By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Marcos Galperin, chief executive of Latin American e-commerce giant MercadoLibre (NASDAQ:MELI) Inc – already the region’s most valuable listed firm – says the company is just getting started.

He wants to triple the number of users, expand online payments, leverage artificial intelligence (AI), and use drones to reach more shoppers. The company is increasingly pushing loans to consumers and sellers on its platform, thus driving sales.

“We have a lot of room to continue growing in e-commerce,” Galperin told Reuters at the firm’s offices in Buenos Aires, stating he aims to boost users from around 100 million now to 300 million, without specifying a time frame.

“On our FinTech platform, Mercado Pago, we’re really just scratching the surface of all that we can do. I think Mercado Pago has enormous opportunities ahead.”

MercadoLibre, Latin America’s answer to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) or China’s Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), has already become the most valuable listed company in the region, with a market cap over $100 billion. Its share price is up about 1,600% in ten years and 26% this year.

Galperin, however, stated he wasn’t “losing much sleep” over the stock price but focused on growing the business in key markets: Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and increasingly Chile. He prefers to expand organically rather than through acquisitions.

“We don’t like buying market share; we like building market share,” he said. MercadoLibre doubled its profits in the last quarter compared to the previous year, propelling its valuation past Brazilian state energy producer Petrobras in August.

ARGENTINA ECONOMY ‘TURNING AROUND’

MercadoLibre’s headquarters are in an industrial district of Buenos Aires, only a few blocks from the original garage where Galperin, now a dotcom billionaire and one of the region’s most influential entrepreneurs, co-founded the company 25 years ago.

The country has, however, struggled through repeated economic crises, with rampant inflation – now over 250% – capital controls, sovereign defaults, and regular recessions weighing down the domestic market.

Galperin expressed renewed optimism, citing market-oriented policies brought in by new libertarian President Javier Milei, who last week visited the firm to mark a new $75 million logistics center investment.

“We are optimistic about the economy in Argentina in the medium term. So that has led us to invest again,” he said, noting a surge in credit and slowing monthly inflation that helps boost consumer sentiment and sales.

“In Q2, we saw growth in terms of transactions and items sold. So the economy is turning around,” he stated, while adding that the recovery would take time.

Analysts have raised concerns over credit quality as fintech unit Mercado Pago has issued more loans, amid uncertainty about potential interest rate hikes in Brazil. Non-performing loans in Q2 were down but still at a high 18.5%.

Galperin, however, expressed he was “very happy” with the firm’s risk management in Brazil and around the region, targeting millions of unbanked Latin Americans.

“As long as the non-performing loans are under control, and they have been, I think we’re going to be OK.”