Latinex Holdings, Inc.

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What it is

Latinex Holdings, Inc. is a holding company that owns 100% of Latinex Capital, Inc., which in turn owns 100% of both the Latin American Stock Exchange (Latinex) and the Central Latin American Securities depository (Latinclear) — the two operating arms of the group.

Through these subsidiaries, it operates as a stock exchange in Panama and also provides administration, custody, clearing, and settlement services for various investments, as well as trust services. In plain terms: it is the plumbing of Panama’s capital markets — the exchange where bonds and shares are listed, traded, and settled.

The holding was founded in 2010 as a result of the merger between the Bolsa de Valores de Panamá, S.A. (BVP) and Central Latinoamericana de Valores, S.A. (Latinclear). The underlying exchange itself turned 35 in 2025, making it one of the oldest securities infrastructures in Central America.

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Who owns it

Shares in Latinex Holdings are traded on the very exchange the company runs, under the ticker LTXH. At the last quoted price of $2.00, roughly 14 million shares are outstanding, giving a market value of $27.6 million.

The company’s largest shareholders include several of Panama’s prominent financial and corporate groups — among them Grupo Aliado, Mercantil Servicios Financieros Internacional, Empresa General de Inversiones, Grupo Financiero BG, Grupo Melo, G.B. Group Corporation, Metro Holding Enterprises, and Grupo de Accionistas Mayoritarios Britt.

Precise individual ownership percentages are not disclosed in available public sources; no single family or state entity holds a declared controlling stake. The company is regulated and supervised by Panama’s Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores (SMV).

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Who runs it

Olga Cantillo is the Chief Executive (Presidenta Ejecutiva) of the Latinex group. She has publicly championed the exchange’s strategy of connecting the local Panamanian market with regional and global capital flows.

Arturo Gerbaud De La Guardia serves as President (Chair) of the Latinex Holdings Board of Directors. The board is composed of 11 directors, at least two of whom are independent, elected by the annual shareholders’ meeting.

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The money, in plain words

Trailing twelve-month revenue is $8.95 million. Out of that, roughly $2.6 million reaches the bottom line — a net profit margin of about 29% (our calculation: EPS of $0.19 × ~13.8M shares ÷ revenue).

For a small exchange, that is an unusually fat margin, reflecting the monopoly-like nature of securities infrastructure.

For every dollar of equity owners have put in, the business earns back about 20 cents a year — a return on equity of ~20% (our calculation), which is strong for a regulated financial-infrastructure business. The shares trade at roughly 10.5 times earnings — a price-to-earnings ratio of ~10.5× — modest by the standards of exchange operators globally.

The company pays no dividend.

The true measure of the business is not its own $9M of fee income but the volumes it facilitates: in 2024, the exchange reached a record of more than $1 billion in volume traded through remote operators and correspondent agreements alone. Latinclear, the settlement arm, is even larger in footprint: it surpassed $35 billion in assets under custody in 2024, a 10.4% increase year-on-year.

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What it is doing now

In March 2025, Latinex Holdings presented its 2024 results and its strategy for the year ahead, reporting that the full-year 2024 trading volume across the exchange reached $7.194 billion, up 11% on 2023, driven by a 20.9% surge in primary-market issuance. The exchange surpassed 270 listed issuers in 2024, with 25 new programmes admitted.

At its 35th-anniversary Investors Forum in September 2025, Latinex announced a new International Listing service — allowing foreign debt securities to trade on the exchange without full local registration, targeting cross-border capital flows into Panama from Ecuador, Honduras, and Colombia. The exchange also holds recognition as a Designated Offshore Securities Market by the U.S. SEC, a credential that broadens its appeal to international issuers.

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What to watch

• Volume sensitivity. Nearly all fee income follows trading and issuance volumes; a slowdown in regional debt markets hits revenue directly.
• International listing traction. The new Listing service launched in September 2025 is the key near-term growth bet; uptake by foreign issuers will determine whether the exchange can grow beyond the ceiling of a small domestic market.
• Technology upgrade. The exchange is mid-migration to new clearing technology and has moved its Nasdaq trading engine to the cloud; execution risk on these projects is real for a 55-person organisation.
• Regulatory environment. Panama remains on international financial-transparency watch lists; any tightening of capital-markets rules by the SMV, or reputational pressure on the jurisdiction, could dampen new listings.
• Ownership concentration and liquidity. With only ~14 million shares and a market cap of $27.9M, the stock trades thinly; any large shareholder exit could move the price materially.

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This is news, not investment advice.