Wall Street’s Surprising Latin American Unicorn Is Worth R$30 Billion

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – An Argentine company has become a hot topic on Wall Street, as it is valued at US$6.5 billion (R$33 billion) and it is not Mercado Livre. It is Globant, a software developer that currently has offices in 16 countries and 12,500 employees, and is the third most valuable company in Argentina, behind only Mercado Livre and Tenaris.

The company was founded in 2003 by four young engineers. From the outset, the founders’ goal was to build a global company that was not overly dependent on Argentina’s complex economy. Gradually, the company began drawing investors’ attention. In its first years it attracted contributions from FS Partners, an Argentine investment fund, and Riverwood Capital.

In 2006, it became Google’s first external provider. In 2014, it went public on the New York Stock Exchange in the United States. One of its growth strategies was acquisitions. Since 2003, Globant has bought 15 companies.

In the 2014 IPO, the stock was traded at US$10; today it is worth US$163, an increase of 1,600 percent. Today it is studied at universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford.

Globant works for clients such as Google, Disney, Santander, and JP Morgan. At Disney, it is responsible for the digital bracelets as well as the app that gives access to attractions in the theme parks of the entertainment giant. In 2019, it had a turnover of US$659 million.

Mercado Livre

Globant is not the only Argentine company experiencing a successful moment. With shares listed on Nasdaq, the world’s leading technology exchange, the Mercado Livre online sales platform reached US$50 billion in market value last week – an amount equivalent to Magazine Luiza, Via Varejo, B2W and Lojas Americanas combined.

Should the Argentine company be listed on the Brazilian stock exchange, the B3, its market value would be the third highest, losing only to Vale and Petrobrás, with about US$5 billion more in market value.

The US$50 billion threshold was reached by Mercado Livre, after its shares accrued a 75 percent increase in the year, rising from US$571.94 to just over US$1,000 per share.

Despite being traded on the stock market that climbed the most during the pandemic, the company’s appreciation also leaves behind the Nasdaq index, which rose about 16 percent in the year.

Source: Exame

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