory, Bob, I think the global reality is well-known to everyone. What we've done on our end is we've started working with our merchants and the 1P business also additionally allows us to try to identify inventory gaps and try to step in as merchants to record ourselves.

And we started working with them towards the holiday season a lot earlier than we ever have before -- I would say, at the beginning of this quarter. So, the situation is the one well-known to everyone.

What has been under our control, we've tried to front-load a lot of the preparation inventory step in with 1P and we like the amount of selection and the depths of selection we have for the upcoming shopping season, given the overall reality..

Robert Ford

That's very helpful. Thank you very much..

Operator

Our next question comes from Richard Cathcart with Bradesco. Your line is open..

Richard Cathcart Head of Investor Relations

Hi there. Thanks very much for taking my question. Just one on the Digital Account TPV that you've disclosed for the first time here, but I think that's pretty aligned with the Wallet TPV previously. For the last few quarters, it's been running between $3 billion [ph] and $3.5 billion this quarter -- a big jump to $5.5 billion.

So, perhaps you could just give us a little bit more information about what the driver of that big jump quarter-on-quarter? Thanks..

Osvaldo Giménez

Richard, we started to disclose the Digital Account TPV. It is similar to what we were disclosing in the past, but it has to [indiscernible]. First, it includes all of the Wallet payments but not QR code payments. QR code payments we are disclosing on the acquiring side of the equation. So, we did for acquiring.

And then what we are adding is card transactions. So, TPV was $5.5 billion, as you said and it's growing, butt over 100% year-on-year in local currencies..

Lisa Schreurs

Does that answer your question, Richard. .

Richard Cathcart Head of Investor Relations

Yes. Thanks very much..

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Stephen Ju with Credit Suisse. Your line is open..

Stephen Ju

Okay. Thank you so much. So Pedro, I think you mentioned in your prepared remarks an increasing percentage of items on free shipping. I just wanted to see if I can get some clarification on that comment.

Do you mean that there's just a greater number of SKUs on a site which qualify for free shipping or that you're underwriting, I guess, a greater amount of free shipping subsidies? And just taking a step back a little bit, as you look at the all-in cost to the consumer relative to some of your competitors who offer all-you-can-eat shipping.

Do you think your offering is efficient to effectively disincentivize users from signing up for that upfront monthly or annual subscription fee? Thanks..

Pedro Arnt

Great, Stephen. So first of all, I think the remarks point to the fact that the volume of purchases made on MELI without the consumer having to pay for shipping hit an all-time high of over 70% of all volume. And when we look at items that can be shipped through Mercado and Vios [ph], that number is almost 80%.

So, we actually view that as probably the most widespread free shipping program available without the need for the consumer to pay a subscription. We now also offer a paid subscription for consumers that potentially are looking for even more free shipping than that.

But our understanding still is that for our markets, with consumers with potentially less disposable income, the fact that nearly 70-plus percent of volume is done on free shipping without any subscription cost, is actually a tremendous value proposition to users..

Stephen Ju

Got you. Crystal clear. Thank you..

Operator

Our next question comes from Marcelo Santos with JPMorgan. Your line is open. .

Marcelo Santos

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. I have two. The first is the reacceleration of active payer additions. I know you're focusing more on fintech users now, but the metric you used to have with the active players. And there was a big jump this quarter.

So could you just talk a bit of what's happening [ph]? What have you done to -- for that to happen or comment on the market? And the second question is regarding the potential impact of new regulations in Brazil regarding prepaid cards.

Is that a negative to you? Or could that be a positive because you spend less? How could we frame that?.

Osvaldo Giménez

Hi, Marcelo, let me start with the second question. You gave us asked that. And with regards to the potential change in regulation but as you know, what's happened is, the Brazilian Central Bank is analyzing putting a cap on interchange fees for prepaid cards. We do issue prepaid cards and this could have an impact.

There are two different items that they're talking about. On the one hand, this cap that could reduce the interchange we collect for those transactions.

And then the second effect they're considering is shortening the payment period from 26 days to 2 days, we already pay most of the bad majority of the contacts at 2 days because those are off-line transactions all transactions will pay later. So that would not have an impact in working capital. It would have, yes, an impact on the financial side.

But on the other hand, as an acquirer and as a process of transactions, we will be paid earlier and will pay a lower merchant discount rate or interchange depending if we are an aggregator or where you see our own gateway for those transactions. So I think those effects will be of similar magnitude.

So at this point, the calculations that don't make us concerned. We believe that those things will be of similar impact and the total effect will not be material. That's our expectation. .

Pedro Arnt

On wallet, first of all, I think, as you pointed out in the question, we do increasingly encourage you to look at the active fintech users of nearly $32 million. It's a better metric to understand users across our entire financial service offering.

But having said that, you're accurate in that there was an acceleration in wallet payers, and it's actually driven across the different use cases. We see a pickup again in QR payments from wallet, in part driven by gradual reopenings as consumers are able to use the wallets in physical stores increasingly.

But also as gradually our wallet becomes better distributed, we also see a nice pickup in peer-to-peer transfers within the wallet and also growth in utilities and cell phones.

So I think it's a gradual acceleration with core underlying metrics that are strong on the wallet which is great news, but also the number of overall fintech users is about twice that large. .

Osvaldo Giménez

And one more thing. We are seeing increased engagement more transactions per user. .

Marcelo Santos

Perfect. Thank you very much..

Operator

Our next question is from Andrew Ruben with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open..

Andrew Ruben

Hi, great thanks very much for the question. My questions relate a bit to the macro backdrop specifically in Brazil.

First, on consumer credit, can you talk through what gives you comfort in continuing the high levels of growth of the consumer credit book mid a backdrop that appears to be coming a bit more difficult? And then related with interest rates in your spread-based businesses, could you provide a bit more color on how you think about the ability to ultimately pass through higher pricing? Thank you..

Osvaldo Giménez

Hi Andrew, with regards to consumer credit, we have had a very good quarter, I think for all of the credit products. I think our credit products, all three of them have been profitable in all three markets. So in the nine different markets we're in, we were able to have good profitability.

We have also been able to significantly increase not only the portfolio but the number of loans outstanding and the number of offers outstanding. There is 6 million people with offers for credit during the quarter. So far, we are very optimistic with how the product is evolving..

Pedro Arnt

Sorry, Andrew, on Brazilian interest rates, we are a company that will strive to not have to pass on increased fee structures to consumers where possible. So the first steps we're taking is how do we try to improve our funding costs.

And in that sense, the financial institution license that we've been granted in Brazil has been instrumental because it does really give us access to cheaper funding sources from that financial institution.

So I think the idea is, first and foremost, to try to improve cost structure and to avoid as much as possible, passing on increased fees on the marketplace to merchants. We might have to around the edges on certain types of credit passed on some of that cost.

But again, we will do whatever we can to avoid the impact of passing that on to consumers, while at the same time, trying to manage our bottom line goals. .

Andrew Ruben

Very helpful. Thank you guys. .

Operator

Our next question comes from Irma Sgarz with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. .

Irma Sgarz

Yes, maybe just piggybacking on the last question, if you could expand a little bit on the funding strategy for Creditor, how you see that evolve from here? I think Oswald already commented on that earlier this year, but I was just curious that given that Kaleido's been growing even faster than expected, how you see sort of off balance sheet versus on evolving in the different sources that you're using and maybe how you see it evolving into 2022.

And yes, thank you for disclosing the fintech users. It's very helpful. I was curious not sure if I'm thinking about this the right way.

But if you could talk about the intersection that you have between the 31.6 million fintech active fintech uses and the overall Meliusers -- or sorry, and the active buyers that you have, which I think were 37% or 38%. .

Pedro Arnt

Sure, Irma. So on credits, I think we continue to execute on the plan we've had all along. We've signed incremental deals with some of our banking partners in different markets for the SPVs. The Fujiki that we use to fund that.

We're on track to exit the year within our objectives of having almost half of the credits already coming from third-party funding. And going forward, given the immense potential in the credit book. And you can see the Q-on-Q and year-on-year growth in the size of the credit book, it's phenomenal. We will continue to open outside windows for funding.

Additionally, and tying into the previous answer, the financial institution in Brazil also allows us to issue Letras Financieras, Stebe and whatnot, which are also very, very efficient way to fund the credit book as it continues to grow.

So I think things are evolving positively in terms of overall cost, which is helping spreads, and we will continue to work to make sure that we have multiple windows available to continue to fund the credit book also off of our own balance sheet.

In terms of the user metrics, I think what we're trying to do there is to give you metrics that do not have too much overlap. So marketplace Pago users, users who use Pago to purchase on the marketplace, we are not including in that unique fintech active user base.

So you can add them both to get to an overall sense of actual total payers that have engaged with Mercado Pago either on the marketplace or off the marketplace, which then becomes a sizable number of, I think, something close to probably $70 million. .

Osvaldo Giménez

Probably one other thing that we are not included in the metric we are including the metric, as we mentioned, those who are paying with either the wallet or payment of land in app or in-store tons as we draw consumer merchant credit the car users, fintech sellers and fintech active products such as asset management.

What we are not included in the metrics is people who are paying at the POS we own or people who are paying the checkout as a guest and not logging into their credentials tearful. So the number -- the total number of players from Macao Par would be higher, and we're not including those..

Irma Sgarz

Thank you..

Operator

Our next question comes from Deepak Mathivanan with Wolfe Research. .

Unidentified Analyst

Frank on for Deepak here. So I wanted to start, can we talk a little bit about fulfillment in Brazil? You talked about new fulfillment centers, but we're curious where we're at with regard to the ideal model.

Looking for what kind of areas you have to build out and how we should think about some of the monetization plans from sellers? And then beyond that, can you talk a little bit about your expectations for investment levels in the holiday season, both on the -- in regards to stepping up spend on marketing or other customer acquisition programs and then as you mentioned before about kind of looking to work with vendors ahead of any supply chain issues, what kind of incremental investments that could incur?.

Pedro Arnt

Great. So, the more we see the power of our logistics network in terms of fast, reliable and ideally free shipping. I think the more conviction we have to continue to build out the multiple nodes within the shipping network and to build those closer and closer to the consumer.

So I think we will continue to build out more fulfillment centers, also fulfillment centers to be able to accommodate for a growing type of inventory. We've added bulky fulfillment center inventories. At some point, we will continue to grow and expand our supermarket and fresh offering.

And I think equally important in terms of the long-term stickiness and loyalty of our users, we are now beginning to roll out our logistics network in some of the MDM countries that ideally will ignite significant growth there.

We've already begun to see that in Chile, and hopefully, Colombia will follow suit as well as continuing to build out the logistics network in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. So I think, again, we are building out what we think is one of the best-in-class networks in the region, and we will continue to grow the nodes on that network.

In terms of Q4, as you know, we like to not give too much forward-looking comment. In general, it is a quarter where marketing spend and customer acquisition increases. We then see those users retained, and we can benefit from them in the upcoming year.

Typically, overall shipping costs as merchants send more inventory to our fulfillment centers at times also increases. And so from a margin perspective, it typically is a weaker quarter. And then in terms of incremental cost in working with merchants, I don't see that there's any material cost aspect there.

I think the way we've tried to manage around that has been to work with the merchants from a lot earlier on to try to plan and secure inventory.

And then, yes, it's very likely that we will step in with more of our 1P business in the fourth quarter and the 1P business at the scale it's at now, which is phenomenal improvement if you look at year-over-year and how fast that business has grown. But at this scale, from a margin perspective, it still is detrimental to margins versus a 3P sale.

And so as mix naturally tends a little bit more towards 1P in the fourth quarter that also typically delivers a structurally weaker margin during that quarter. .

Unidentified Analyst

Thanks so much, Pedro. Congrats on the quarter. .

Operator

Our next question comes from Jamie Friedman with Susquihana. Your line is open..

Jamie Friedman

Thanks, Pedro, Osvaldo. When you said before on the credit product, you had $36 million approvals up from 27%.

Is that -- does that mean they've been approved and drawn or just approved?.

Osvaldo Giménez

James. When I mentioned, we had 36 million approvals. Those are the number of users to which we approved a credit line. Of those 6 million using it or use it during the quarter. So what I mean is we have been able to -- and this number was, if I'm not wrong, 27 million the prior quarter.

So we increased by 9 million, the number of people with the credit offering just in the last quarter. So we are very excited by that. And also very excited about how we have grown our portfolio. We have grown our portfolio ForEx in the last year. .

Jamie Friedman

Okay. And then and then just a more general question. I appreciate the changing characterization of the fintech and the unique fintech active users, that's really helpful. When you said at the beginning Petroabout ecosystems of merchant and individual in your go-to-market.

Could you elaborate on that what's that -- What's that about? Like why are you decomposing merchant and individual on the fintech side?.

Pedro Arnt

Sure. So I think as a product and technology company that we are, we place a lot of focus on the quality of the products and the user experience. What -- as we've grown out the portfolio of payments products, what that was leading to was a less cohesive go-to-market and sales strategy because we had a lot of product focus.

As we try to shift to dividing merchant and individuals within how we view the market, the idea is to be able to think from the consumer backwards and to be able to more effectively and efficiently cross-sell the entire product within the Mercado Libre universe, which could also include marketplace and content offerings that we have based on the consumer segment and less so on the individual products.

.

Jamie Friedman

Got it. That makes sense. .

Operator

Our next question is from Marvin Fong with BTIG. Your line is open. .

Marvin Fong

Great. Thank you for taking my question. Just two for me. Just one on fintech. It looks like the take rate might have compressed a little. So was that due to the spread compression that you were alluding to Pedro.

And if so, could you maybe talk about with a little more granularity, which revenue line might be more impacted than others? And then second question, just on the third quarter, it looks like it was a bit of a bit of an improvement in the COVID conditions towards the back half of the quarter in Brazil and Mexico.

Just curious if you could comment on how that might have affected your GMV trends throughout the quarter. .

Pedro Arnt

Sure. So just on the fintech take rate, you're absolutely right. What we see is we see continued improvements driven by credit revenues, about 10 incremental basis points Q-on-Q.

But then with the increase in financing costs and my previous comment that we're trying to not have to pass all of that on to consumers, we saw about 20 basis points of contraction on take rates because of the higher cost in financing. So that's kind of how the key drivers play out on that. .

Osvaldo Giménez

And then, with regard to [indiscernible].

As you mentioned, I'd say there has been more of a normalization of commerce during the last quarter with increased fascination rates and lower contagious rate -- And so what we have seen is probably a reacceleration in the use of QR code and increase in the use of POSs and probably comparisons for online payments and the marketplace itself suffered a little bit because a year ago was -- we were right in the middle of the big boom driven in part by lockdowns and in part by Oilergenial and government payments.

So stats were probably tougher this quarter than the prior one. .

Pedro Arnt

Just one thing here. Osvaldo is correcting me, retroactively, accurately correcting me. So on the unique user metric, what I meant to say is when we measure the unique metric user, that the number of users that we report as fintech users does not include payments on the marketplace.

Now if one of those users also use the marketplace, he could appear on the marketplace metric if we are to disclose that. So we're not deduplicating the users. My intention was to say that those nearly 32 million users are users that only fall into that bucket because of fintech usage. So that was regarding to Ermos question.

Marvin Fong

That's it for me. Thank you. .

Operator

Our next question comes from Jen Thompson with Autonomous..

Jen Thompson

I think you mentioned earlier that fulfillment as a percentage of total deliveries was at 30% in all markets. I know that Mexico typically leads that in Brazil somewhere in the middle. Do you have the breakdown by country, again, like you've given on previous calls by chance..

Pedro Arnt

Yes, I think what we've disclosed this time around is the overall level. I think your assumptions are fairly right, but we didn't give out any of the country-by-country fulfillment levels. Fulfillment continues to trend in the right direction.

And hence, that's also tied to my comment on the continued conviction behind investing in more warehouses as more and more inventory comes in. I think what we didn't answer there was the monetization part of that question.

We will introduce gradually and cautiously, but we will introduce incremental monetization to sellers using our fulfillment services because we feel that there's significant value add to these users.

And the level of penetration and the feedback we're getting from our merchants allows us to start sometime next year, introducing monetization on items that are stored in our fulfillment centers. And part of that is that we continue to see good traction and adoption of our fulfillment offering. .

Jen Thompson

Perfect. I actually grabbed this up, and I see it on slides up and now, so I should not ask with my lips, I should ask my eyes, I guess, next time. Sorry about that..

Operator

Okay. Next question is from Caio Prato with UBS. Your line is open..

Caio Prato

Thank you for the opportunity for asking question. So my question is more related to the quality business.

So I just would like to have a sense for you, which is the line that's gaining more traction looking to the consumer side, if this is a preacute product or if this is by an operator offering? And if you could share the penetration level of the bowel projects in each geography in the third quarter as well. Thank you. .

Osvaldo Giménez

The consumer side of our credit business, we have two main products. The first one is how similar to pay later. What we offer is purchasing loans. These are loans where people pay in installments, typically between two installments and 12 installments, and we usually charge an interest for those.

Only in Mexico, we have started offering the first 30 days for free. So if you want to pay 30 days later, you're going to do it for free. But it's basically by opalater loan where we charge interest given the iterate conditions in Latin America.

And to that, we have recently added personal loans, which is money with deposit into the wallet in the colo or valent and users are free either to use it anywhere or to withdraw it to their bank account or through an ATM.

So those are the two products we are very excited with the growth of the second one, but we are not at this stage disclosing specific percentages or country details. On top of those two consumer products, the third one is a credit card, we launched a credit card a couple of quarters ago, and we are excited with the initial growth..

Operator

And sir, I'm not showing any further questions in the queue. .

Pedro Arnt

Great. So thank you, everyone, for listening in. We look forward to giving you a full year and a wrap-up of Q4 when we announced those numbers. Until then, happy holidays to everyone at Mercado Libre, we will diligently be working through the holiday season to make sure everyone's parcels arrive in time and almost certainly with free shipping.

Thank you. .

Operator

Thank you. And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect..

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