MELI or Magalu? Who gains more from the Americanas debacle?

With Americanas going into judicial recovery, the market is trying to estimate the impacts for the sector — especially for the other listed retailers (Magazine Luiza, Via Varejo and Mercado Livre).

In a report published today, Citi estimates the potential gain for the three competitors. For the purposes of the analysis, the bank uses data from SimilarWeb and assumes that all Americanas customer traffic migrates to other players.

The conclusion: the biggest beneficiary in absolute terms would be Mercado Livre, but, in percentage terms, Magalu would have the biggest GMV gain.

“We expect Magazine Luiza’s online GMV to grow 18%, followed by Via Varejo (+15%) and Mercado Livre (+11%),” wrote analysts João Pedro Soares and Felipe Reboredo.

To arrive at these numbers, Citi measured the overlap of traffic between Americanas and the other three retailers. The biggest overlap is with Mercado Livre, which shares 78.5% of its audience with Americanas, followed by Magalu (58.4%) and Via Varejo (37.2%).

In the analysts’ view, if Americanas were to go offline, the most natural thing would be for customers who already buy on both sites to start spending at MELI.

“MELI’s gain in percentage terms is smaller because it is very large today, so this migration does not represent that much for it, but in absolute terms it would be the biggest beneficiary,” the analysts wrote.

Citi also made a distinction between the GMV of 1P and 3P. In the bank’s estimates, Mercado Livre would capture most of 3P’s GMV. The 1P’s GMV, however, would go mainly to Magalu; MELI does not have 1P.

As for physical retail, Citi said it was difficult to predict the impact because “the market is much more fragmented and Americanas’ business addresses a much larger number of players, which include electronics, home products, food, beverages and even fashion retailers. .”

From the close on the 11th, when Americanas unveiled its pump, until today, Magalu is up 22% and MELI, 18% — while Via Varejo cai 14%. In this same period, the Bovespa index was sidelined.