DLocal 2026 Q2 Earnings Call - TPV Surges 92% as Operating Leverage Accelerates

Conference Operator: Be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to the company.

Mirelle Aragão, Head of Investor Relations, DLocal: Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining our earnings call today. If you have not seen the earnings release, as always, a copy is posted in the financial section of the investor relations website. On the call today, you have Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, Guillermo López Pérez, Chief Financial Officer, Christopher Stromeyer, SVP of Corporate Development, and Mirelle Aragão, Head of Investor Relations. A slide presentation has been provided to accompany the prepared remarks. This event is being broadcast live via webcast, and both the webcast and presentation may be accessed through DLocal’s website at investor.dlocal.com. The recordings will be available shortly after the event is concluded. Before proceeding, let me mention that any forward-looking statements included in the presentation or mentioned in this conference call are based on currently available information and DLocal’s current assumptions, expectations, and projections about future events.

Whilst the company believes that our assumptions, expectations, and projections are reasonable given currently available information, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on those forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those included in DLocal’s presentation or discussed in this conference call for a variety of reasons, including those described in the forward-looking statements and risk factors section of DLocal’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on DLocal’s investor relations website. Now I will turn the conference over to DLocal. Thank you.

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our results for the second quarter of 2026 are yet another proof point of our continued traction and execution. There are four main trends I’d like to kick off with that best summarize the current strength of our business. TPV reached $17.7 billion, accelerating to 92% year-over-year, the highest growth rate since the first quarter of 2022. We’ve processed more in the second quarter than what we did throughout all of 2023. Second, our net revenue retention was 153%, the fifth straight quarter above 140% as we continue to deepen our relationships with our merchants. Our gross profit hit $127 million, up 29% year-on-year. We’ve now hit an annualized rate of more than $500 million in gross profit. Finally, our operating leverage is improving.

With operating profit as a percentage of gross profit up 6 percentage points quarter-over-quarter to reach 50%. As messaged previously, we expect further operating leverage improvements to kick in during the next 2 quarters as we benefit from the deployment of automations and AI we have been investing in and spending in key areas that was front-loaded to the first semester of this year softens out. On TPV, the metric that reflects market share, growth was extraordinary this quarter, but even more importantly, has been consistently strong. TPV growth has remained above 50% year-over-year for 7 consecutive quarters, with the last 3 quarters at above 70%. Furthermore, growth has accelerated over the past 5 quarters, reaching its higher year-over-year rate in over 4 years.

Although the pace and scale of this growth will naturally create more demanding comparisons as we move through the second half of the year and into 2027, what we are seeing today reflects the positive returns on investments we have made in our platform and our portfolio of licenses. It serves as a testament to the trust merchants place in us as they build and grow across emerging markets. This trust is a direct result of the execution on our value proposition. Through a single integration, our merchants access the locally relevant payment methods, local card schemes, and the financial infrastructure they need to operate and grow across more than 60 emerging markets. Our licenses, local teams, and operating expertise help them navigate complexity and improve performance in each country, ultimately increasing substantially their chances of a successful go-to-market deployment in the places that they partner with us.

Today, more than 760 leading global merchants trust DLocal. This includes 4 of the largest ride-hailing companies operating in emerging markets, 5 of the 10 largest e-commerce platforms, the top 5 video streaming platforms, and 7 of the 10 largest remittance companies, amongst many other of the world’s best businesses. We are now also starting to serve some of the world’s preeminent AI companies and digital asset exchanges. The trust that these merchants place in us is translating into deeper relationships over time as they add countries, payment methods, and products. Consequently, our TPV retention rate of 188% this quarter demonstrates the depth of these relationships. This quarter alone, several Tier Zero merchants had significant ramp-ups in some of our largest markets, such as Brazil and Argentina, demonstrating that the opportunity remains substantial even in more established markets.

We also continue to see our merchants expand into new geographies at a very rapid pace. Across our portfolio, we continue to gain both share of wallet and market share across the Global South. Share of wallet increased by 2 percentage points year-over-year in the first half to the low teens, and we now estimate our share of EM digital payments to be in the low single digits. Despite our growth, the opportunity to deepen relationships across our merchant base and capture even more new merchants remains massive. Asia-Pacific is a clear example of this and one we’re increasingly excited about. It is the largest, very fast-growing, and highly fragmented region with significant untapped opportunity that we serve. It has become one of our strategic priorities as we have been expanding our presence and investments throughout that region.

All of this growth that we’re seeing today reflects the investments we’ve made in our platform over the last several quarters and years. Those investments are delivering tangible results, and they continue to strengthen the foundation for our next phase of growth. Our focus remains on three areas. First, we continue to broaden our offering and invest in performance through our optimization capabilities. In the end, the performance and breadth of our One dLocal offering is the single most important factor for our continued growth and success. Second, we are embedding AI and automation across the business. This is already increasing our development capacity with meaningfully higher monthly deployments and shorter lead times. We expect the positive impact on our cost structure from our automation efforts to become increasingly visible starting in the second half of the year across different areas of the company.

Third, we’re expanding the value-added services we offer merchants, creating additional opportunities and revenue streams over time. We will soon launch dMor, our dLocal Merchant of Record solution, through which DLocal acts as the legal seller on behalf of the merchant, allowing us to offer our clients a more comprehensive go-to-market solution. Our buy now, pay later offering continues to expand and improve and is now live in eight markets. We will continue to invest with discipline behind these priorities and the others we have as we continue to scale out the business. With that, let me turn it over to Guillermo to walk you through our quarterly financial results.

Guillermo López Pérez, Chief Financial Officer, DLocal: Thank you, Pedro. Good afternoon, everyone. Let me start by briefly summarizing the key financial highlights for this record quarter. As Pedro mentioned, we had an exceptional quarter in volume, which translated into another quarter of record gross profit. Operating profit improved 22% sequentially, and we also began to see operating leverage improvements emerge during the quarter, with operating profit as a percentage of gross profit up six percentage points sequentially. Net income increased 28% year-over-year and roughly 30% sequentially. EPS also benefited from the execution of our share repurchase program. Cash generation remained strong with adjusted free cash flow conversion of 86% of net income in the first half of the year. Let me now dive into the details, beginning with volume performance. Volume reached $17.7 billion in the second quarter, up 92% year-on-year.

First half growth was exceptional, broad-based across our merchants and verticals, and helped by favorable FX. Ride hailing was the largest contributor to sequential growth. One large global merchant was an important driver, but the growth wasn’t concentrated just there. Several ride hailing and on-demand delivery merchants expanded meaningfully too. Travel remittances, e-commerce, SaaS, and advertising also contributed to growth. Financial services were down modestly, mostly seasonality as some travel-related merchants in LATAM. Our business mix continues to evolve. Local-to-local flows hit 61% of TPV, up six percentage points from Q1. The increase in Local-to-local mix was primarily driven by the growth of ride hailing and on-demand delivery, which are inherently Local-to-local businesses. This volume growth translated into another record quarter of gross profit. Gross profit reached $127 million, up 29% year-over-year and 7% sequentially. Brazil and Argentina were the primary drivers.

In Brazil, gross profit reached a record $40 million, supported by the ramp-up of ride hailing and travel merchants alongside sustained e-commerce growth. Argentina also delivered record gross profit with $20 million, driven by broad-based growth across e-commerce, ride hailing, and on-demand delivery, as well as lower advancements costs. Elsewhere in Latin America, gross profit grew 6% sequentially and 32% year-over-year. Mexico kept growing volume well. Gross profit was modestly lower sequentially, though, and the mix shifted to Local2Local, and some large merchants ramp-ups reached their final pricing tiers. In Africa and Asia, gross profit was down sequentially. That is mainly due to a lower share of higher spread markets like Mozambique and Vietnam, where Q1 had gains that do not necessarily recur, as we flagged last quarter. Turning to expenses, total operating expenses were $63 million, up 46% year-over-year, and down 4% sequentially.

The year-over-year increase reflects three factors. The annualization of investment made in the second half of 2025, high average salaries driven by the annual merit cycle and a limited number of senior strategic hires, and higher marketing spend concentrated in the first half around our World Cup campaign and large merchant events. Sequentially, the reduction reflects in part the absence of the $4.4 million non-recurrent prior year tax item recorded in OpEx in Q1. Headcount remained broadly stable sequentially, while gross profit per employee increased. From here, we do not expect material increases in headcount this year. As a result, operating profit reached $64 million, up 15% year-over-year and 22% sequentially. Operating profit represented 50% of gross profit, an increase of six percentage points from Q1. As Pedro mentioned, we have invested heavily in automation.

As those initiatives deploy, and as we annualize our second half 2025 investments, we expect operating leverage to become increasingly visible during the rest of the year. Finally, below the operating line, net income reached $55 million, up 28% year-over-year. Diluted EPS was $0.18, supported by earnings growth and helped by the execution of our share repurchase program. Under the $300 million program authorized in March, up to the end of Q2, we have repurchased approximately 6.9 million Class A shares for $86 million. All of these shares have been canceled. The reported effective tax rate for the quarter was approximately 16%. Excluding the non-recurring prior year tax adjustment, the normalized effective tax rate for the first half was 15%. As we have discussed, the effective tax rate can vary quarter to quarter based on country and business mix.

Adjusted free cash flow was $69 million, up 41% year-over-year, with adjusted free cash flow conversion of 125% of net income. Cash flow from operations before working capital changes increased to $83 million, reflecting higher operating profit. Free cash flow also benefited from a partial reversal of last quarter’s temporary working capital effects, which was partially offset by higher income tax paid. With that, I will hand it over back to Pedro.

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Thank you, Guillermo. Following the strength we have seen in the first half, we are updating our annual guidance. Looking ahead, we continue to see strong momentum across multiple verticals and geographies. This strength is broad-based and gives us the confidence to raise our TPV growth guidance to 60%-70% year-over-year. It is worth reinforcing why TPV remains such an important metric for us. Payments is ultimately a scale business. As our volumes grow, we gain greater leverage with downstream providers, deepen our FX liquidity, and generate more data to improve performance. These dynamics reinforce one another over time and are central to the long-term value creation of our business model. Following the strength in volumes and the continued ramp-up of several large merchants, we are also raising our gross profit growth guidance to 25%-30% year-over-year.

We are maintaining our operating profit growth guidance of 27.5%-32.5% year-over-year, only because, as Guillermo discussed, annual operating profit will be dragged down by the non-recurring prior year tax item and FX headwinds that we did not expect in the original forecast. As always, our outlook is subject to the inherent volatility of the emerging markets in which we operate. That said, we believe this guidance best reflects what we see in the business as of today. With that, I will hand it over to Chris to lead us through some questions on the quarterly results.

Christopher Stromeyer, SVP of Corporate Development, DLocal: Hello, everyone, from a wintry but sunny day here in Montevideo, Uruguay. As we did last quarter, we want to take a few minutes here to cover the key themes that we think will be relevant to investors from this quarter. Pedro, Guille, thank you so much for being here with us again. Pedro, let me start with you. We delivered another spectacular quarter in terms of TPV growth, with evident share of wallet gains across our portfolio. As we move into tougher comps going forward, what gives you confidence that we can keep delivering high growth in the medium term?

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Big picture, the growth we are seeing is a reflection of two things, the market opportunity, which is still enormous and will continue to be enormous, but also the returns on the investments we have been making to improve performance, broaden product offering, and strengthening our competitive positioning. Those are trends that we feel comfortable will sustain themselves in time. Looking at it a little bit shorter term, the first half of the year also benefited from a ramp-up of some large global merchant expansion deals, both into existing geographies and new markets. For example, the largest Tier Zero merchant that Guillermo discussed previously, that ramp-up across key markets is already completed. The headwinds from the tiered pricing impact as they ramped up, which have been significant factors over recent quarters, becomes less pronounced going forward.

One interesting data point is if we exclude this one very large merchant relationship and a few currency volatility effects, net take rate would have been very close to flat quarter-over-quarter, despite TPV growth that still would have been in excess of 65% year-on-year. Even as we enter these tougher year-on-year comps from these ramp-ups that have been behind us, we really don’t see any signs of the overall growth model slowing down, and we continue to expect share of wallet gains across the existing merchant base, expansion into new merchants, going into new geographies, and then, as always, continue to offer more payment methods and new products. The investment thesis is one of a durable growth opportunity, again, supported by size of market and an overall secular trend towards digitalization of emerging market economies globally.

As we continue to execute, we feel very enthusiastic about the mid to long-term opportunities of this business.

Christopher Stromeyer, SVP of Corporate Development, DLocal: Great. Guillermo, going over to you, turning from growth to profitability. Operating expenses declined modestly quarter-over-quarter, but I think more importantly, our full-year guidance implies further and important improvements in operating leverage in the following quarters. What gives you confidence in that trajectory?

Guillermo López Pérez, Chief Financial Officer, DLocal: Well, there are a few things that are coming together to give me some confidence. The first one, and I would say the big one, is timing. There’s a lot of investments we made in the second half of last year. They are now fully in our numbers in the first half, so I think that headwind will fade in the second half. We also have front-loaded marketing into the first half. We have the World Cup campaign. We have a large merchant event, and that happened in the first half of the year, and that shouldn’t repeat in the second half. It’s also worth saying that the first half carried one of costs that we don’t expect to happen in the second half. We have higher credit loss provisions that we expected. We have higher operational losses. We have the prior year tax adjustments.

We don’t expect that level of one-offs in the second half, although it must be said that those are always difficult to predict. Also finally, headcount, as you can see in the earnings script, has been broadly flat. There’s a salary step-up that was really the merit cycle that we do every year and a few senior hires that we did, and now that’s embedded into our base. There’s the automation program that Pedro mentioned that should still roll out to all the organization and help us see some of that leverage in the second half of the year. One thing I would mention and that I would flag is that if you take some combinations of our guidance ranges, you come back into an OpEx cut that’s bigger than what we have currently planned.

Cost discipline always carries some risk, so we’d rather hold the operating profit guidance as it is and let the gross profit upside and the cost normalization play out. I think that’s the way we are balancing the near term with the long-term investments that we need in this growing business.

Christopher Stromeyer, SVP of Corporate Development, DLocal: Following up on what Guillermo said about automation, which is what’s actually happening operationally in the company, Pedro, can you give us some more color on how we’re seeing our AI efforts and where we are on that trajectory?

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Yeah. We’re really seeing AI as a core enabler across the company as we increasingly embed it across engineering, compliance, operations, commercial, customer support. There are tangible results already, although we expect more to come, especially in the back half of the year. As we’ve said previously, over 60% of code is already AI generated. That’s led to a, I think it’s nearly doubling of engineering deployments year-over-year and a significant reduction of lead times in our software development cycle. That’s how we’re supporting volume growth that is over 80% for H1 with headcount, as Guillermo just said, which is really broadly stable overall. That bodes well for the long-term operational leverage of the business model.

When I look ahead, I see further efficiency opportunities through AI and automation and more of a medium-term look as we expand our product portfolio and cover more and more countries. We expect to be able to selectively add headcount, but primarily feet on the ground and localization, while at a centralized and overall middle and back office level, which is always relevant in a payments company, we expect to be able to really push the envelope in terms of automation and high operational leverage there.

Christopher Stromeyer, SVP of Corporate Development, DLocal: Great. Turning to taxes, where investors have seen some volatility in the last few quarters in terms of our effective tax rate, how should they think about the tax rate going forward?

Guillermo López Pérez, Chief Financial Officer, DLocal: Quarter to quarter, the tax rate will keep moving, and it depends on the country and the business mix. There’s going to continue to be that volatility in coming quarters. Now, looking ahead, and based on the legislation currently enacted, we do expect some upward pressure on our ETR, particularly in jurisdictions that are implemented the OECD’s Pillar Two framework, which we are expected to impact as of starting in 2027. It’s important to say that there is still regulatory developments under discussion across several of the countries in which we operate, so it’s too early for us to quantify the ultimate impact. But we continue to evaluate these changes with our external advisors, and we will provide updates as appropriate.

That said, more on this year, excluding the quarter-to-quarter volatility that I discussed and the prior year tax adjustments, our normalized effective tax rate for the first half provides a reasonable reference point for the remainder of the year.

Christopher Stromeyer, SVP of Corporate Development, DLocal: Great. One last one, Pedro, before we open the line, let me just come back to you. From everything we’ve covered during the earnings presentation, during this conversation, for you, what are the most important takeaways that you’d like to leave our investor community with?

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Yeah. First of all is the strength of the execution, and the kind of growth that that’s delivered, but more importantly, that it should continue to deliver. All of this supported by the fact that our relationships with global merchants are increasingly deeper and stickier. You see that in the retention rates we mentioned during the prepared remarks. We’re seeing merchants adding countries, adding payment methods, and now beginning to add products that they use from us. That generates the kind of positive cycle where we can continue to invest in platform, in product, and innovation, and we see the returns of those investments allowing us to capture what is a sizable market opportunity going forward. Second, this is somewhat related to scale, somewhat related to AI, and somewhat inherent to the business model is the operating leverage long term.

You’re going to see some of that in the second half as the business continues to scale and the automation initiatives that we’ve mentioned get deployed. Longer term, the balancing act becomes one of making sure that we find that right equilibrium between continued deliverance of operating leverage, while at the same time investing to keep that flywheel going. This is a highly attractive cash generative financial model, and that gives us the ability to continue investing, to carry out that flywheel, yet consistently return value to shareholders. Really, we think the company is in a really strong position right now, and we just need to continue executing on our strategic plan.

Christopher Stromeyer, SVP of Corporate Development, DLocal: Great. Thank you very much, Pedro, Guille. This concludes our conversation, and we’ll now open the line of questions.

Conference Operator: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. You will hear the automated message advising your hand is raised. If you would like to remove yourself from the queue, press star and one again. We also ask that you wait for your name and company to be announced before proceeding with your question. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question will be coming from the line of Tito Labarta of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Tito Labarta, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hi. Good evening. Thank you, Pedro, Guillermo, Chris, for the call for taking my question. Very impressive on the TPV growth. Just to understand what drove such a large increase in the quarter. I know you gave some color there on some merchants and ride hailing, et cetera, but was there anything unexpected? I do not think anybody was modeling 90% year-over-year TPV growth. Just to understand that dynamic, and it seems like there is still room for that to continue to grow at a very healthy pace. Pedro, you mentioned that there was that one merchant that negatively impacted the take rate, but if it was not for that, it would have been flat. I just kind of missed it if you can just mention that again, because I think on the other hand, what everybody is trying to figure out is what is the floor on the take rate.

I know there is that inverse relationship between TPV growth and take rate, and there was a lot of Local-to-local volume in Brazil and Mexico, but help us think about the take rate and TPV growth. Thank you.

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Thanks, Tito. If you look at the vertical performance quarterly, I think it paints a picture in terms of phenomenal strength around ride hailing and travel primarily. Ride hailing has doubled Q-on-Q. It is not even a year-on-year number. That is just a reflection of some very rapid expansion into numerous new markets and significant share of wallet gains across a few key counterparts, very large global companies that have really, I think, bumped DLocal up to a whole new tier in terms of the importance and the amount of volume that they flow through us.

In a way, I think this is a confirmation of what we’ve always said, that even relative share of wallet of our existing merchants allows for significant room to grow. When we see that happen, you have this kind of acceleration in TPV. It sets up tough comps for next year. On the flip side, there are plenty of merchants and global opportunities where if we continue to execute well and deliver performance and cost, we can see this kind of massive ramp-up. Then on take rate, I think, thanks for the question. The flip side, but it’s not really a flip side, that’s just a consequence maybe of over-focusing on take rates. When merchants have these significant spikes in volume, they do rapidly hit new pricing tiers.

That’s still all incremental gross profit to us, and it’s very positive, but it does drive down the headline take rate. Were you to back out that one very large ride-hailing merchant’s mixed gains at a lower take rate, take rate would have been relatively flat sequentially. That doesn’t necessarily signal a bottom, Tito, but it does show that there is potentially increasingly an asymptotic shape to this. More importantly, I think it confirms what we’ve said all along, that incremental TPV at incremental gross profit is really the financial model here and not managing to any specific take rate.

Tito Labarta, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Okay. No, that’s super helpful, Pedro. Just to clarify then, so it was just that one ride-hailing merchant, which seems to have given you a lot of volume, excluding that one, take rates would have been relatively flat. Then in terms of, you mentioned your wallet share, right? How about with ride-hailing merchants or with maybe your top 10 merchants? How does the wallet share maybe compare to that versus the average overall?

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: So yeah. This is a very large global merchant, so interestingly, even with this massive ramp-up for that merchant, it’s not like we’re maxing out share of wallet or that it has a significantly different share of wallet with us. That won’t always be the case. I think it’s fair to say that in some cases, a very rapid ramp-up could mean that we become significant in terms of share of wallet. Remember, we measure share of wallet exclusively in markets where we operate. This ramp-up, as you’ve seen, is very much focused on LATAM, which means that in the future, potentially there still could be more and more share of wallet gains from someone like this if we’re able to serve them in a growing number of African, Middle Eastern, or Asian markets.

We still have a very large untapped addressable market ahead of us if we continue to execute, even when you look at it on a per merchant basis.

Tito Labarta, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Okay. Very helpful. Thank you, Pedro, and congrats on the strong results.

Conference Operator: Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question is coming from the line of James Friedman of Susquehanna International Group. Please go ahead.

James Friedman, Analyst, Susquehanna International Group: Hi. Thank you for taking the question. Gary, in terms of the annual operating profit growth guidance, I know there were a couple of one-timers that you are calling out foreign exchange and tax. I apologize if I missed this, but did you quantify the effect of those? If not, could you?

Guillermo López Pérez, Chief Financial Officer, DLocal: I think you are referring to when I quantify how to think about tax in the remaining of the year. There was the one-time tax impact that we booked in Q1. That was a one-off, and it is not repeatable. If you normalize for that item in Q1, the tax rate was about 15% in Q1 and Q2, so around 16%. What I was trying to say is that if you think about the balance of the year, that normalized tax rate in the first half should be a good example of what we would expect for the remainder of the year. Now, in terms of FX, I do not know exactly what you refer. We talk about the FX headwind that we saw on volume, and that is included in some of the presentations that we share.

But obviously, it is very difficult for me how FX will impact the remainder of the year from a volume or gross profit perspective.

James Friedman, Analyst, Susquehanna International Group: But the operating profit guidance of 27.5%-32.5% growth for the year is unchanged. I may be mistaken, but I thought that you had mentioned. We know about the tax from the Q1. Then I thought you had mentioned.

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Jamie, let me see if I can.

Yeah, go ahead. Sure.

Let me see if we can help you walk through this.

Okay.

What we are saying is we are not adjusting stuff out.

Yeah.

Operating profit is operating profit. So with the $4.4 million of prior year tax, plus the fact that if you look at currencies, they have actually become a little bit of a headwind versus where they were at the beginning of the year when we issued the guidance. Those two effects lead us to leave the guidance unchanged. If you look at the matrix slide, what we are saying is, were we to adjust out the prior year tax period, it is likely we would have raised the operating income guidance as well. But we would rather not adjust and just give you guys this kind of clarity.

James Friedman, Analyst, Susquehanna International Group: Yeah. I got it. When you say the matrix slide, you are talking about the bridge, right?

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: The guidance update, you will see that it indicates that

James Friedman, Analyst, Susquehanna International Group: Operating profit, exclusive prior year tax

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: investment, we would have seen the year coming in around the upper range of the original guidance

James Friedman, Analyst, Susquehanna International Group: Oh

and potentially would have also raised guidance on operating profit.

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: I got you. Okay. Sorry to belabor that, but I think that is something investors are really focused on. Then, let’s see, in terms of the Local-to-local, so where is this? Sorry, I am going to page 21. Yeah, pay-ins, payouts, Local-to-local. So, okay. How should we be thinking about the composition of those dimensions, both pay-ins, payouts, and Local-to-local cross-border, and their impact on take rates?

Yeah. Payouts, in general, have a lower take rate. They are instrumental many times in generating liquidity for us and having a better margin on the pay-in business, but they are lower take rate. Local-to-local do not have the FX components that cross-border does, and those are also lower take rate. So when we mention a very large ride-hailing merchant, ride hailing typically has a strong mix of local settlement because they need cash in-market to settle to the driver. Therefore, those are lower take rates. So that kind of explains why, in part, if you back out for that very large ramp-up in volume coming from a Local-to-local ride-hailing merchant, you would have gotten flat take rate on the rest of the book.

James Friedman, Analyst, Susquehanna International Group: Okay, now I got you. And just to clarify, sorry, is that sequentially? That is sequentially, not year-over-year, right?

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: These comments have all been sequential, yes.

James Friedman, Analyst, Susquehanna International Group: Sequential. Okay. All right, great. Thank you, guys. I’ll drop back in the queue.

Conference Operator: Thank you. One moment for the next question. Next question will come from Guilherme Jaspers of JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Guilherme Jaspers, Analyst, JPMorgan: Hi. Hello, good evening, everyone. My question is on the outlook for the second half and going forward. Pedro, I think the message is super clear that we could see costs slowing down a little bit. My question is, how much costs are tied to the strong commercial performance that you’re printing, right? Because there’s a positive effect here. We always want companies to cut costs, but in some way, there’s a positive effect, I think, on revenues as you invest in headcount expansion. So in the end, I’m not 100% sure how much of your very strong TPV and revenues, in some way, are tied to the investments you have been making on the business.

My question is more looking forward, if there is any risk that as you slow down a little bit costs and the investments, if we could see the top line that today has a very strong momentum, it also lose a little bit of momentum. How you think about this trade-off? Thank you.

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Let me take a first cut at this, and Guiseppe can compliment me. There’s obviously always a relationship between what you’re investing and how you’re growing. However, if you listen to the prepared remarks, I think we’ve highlighted three factors that we think drive the ability to really manage cost for the second half of the year. One is simply that you will no longer have the prior year tax impact. Two, marketing spend because of the World Cup campaign, where we were a World Cup sponsor, was heavily tilted to the first half of the year and doesn’t happen in the second half of the year. And third, the operating leverage that we’re expecting to see, and the first two are already confirmed.

The third is the one that we need to confirm as it plays out, is driven by the deployment of a lot of the automations and AI-driven replacement of headcount that we will carry out in the second half of the year. So it doesn’t necessarily have a detrimental impact to top-line growth because this is where the leverage is coming from. I don’t think it’s that the World Cup marketing has a direct pass-through to growth. That’s just long-term merchant relationship building. So I think we’re fairly confident that this is a business model that can continue to deliver strong growth and operating leverage into the future.

Guilherme Jaspers, Analyst, JPMorgan: That’s clear. And just a follow-up very quick one on the point, I think it was asked in the call as well, the FX point. I was just curious, you mentioned that FX played a little bit against the beginning of the year. But just in what portion of the business, Pedro? Because I’m trying to reconcile here, the EM FX had a very strong performance right year to date. Most of the countries had a positive tailwind from FX. So just trying to understand why it was a headwind throughout this first half.

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: I think. Go ahead.

Guillermo López Pérez, Chief Financial Officer, DLocal: Yeah. If I think about OpEx and some of the FX impacts that we mentioned in Q1, if you think about the footprint of our resources, they are in countries whose currency has appreciated against the dollar. We are talking countries like Brazil, for example, or Uruguay. It is difficult to predict going forward, but that is the impact that we are seeing in the first half. That said, it is not some of the most material impact that has had in terms of OpEx growth. As we said in the first half, the majority of the impact came from the investments that we did in the second part of last year.

Guilherme Jaspers, Analyst, JPMorgan: Okay. Thank you so much.

Conference Operator: Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question will be coming from the line of Pedro of Itaú BBA. Please go ahead.

Pedro, Analyst, Itaú BBA: Thank you very much. Good evening. Congrats on the quarter. Pedro, I am trying to also puzzle things together a little bit. You are pacing on a much stronger TPV or client traction pace, gross profit pace, choosing to reinvest a little bit, yes. You go into 2027 with a lot more momentum. When I play here with my model, the pace that you are ending this year at for gross profit. A little bit also tied into the second question. I am not sure how much I carry from it also in terms of the reinvestments that you are doing. Of course, should be more, but relatively speaking for 2027. Thank you.

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Okay. Thanks, Pedro. I think you are picking up on something which is important, and I do not want to get too ahead of myself in terms of giving 2027 guidance. I think the nature that this year is playing out with more expenses in OpEx in the first half of the year than the second half of the year. We have called out World Cup, we have called some of the prior year tax issues. You are going to have a very strong operating leverage exiting Q4. I do not think you guys should then project that into all of 2027 linearly, because 2027 should be better spread out in terms of where the spend occurs as well. We are trying to make sure we find the right balance here between investing for the long term and delivering operating leverage. Again, we will address this when we issue the guidance for 2027.

Now it is a bit premature, but what I am trying to say is be careful with grabbing Q4 margin structures and assuming it continues to leverage from there. That may not be the case. Full year 2027 versus 2026, certainly we are committed to very consistent operating leverage, but not necessarily Q4 exit rate to 2027 full year. I hope that helps.

Pedro, Analyst, Itaú BBA: Yeah, and you got exactly the outcome I was getting here. It helps me paint the picture a little bit, and we will talk again soon then. Thank you very much.

Conference Operator: Thank you. One moment for the next question. The next question is coming from the line of Matthew Coet of Truist. Please go ahead.

Matthew Coet, Analyst, Truist: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question here. I have one more on the take rate. If I look at the monetization bridge slide that you guys provide, which is really helpful, it looks like there was a 5 bps impact from lower FX spreads in Vietnam and overall volatility. Could you unpack that a little bit more for us? Would you expect this to potentially reverse in the back half of the year, or at least for this headwind to go away? It kind of goes into if I look at the implied guide for the take rate in the back half of the year, it’s 75 basis points versus 72 this quarter. I’m just trying to connect the dots because usually the take rate’s a little bit lower in 4Q. Thank you.

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Okay, let me start with the easier one, which is the FX spreads Vietnam. I think what you’ve seen with our business consistently is that there are pockets of the emerging world which at times show very, very large spreads on FX because of macroeconomic volatility. For periods of time, it’s been Argentina, for other periods, it’s been Egypt, for others it’s been Bolivia, for others it’s been Nigeria. The beginning of this year, we saw that in Vietnam, and then the spreads in that market have significantly compressed when you compress Q2 to Q1. I think this is inherent in certain pockets of our footprint. Smaller markets, more volatile, but that have periods of very high profitability. This is just inherent in the business.

I think the good thing is that as we deliver more and more time, our thesis has been playing out that which pocket of the emerging world is high spread changes, but there always seems to be somewhere appearing. Volatility, I think is a little bit more predictable going forward. It should lessen, I think, into the back half. There’s about a third to slightly less than a half of that volatility. That really was very much Q1 related of this year, and unless something else happens in terms of quick dislocations of currency values, I don’t think you’ll have this level of volatility in future quarters. A lot of this happened in Mozambique, to be very specific. Yet another pocket of the emerging world.

Matthew Coet, Analyst, Truist: Pedro, that was super helpful. Then, maybe more fun of a question here, when you first provided your 2026 guidance, you gave a nice bridge in terms of the breakdown of incremental TPV, where you broke it up into share of wallet gains in existing countries and new countries, new merchants, new products. I wanted to focus on the new merchants and the new products aspect of that guide. Could you just give us a reminder or update us on how that’s trending compared to your original expectations? Then could you also double-click on the dLocal Merchant of Record solution business? Kind of curious what geos, what verticals, where do you see product market fit there? Thank you.

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Okay. Yeah. The answer there is no material changes. Directionally, if we were to update that data, you would see more performance from share of wallet gains of the existing book, less from new merchants, and less from new products. I think the new merchants versus existing merchants is almost more of a mixed thing. Just that, as we’ve said, there’s been more than one existing merchant with very, very strong share of wallet gains that have exceeded initial forecasts. On the new product issue, I think it’s fair to say they’re slightly behind where we’d like them to be right now, and there’s work to be done there. Merchant of Record, again, I think it’s an attempt at having a broader portfolio of products, to see which ones stick, which ones have a faster ramp-up.

Merchant of Record, I think if I were to give a proxy from a competitor, it does some of the things Stripe Atlas does and then more. It essentially places more of the burden of setting up a local entity, filing taxes, collecting taxes on us and less on the merchant. So it’s a product that allows merchants to accelerate their go-to market into a new country even faster because not only do they not have to deal with payments under DMOR, they don’t have to deal with many other statutory issues and tax issues. So we’re just trying to do more and more of the heavy lifting when it comes to opening operations into a new emerging market. And obviously those products allow us to capture a higher take rate.

Matthew Coet, Analyst, Truist: That’s super clear. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. One moment for the next question. The next question is coming from the line of Camila Azevedo of UBS. Please go ahead.

Camila Azevedo, Analyst, UBS: Hi, everyone. Thank you for the space and congrats on the results. I have one question in terms of the regional and vertical analysis when we talk about Brazil, Argentina, Latin overall. While we saw strong TPV and gross profit in Brazil and Argentina, we saw the sequential decrease in gross profit in Mexico. Could you please provide more detail on the cost pressures and also volume price tiers affecting the Mexico market, please? Thank you.

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Great. Mexico, I think it is worth covering, so thank you for the question. Mexico obviously continues to have very strong TPV growth. It actually had very strong revenue growth of 64% year-on-year. I would say top line, very strong. Then disappointing gross profit line, if you will. But the reason I am calling out the revenue is that what that points to is that that is primarily a cost issue. What is happening in Mexico is the decline in our pricing power, which is not that marked, that is why revenues continue to grow 64%, have been significantly offset by not being able to push down our cost structure. Our cost structure in Mexico is actually as a percentage of TPV, slightly up.

What we need to do a better job at, and I think scale and just further negotiation with processing partners should allow us to get there, is to manage the Mexican cost basis, primarily that of processing payments better, and that should begin to align gross profit growth closer to revenue growth, which continues to be very strong. There is work to be done in Mexico, but it is more cost management, which I feel relatively confident we will deliver on. Jeff? Did you ask about another region, Camila? Sorry, I was focusing on Mexico.

Conference Operator: Pardon me. This is the operator. Camila has left the stage. One moment for our next question. Our next question is coming from the line of Neha Agarwala of HSBC. Please go ahead.

Neha Agarwala, Analyst, HSBC: Hi, and thank you for taking my question, and apologies if I’m making you repeat any of the answers. I just wanted to get a bit more color. You mentioned that you are gaining more share with the existing merchants. That is what is driving the strong TPV momentum that we are seeing. What is allowing you to gain this share? Is it the conversion rates that you’re providing, which is better, or just the breadth of the platform? I know there’s not one silver bullet, but a mix of things. If you can put in hierarchies as to what are the key things that is allowing you to win more business with your merchants. Would that also translate into more accelerated take rate pressure as margins quickly hit the tiered pricing, as we saw that impacted take rate in this quarter as well.

Should we see a more accelerated compression in that take rate in the near term as you grow more with existing merchants? Thank you.

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: Yeah. Thanks. I think you’ve hit on some of the key drivers of a merchant decision on how to give us more markets, more volume, more products. It’s a combination of conversion rate, price, and obviously also service model and quality of service. I wish there were one answer for every single merchant. I think different merchants and different verticals will focus more on different things. Very low-margin businesses may be more price sensitive. Higher-margin business will be more conversion rate or service model sensitive. But those are usually, I think, the three factors that drive decision. Given the strength and sustained strength of our TPV growth, I think it’s fair to say that we’re definitely doing a good job on delivering value on conversion, service model, and price.

If you want a more specific readout on the current quarter results, I think it would be fair to say that this very rapid ramp-up of one global merchant is a good example of when, because we have a multi-market relationship with them, we’re able to ramp them up very quickly at a lower take rate, but it’s still significantly accretive to gross profit. There are other secondary benefits that come from this, right? As our TPV grows across a market, it allows us, as it happened in Mexico, it’s definitely happening everywhere else, to lower our cost of processing, which then improves our net take rate across the rest of the book, just because pricing is flat, cost is coming down.

On this specific win, I think it is a combination of them realizing that a rapid ramp-up gets them to lower price tiers, and that we’ve reached a level of operational excellence that they can trust us with this level of share of wallet. Going forward, I’m going to be careful here, but given what we’re seeing today, I think our expectation is not of accelerating take rate decline into the end of the year. That’s as far forward as I’ll give you an indication of what we’re seeing today.

Neha Agarwala, Analyst, HSBC: Got it, Pedro. If I can just clarify this, would it be fair to assume that part of the take rate decline that we saw sequentially in this particular quarter could be maybe reversed in third quarter because it was driven by a mix shift, which you can’t control, which might change again next quarter, and also FX-related volatility? Could we see part of the net take rate pressure ease in third quarter?

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, DLocal: I think implied in our revised guidance is not a reversal of take rate. It is a deceleration in the rate at which take rate declines. We’ve raised TPV guidance.

which means I think the way we’re managing the model is to even stronger market share gains and TPV acceleration, all in accretive gross profit deals, which means we’ve also raised the gross profit range, but not necessarily because take rates are going up, but rather on the strength of TPV growth.

Neha Agarwala, Analyst, HSBC: Very clear. Thank you so much.

Conference Operator: Thank you. That does conclude today’s conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.