James Hambro Dumps 28,000 MercadoLibre Shares Worth $55.2 Million

James Hambro & Partners trimmed 28,631 MercadoLibre shares, an estimated $55.23 million sale, cutting the position’s quarter-end value by $62.50 million to $29.18 million. MercadoLibre’s weighting fell from 3.3% to 1.14% of reportable AUM, moving it out of the fund’s top five holdings. The filing also highlights ongoing pressure from competition and rising credit losses, though the fund retained a smaller stake.

Analysis

This trim reads less like a one-off portfolio rebalance and more like a forced de-risking from a crowded high-beta compounder into a more defensive quality mix. The key second-order effect is that MELI is being treated as a long-duration growth asset whose valuation is now hostage to credit-cycle optics: when market participants start focusing on doubtful accounts faster than GMV/TPV growth, multiple compression can outrun fundamentals for several quarters. That creates a meaningful air pocket because the stock no longer has the same “must-own” status inside the fund’s top five, which can reduce incremental bid support on weakness.

The real business risk is not e-commerce share loss per se, but balance-sheet and earnings volatility from credit expansion. If underwriting remains tight enough to protect asset quality, growth can decelerate visibly over the next 2-3 quarters; if standards loosen to defend share, loss provisions can continue to suppress operating leverage. Either path is inconsistent with the market’s prior assumption of near-automatic compounding, so the stock likely needs either a clean inflection in delinquency metrics or a re-acceleration in take rates/ad monetization to rerate higher.

Competitively, Amazon and Sea are the relevant marginal beneficiaries, but the more subtle winner is the ecosystem of local lenders and fintech rails that can cherry-pick smaller, lower-risk borrowers if MELI tightens its credit box. That said, the selloff may be overdone if investors are extrapolating current credit noise into a structural moat break: MELI’s logistics/payment integration still makes it the lowest-friction merchant acquisition engine in the region, and those network effects usually reassert themselves after a balance-sheet reset. The timing matters: this is a months-long digestion story, not a days-long event trade, unless credit data deteriorates sharply again.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Short MELI vs long AMZN or SE over the next 1-3 months as a relative-value expression of slower credit-driven earnings comp vs broader platform resilience; target downside is another 10-15% if delinquency optics worsen, with stop on a confirmed underwriting inflection.
• If holding MELI, hedge with out-of-the-money puts into the next earnings window; the stock is vulnerable to a gap-down if reserve builds or portfolio growth guidance disappoints, and options are preferable to spot shorts given rebound risk.
• Look to buy MELI only on confirmation of improving asset quality over 2 consecutive quarters; entry should be disciplined because the setup favors volatility compression before a durable rerating, not immediate mean reversion.
• Monitor SE as a higher-beta regional beneficiary if investors rotate away from MELI’s credit story; a tactical long in SE works best on weakness versus MELI, but only with tight risk controls because its fundamentals remain less proven.
• For long-only books, pair a small MELI position with JPM or MSFT as a quality offset rather than adding outright exposure now; this preserves optionality on a recovery while limiting drawdown if the market continues to punish credit-sensitive growth.