Nubank Surpasses 100 Million Clients Across Latin America

Daniel Cancel, Bloomberg News

The Nubank mobile app on a smartphone arranged in Mexico City, Mexico, on Saturday, Aug. 5, 2023. Nu Holdings Ltd., the Brazilian digital bank that counts Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. among its biggest stockholders, is betting big that its high-yield savings accounts will stoke growth in Latin America's second-largest economy. Photographer: Alejandro Cegarra/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Nu Holdings Ltd., one of the world’s largest digital banks, surpassed 100 million clients across its operations in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.

The Sao Paulo-based financial technology firm is the first digital banking platform to reach the milestone outside of Asia, according to a filing on Wednesday. The stock was little changed at the start of trading in New York.

The bulk of business for Nubank, as the company is known, is in Brazil, where it has 92 million clients. It reported more than 7 million in Mexico and nearly 1 million in Colombia after ramping up investments in those countries to win market share. At the end of 2023 the client count stood at about 94 million.

Read more: Nubank’s Surge Backs CEO Drive to Poach Clients From Rivals

“In 2013, we had set ourselves the ambitious goal to reach one million customers in five years, which seemed almost impossible at the time,” chief executive officer and co-founder David Velez said in the statement. “In a decade, we have surpassed 100 million.”

Nu carried out an initial public offering in New York in 2021. After a selloff in 2022, the shares have rallied more than 260% from the low, now trading close to $12 a piece. The market capitalization stands at $57 billion.

The rally has also catapulted the fortunes of its founders with Velez’s net worth standing at $11.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Cristina Junqueira, another co-founder who is currently the chief growth officer, has seen her stake exceed $1.5 billion this year.

Read more: Nu Plans to Invest $100 Million in ‘Priority’ Mexico in 2024

The company is expected to release first quarter earnings next week on the heels of a full year 2023 performance that saw $1 billion of profit on $8 billion of revenue.

(Adds share price in second paragraph, CEO comment in fourth.)