MercadoLibre
Q1 2022 Earnings Call
May 05, 2022, 4:30 p.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Lissa Schreurs
Hello, and welcome to the MercadoLibre earnings conference call for the quarter ended March 31, 2022. I am Lissa Schreurs, Investor Relations officer for MercadoLibre. Today, we will share our quarterly highlights on video. After which, we will begin our live Q&A session with our Chief Financial Officer Pedro Arnt; and chief executive officer of Mercado Pago, Osvaldo Gimenez.
I remind you that management may make forward-looking statements relating to such matters as continued growth prospects for the company, industry trends and product and technology initiatives. These statements are based on currently available information and our current assumptions, expectations and projections about future events. While we believe that our assumptions, expectations and projections are reasonable in view of the currently available information, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from those included in this conference call for a variety of reasons, including those described in the Forward-Looking Statements and Risk Factors sections of our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, and any of MercadoLibre, Inc.'s other applicable filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on our Investor Relations website.
With that, let's begin with a summary of our results.
Pedro Arnt -- Chief Financial Officer
Hi, everyone. I'm pleased to present some of the highlights and key messages regarding the performance in Q1 of 2022. We had a very strong start to the year, setting a sound base for the challenging ramp-up ahead of us in the coming quarters. Our marketplace growth has remained consistent for yet another quarter.
We reached almost $7.7 billion in gross merchandise volume, growing nearly 32% on an FX-neutral basis and sustaining a two-year CAGR above 70%. With almost 40 million unique buyers in the quarter, buyer behavior remains sticky. Total items per buyer continues to grow versus last year's pandemic-impacted year. We're confident that the depth of product and category mix on our marketplace and the quality of our seller base places us in a unique position to drive continued growth with solid monetization in commerce.
The services attached to our marketplace are also continuing to expand. Specifically, the advertising business has been a consistent highlight in terms of growth and margin structure and has almost doubled in revenues year over year as we've improved our technology to serve ads throughout our platforms. We will continue to launch more features and channels behind this business. We're also very encouraged by the performance of the fintech business during this quarter.