Is MercadoLibre Inc. (NASDAQ:MELI) the Best Growth Stock to Buy for the Next 3 Years?

We recently published a list of the 15 Best Growth Stocks to Buy for the Next 3 Years. In this article, we are going to take a look at where MercadoLibre Inc. (NASDAQ:MELI) stands against other growth stocks to buy for the next 3 years.

On April 29, Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities joined ‘Power Lunch’ on CNBC to discuss his outlook for the tech sector and expressed that tariffs aren’t stopping the AI revolution. According to Ives, the critical question for the sector was whether spending, particularly CapEx, was being maintained. He expressed confidence that CapEx was holding up and predicted that the forthcoming results from big tech companies would serve more as a confidence booster for the market, rather than fueling the existing fears. As some investors are of the idea that concerns about a potential soft patch in the economy remain, there’s a preference for safer investments in insurance and other stable sectors, rather than big tech. However, Ives acknowledged that while uncertainty had been prevalent in recent weeks, his own survey work and field research indicate that AI-related spending stays strong. He noted that, while there were areas of the cloud sector where spending was accelerating, the overall uncertainty would likely result in broad guidance ranges from companies.

Michael Darda, the Managing Director, Chief Economist, and Macrostrategist at ROTH, also believes that AI would generate solid returns in the future. Ives agreed with Darda’s assessment and stated that enterprises were seeing similar advancements and could not afford to leave their AI projects behind without the risk of consequently falling behind. He also pointed out that for companies like those in the MAG7, the AI revolution is a central theme, which is why challenges brought forward by tariffs would not impact the AI revolution as much. Darda changed his outlook from bearish to bullish on tech and AI recently due to his personal experience with AI tools, which he felt had improved over the past year.

Dan Ives reiterated that, despite the uncertainty created by tariffs, the demand for software remained a safety blanket, and spending by hyperscale companies is expected to continue.

Our Methodology

We sifted through financial media reports to compile a list of the top growth stocks to buy for the next 3 years. We then selected 15 stocks with a 3-year revenue compound annual growth rate of over 20%. The stocks are ranked in ascending order of the number of hedge funds that have stakes in them, as of Q4 2024, which was sourced from Insider Monkey’s database.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

MercadoLibre Inc. (NASDAQ:MELI)

3-Year Revenue CAGR: 43.24%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 96

MercadoLibre Inc. (NASDAQ:MELI) is an online commerce platform that operates Mercado Libre Marketplace. This online commerce platform can be accessed through the mobile app or website. It also operates Mercado Pago, which is a financial technology solution platform.

In 2024, MercadoLibre made $21 billion in revenue and more than $1 billion in free cash flow. This growth came from higher gross merchandise volume (GMV) and total payment volume (TPV) across key markets, such as Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. On April 7, Bloomberg reported that MercadoLibre Inc. (NASDAQ:MELI) plans to increase its investment in Brazil by 48% to invest ~$5.8 billion in 2025.

This investment will enhance the company’s logistics, technology, marketing, and financial capabilities and allow MercadoLibre Inc. (NASDAQ:MELI) to increase its staff in Brazil by 14,000 to reach a total of 50,000 employees. Moreover, the company introduced technological improvements like virtual try-on features and optimized grocery shopping interfaces that contributed to a 29% increase in shipped items.

Lakehouse Global Growth Fund highlighted the company’s significant future potential and stated the following regarding MercadoLibre, Inc. (NASDAQ:MELI) in its February 2025 investor letter:

“The Funds largest position, e-commerce leader MercadoLibre, Inc. (NASDAQ:MELI), delivered another impressive quarterly result, combining robust growth with improving profitability. Net revenue grew 37% year-on-year in U.S. dollar terms to $6.1 billion while operating margins climbed to 13.5%, which was particularly pleasing given the company remains firmly in reinvestment mode. Key operational metrics for its marketplace underscored this strength, with items sold increasing 27%, unique buyers climbing 24% to a new high of 67 million and items per buyer increasing to 7.8. Importantly, the company continues to gain incremental market share in its primary regions, namely that of Brazil and Mexico.

The outperformance of the company’s advertising business also continues to be bright spot, growing 40% plus year-on-year in USD terms. As of today, the advertising business still only represents 2.1% of GMV, which is well below the level of more mature e-commerce peers globally and suggests there is still plenty of runway to grow the ads business. This not only provides another attractive growth vector but also a meaningful lever to improve profitability over time given the higher-margin nature of advertising revenue.”

Overall, MELI ranks 5th on our list of the best growth stocks to buy for the next 3 years. While we acknowledge the growth potential of MELI, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MELI but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.