Why MercadoLibre keeps soaring as other e-emporiums sink

IN MARCH AMAZON announced it would fire 9,000 workers—bringing to 27,000 the total number it has laid off this year. The e-commerce giant’s share price is down by a third since 2021. Other online-shopping darlings, from Shopify in Canada to Coupang in South Korea and Grab in South-East Asia, have suffered a similar fate (see chart). With one exception. At $64bn, the market value of MercadoLibre, an Argentine firm listed in New York with operations across Latin America, has been rising lately and is back roughly to where it was at the start of 2022—and twice that before covid-19. In April, as the world’s tech firms were sacking workers en masse, it said it would hire 13,000, mainly in Brazil and Mexico, raising its workforce by a third.