Andean Exchange Merger Posts Record Quarter as Volumes Jump 75%

REGIONAL · MARKETS

A decade-long effort to weld three small South American stock markets into one is finally showing up on the bottom line, with record first-quarter profit and a surge in trading that suggests the bet on regional scale is starting to pay off.

What the Andean exchange merger delivered this quarter

The numbers behind nuam — the regional holding that brings together the bourses of Bogotá, Santiago and Lima — landed well above year-earlier levels. Operating revenue reached 40.7 billion Chilean pesos, roughly $43m, a 17% rise measured in local currency.

Net profit came in near 9.7 billion pesos, about $10m, up 47% on the same period of 2025. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization climbed 38% to around 19.8 billion pesos (about $21m), lifting the operating margin to 49%, some eight percentage points higher than a year before.

Chief executive Juan Pablo Córdoba tied the result to two forces working together: buoyant capital markets across the three countries, and a company increasingly able to capture that activity through a single, more efficient platform. For foreign readers unfamiliar with the players, the significance is structural rather than dramatic — this is the financial plumbing of three mid-sized economies being rebuilt into one larger, more liquid venue that is easier for international investors to access.

Why trading volumes are surging

The headline operational figure was the 75% jump in equity-trading volumes, alongside a 29% rise in fixed-income activity and 21% in derivatives. Cleared volumes reached $521bn, up 29%, while assets under custody hit a record $387bn, a 39% increase.

The combined market capitalization of the three exchanges stood at $532bn at the close of the quarter, up 43% from a year earlier — a reflection of both rising regional asset prices and the pull of a unified marketplace.

Much of the momentum traces to wider enthusiasm for Latin American assets in early 2026, as a weaker dollar for much of the period steered foreign money toward the region. But nuam also argues that integration itself is widening the investor base: since early 2025, Colombian investors have been able to buy the most liquid Chilean and Peruvian shares directly, and the reverse access is being built out across the three markets.

The cross-border access is being added in stages. In January 2025 the Colombian exchange listed shares from Chile’s main IPSA index, and by the second half of that year the most liquid Peruvian stocks were enabled as well, so that investors in one country can already reach the leading names in the other two.

Behind the equity push sits a deeper plan: a single set of trading, clearing and custody systems spanning all three markets, which the company says will cut costs for brokers and issuers and reduce the friction that has long discouraged cross-border investment in the region.

The integration roadmap and what comes next

During the quarter the holding completed the rollout of its new equity-trading platform in Colombia and Peru, with Chile still to follow. The system, built with global technology providers including Nasdaq and Devexperts, is designed to process up to 10,000 transactions per second — infrastructure that places the Andean bloc among the more technically advanced emerging markets.

When Peru switched on the platform in late April, its first session ran without interruption and trading volume came in nearly 20% above the prior day.

The strategic logic is straightforward: individually, the Colombian, Chilean and Peruvian markets are too small to compete for global capital with the likes of Brazil or Mexico. Pooled, they form a market deep enough to matter.

The first-quarter results are the clearest sign yet that the merger — years in the making and not without skeptics — is converting that theory into recurring revenue. The remaining test is Chile, the largest of the three, whose full migration will determine whether nuam can deliver a genuinely single Andean equity market rather than three linked ones.