Damien Kantor
08/05/2020 - 12:02
- Clarín.com
- Economy
This Wednesday, August 5, Mercado Libre set another record. At 11.17 in the morning, the Argentine eCommerce giant's stock traded on Wall Street at $ 1,208 and reached a valuation of $ 60 billion . Thus, 21 years after its creation, the company created by Marcos Galperin continues to climb in the consideration of investors, as it happens with the rest of the great global technology companies, led by the so-called FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google).
Mercado Libre's rise is due to the rise of electronic commerce, Mercado Libre's main business in the 18 countries where it operates. It began operating in armed offices on a parking lot in 1999, and from the same origin began to expand globally. So far this year and after falling at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, its shares on the New York Stock Exchange began to rise since March 23 and accumulates a rise of almost 95% so far this year .
On May 19 , it topped a price of $ 800 a share and was already valued at $ 40 billion. On July 6 , the stock crossed $ 1,000 and the valuation of $ 50 billion. But the escalation does not stop and analysts are not encouraged to forecast what its ceiling is. Mercado Libre is by far the most valuable Argentine company in history. The one that had gone the furthest was YPF (Repsol): the oil company reached its maximum of US $ 27,307 million, in September 2005. Today it is worth almost 10% of that value: US $ 2,722 million.
Globant also follows the trend. The Argentine software multilatina, created by 4 native engineers from La Plata, had a market valuation of US $ 7.3 billion and is about to become the second company in the country: its shares grew more than 65% this year and is at about to beat Tenaris from the Techint group.
Mercado Libre today is practically an online shopping, where the main brands commercial stores of different sizes are installed. Its market place has 1,700 official stores , from supermarkets to sportswear and fashion brands. And he fully fulfilled his vision that Argentines could buy something without touching or trying it before.
Mercado Libre reaches Nasdaq in 2007, the stock exchange where the shares of the world's leading technology companies are listed. And it becomes the first technology company in Latin America to make its public offering of shares (IPO). The New York Stock Exchange registered it under the name "MELI".
A decade later, in 2017, the company entered the Nasdaq100 index for the first time, the list of the 100 technology companies with the highest market value. It replaces Yahoo! Already 46 years old, Galperin also enters the ranking of the richest in the world with a fortune of over US $ 1 billion.
