The quarter arrived, and it split the verdict. dLocal reported Q2 FY2026 after the close on 2026-08-13: total payment volume nearly doubled to US$17.7bn, revenue beat consensus by roughly 8%, and full-year guidance was raised on both volume and gross profit. The shares opened up at US$15.28 — and closed at US$14.17, down 4.0% on 2.58x average volume. The market read past the headline to the take rate, and so does this report.
short_entry_confirmed: true and a Full-Size ladder; this one records false and Half-Size. Only the Fundamental path remains open.dLocal is the payments plumbing that lets a global company get paid in places where getting paid is hard. When someone in Brazil, Nigeria, Egypt or Argentina pays for a streaming subscription, a ride-hail trip or a plane ticket, the merchant on the other end is usually a large international business with no local bank licence and no way to accept a Pix transfer, a boleto or a domestic debit card. dLocal provides one integration that reaches over forty emerging markets and hundreds of local payment methods, collects the money locally, converts it, and settles it across the border — and does the same in reverse for payouts. Its genuine advantage is not technology but permission: the portfolio of payment and money-transmission licences it has assembled across dozens of jurisdictions, each slow, costly and politically awkward to obtain. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Montevideo, Uruguay, it is profitable, generates cash, and carries no meaningful net debt.
Lifecycle: High-Growth — and an unusually profitable one. dLocal grew revenue 56% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2026 while earning a 16.1% operating margin and converting 125% of net income into adjusted free cash flow. That combination is rare. It is also the reason this report scores the business on gross profit rather than revenue throughout.
| Sub-signal | Reading (Q2 FY2026, quarter ended 30 Jun 2026) | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Gross-profit trajectory | US$127.2m, +29% YoY (+23% constant currency) — a record, and an annualised run-rate above US$500m. But decelerating: +37% FY2025, +38% Q4 FY2025, +40% Q1 FY2026, +29% now. | 66 |
| Profitability vs peers | Operating margin 16.1% (Q2 FY2025: 21.7%). Operating profit over gross profit 50% — down 6pp YoY, but up 6pp on the quarter from 44%. | 55 |
| Cash generation | Adjusted FCF US$68.5m, +41% YoY; conversion of net income 125%. Capex US$9.9m = 2.5% of revenue. | 85 |
| Balance-sheet health | Cash US$794.9m (of which US$369.1m corporate); equity US$540.5m; financial liabilities US$64.6m. Interest coverage 8.1x. Net corporate cash even after the new US$150m facility. | 82 |
| Take-rate trend (sector-specific) | Gross profit over TPV 0.72%, from 0.84% last quarter and 1.07% a year ago. On a full-year basis: 1.15% (FY2024) → 0.99% (FY2025) → 0.72% now. Multi-year, and accelerating. | 22 |
| Retention (sector-specific) | Net revenue retention 153%, the fifth consecutive quarter above 140%. TPV retention 188%. Merchants are expanding, not leaving. | 92 |
| Geographic diversification (sector-specific) | Seven named markets across three continents — Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Other Africa & Asia. This quarter Brazil and Argentina were up while Mexico and Africa/Asia were down, which is diversification visibly working. Scored on qualitative disclosure: the quarterly release publishes no revenue-by-country split. | 70 |
Moat score: 60/100 — the average of the five. The shape matters more than the number: a strong licence-and-retention moat wrapped around a pricing layer that is visibly eroding.
| Rival | Where it presses | Share / moat-erosion vector |
|---|---|---|
| Adyen | The largest global merchants — the same Tier 0 accounts named in Mexico this quarter | The most direct threat to pricing. A single-platform incumbent with its own licences, able to price aggressively into LatAm to win a global merchant's whole wallet. This is the most credible explanation for Tier 0 merchants reaching "higher volume pricing tiers". |
| Stripe | Global merchants wanting one contract, plus developer-led mid-market | Erodes the integration-convenience half of the network effect rather than the licence half. Deepening its own local acquiring reduces the number of countries where dLocal is the only practical route in. |
| EBANX | Head-to-head in LatAm and increasingly Africa/Asia — the closest like-for-like competitor | Same model, same regions, private and able to buy share. The clearest source of direct price competition in dLocal's core markets. |
| Nuvei | Cross-border and alternative payment methods | Under private ownership since 2024 and less price-disciplined as a result; overlaps in APM coverage. |
| Local acquirers (StoneCo, PagSeguro, Rede/Cielo in Brazil; Clip in Mexico) | The local-to-local flows that are now a rising share of dLocal's mix | Structurally the cheapest operators in their home market. Local-to-local carries a lower take rate precisely because these firms set the price there — this is the single largest mechanical driver of the mix shift. |
| Merchants' own rails (Uber, Netflix, Amazon, Booking) | Insourcing at scale | The tail risk. A merchant large enough to obtain its own local licences can bypass dLocal entirely. NRR 153% says none has yet; the Tier 0 pricing concession is what keeps it that way. |
How this fed the sub-scores. The Tier 0 repricing and the local-to-local mix shift are the direct inputs to Pricing power 32. Cost of services outgrowing revenue by 17 percentage points, plus the named Nigeria and Mexico cost items, set Cost advantage 56. NRR 153% / TPV retention 188% — quantified, audited, five quarters running — set Switching costs 76, discounted from higher because the retention is partly purchased.
| Component | Reading | Score |
|---|---|---|
| ROIC (40%) | Asset-light and net-cash: TTM operating profit US$235.2m, ROE 41.3%, ROA 8.6%, capex 2.5% of revenue. Invested capital is negligible, so ROIC sits far into the top quartile of any peer set. | 88 |
| Capital allocation (30%) | Of the US$300m buyback authorised in March 2026, US$86.1m was spent on ~6.9m Class A shares to 30 June — an average near US$12.5, below today's price. Annual dividend US$0.1967 (28.9% of TTM EPS). The new US$150m facility on a net-cash balance sheet is the one debatable call. | 75 |
| Skin in the game (30%) | Founder-linked ownership persists: director and co-founder Sebastián Kanovich retains 11.6m convertible Class B shares. Share-based compensation is US$6.5m in the quarter — 1.6% of revenue, exceptionally low for the sector. Dual-class structure is the governance debit. | 68 |
Composite: 78/100. Capital discipline is a genuine strength here and is doing real work holding the Quality pillar at 66 while the take-rate sub-signal drags at 22.
nonOperatingIncomeExcludingInterest of +US$22.5m for Q4 FY2025, which would have been material — it is a
line-item mapping artefact for an IFRS filer; the company's own statement shows the gap between operating profit and
pre-tax profit that quarter was only +US$1.4m. Second, the distortion in this window runs the other way:
Q1 FY2026 net income was reduced by US$9.7m of prior-year (2023–2025) tax adjustments, so trailing EPS of US$0.68
understates the underlying run-rate.The anchor, in one line: at US$14.17 the shares trade on 13.15x forward earnings against a rate-and-growth-warranted 27.7x — a ratio of 0.475, deep inside the Attractive band. The valuation pillar is the reason this name still carries two BUY signals after a quarter that cut the Quality score.
relative_strength_vs_sector now names XLF explicitly so the benchmark is never ambiguous.| Input | Value | Source / discipline |
|---|---|---|
| Risk-free rate | 4.63% | US 10-year Treasury, FRED DGS10 at 2026-08-13. Attribution matters here: this is the run's shared macro input, not a figure lifted from the macro report — that report is dated 2026-08-12, cites the 10-year at 4.70%, and carries no market-snapshot field. On 4.70% the discount rate would be 9.20%, the warranted multiple 27.4x and the ratio 0.480 — still Attractive, so nothing turns on it. |
| Equity risk premium | 4.50% | Framework constant. |
| Risk add-on | +0.00% | Business Quality 66 clears the 65 threshold. |
| Discount rate r | 9.13% | 4.63 + 4.50 + 0.00. |
| g (years 1–5) | 15.0% | Consensus forward growth near 27.5% × 0.75 = 20.6%, then capped at the 15% secular-growth ceiling. The haircut and the cap are both binding — this is deliberately not the headline growth rate. |
| g (terminal) | 3.0% | Long-run nominal GDP ceiling. dLocal reports in US dollars, so the US- calibrated terminal rate is the internally consistent choice (see the currency note below). |
| Warranted forward P/E | 27.7x | Two-stage discounting; below the 33x Information Technology guardrail, so uncapped. |
| Actual forward P/E | 13.15x | US$14.17 ÷ FY2027 consensus diluted EPS of US$1.08 (n = 4). |
| Ratio → band | 0.475 → Attractive | Threshold for Attractive is 0.80. |
| Lens | Weight | Reading | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warranted anchor | 40% | Ratio 0.475 — deep in the Attractive band. | 88 |
| Sector median | 20% | 13.2x sits above LatAm domestic processors (StoneCo, PagSeguro near 7–9x) and well below Adyen (~35x) and the global platforms. dLocal grows several times faster than the cheap comparables — but the cheap comparables are cheap for a reason that also applies here. | 62 |
| Own-history decile | 15% | Roughly decile 3 of its own post-IPO range (60x-plus in 2021, 9–10x at the 2025 lows). The 52-week position is 57% of the 10.64–16.78 range. | 72 |
| PEG | 10% | 13.15x against consensus FY2026→FY2027 EPS growth of 31.3% = 0.42. | 88 |
| Analyst consensus | 15% | US$14.17 vs a mean target of US$18.35 (n = 10; high 21.00, low 14.50) = 22.8% below. Discounted from the 85–100 band because no target has been issued in the last month — the panel has not yet responded to the print. | 72 |
Valuation Attractiveness: 78/100 — unchanged from the 2026-07-31 report. Not because nothing happened, but because two things offset: the price fell 6.4% while the forward earnings basis was struck slightly lower.
Implied-growth read — and the honest caveat that goes with it. Solving the same two-stage model backwards for the growth rate that justifies 13.15x, holding r at 9.13% and terminal growth at 3%, gives roughly −2.5%. At US$14.17 the market is not pricing slower growth than we assume; it is pricing shrinking earnings — against a company that just raised full-year guidance on two of three metrics. For scale: even plugging in zero five-year growth warrants 14.7x, still above where the shares trade.
The caveat, stated rather than buried: that gap is wide partly because the framework's 3% terminal growth rate puts a high floor under any warranted multiple — a large share of the 27.7x sits in the terminal value, so the model is structurally generous to a profitable business at almost any near-term growth rate. This is precisely why the relative cross-checks carry 60% of the pillar and the anchor only 40%, and why the fair-value estimate below is struck at US$17.45 from peer, history and consensus references rather than at the ~US$29.8 the anchor alone implies. The gap is the investment case — but §11's Bear is the discipline that says it could close from the wrong end.
dLocal's fortunes sit above its own execution in two places, and this quarter they pulled in opposite directions. Both are scored; neither is allowed to hide the other.
| Horizon | Reading | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Historical (25%) | Seven consecutive quarters of TPV growth above 50%, and growth has accelerated in each of the last five. Q2 FY2026 processed more volume than the whole of 2023. | 90 |
| Current (50%) | TPV US$17.7bn, +92% YoY (+80% constant currency), the fastest since Q1 2022. Full-year TPV guidance raised to 60–70% from 50–60%, and gross-profit guidance raised to 25–30% from 22.5–27.5%. | 88 |
| Forward (25%) | Management's own caution, quoted: growth "will naturally create more demanding comparisons as we move through the second half of the year and into 2027". Underlying EM digital-commerce growth is 15–20%, so the current rate is a share-gain rate, not a market rate — and share gains at these magnitudes do not annualise. | 70 |
Driver 1 score: 84 — Strong Tailwind.
| Horizon | Reading | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Historical (25%) | A soft dollar through the first half of 2026 was a consistent tailwind to reported results. | 70 |
| Current (50%) | The dollar firmed in August as Fed cuts were priced out — the macro report of 2026-08-12 names this as precisely the reason it trimmed DLO's short-horizon signal to Neutral. The translation tailwind that flattered the second quarter is fading as the third quarter runs. | 38 |
| Forward (25%) | With a September hike carrying roughly 44% market-implied odds and three hawkish July dissents, the risk skews to further dollar strength — a direct drag on reported growth. | 35 |
Driver 2 score: 45 — mild Headwind.
DLO carries its own entry in the macro report's watchlist forecast — short Neutral / medium Outperform / long Outperform — and that is what is used here, in preference to the sector row. Where it differs from the sector map, and why that matters: the macro report classifies DLO under Financials (XLF), whose sector signals are Neutral / Underperform / Neutral. The name-specific signal is better than its sector on both the medium and long horizons — the sector row is carrying US regional-bank credit and rate exposure that has nothing to do with an emerging-market payments processor. Using the XLF row would have imported a headwind DLO does not face. It also arguably sits closer to Information Technology (Neutral / Neutral / Outperform), which is how the data providers classify it; the name-specific read straddles the two sensibly.
The macro report's stated reason is worth quoting because it is the same mechanism §5 scores: "The soft-dollar tailwind is what powers this name, and the dollar just firmed as cuts came off the table — hence the short trim. The EM-payments volume story is structural and survives the middle and long horizons intact."
Pressure: Neutral — the near-term dollar move is a genuine headwind while the structural volume story is a tailwind, and honestly scored they offset. This is the reason the base BUY on medium and long is not amplified to STRONG BUY despite an Underlying Driver score of 70, which on its own would qualify. Amplification requires both conditions; only one is met. The dominant regime — energy-shock stagflation, with Fed cuts priced out and a live hike-versus-hold debate — reaches dLocal almost entirely through the dollar rather than through demand.
Source: watchlist-forecast (name-specific) · Macro report 2026-08-12
The tape did something specific on 2026-08-14 that the timing pillar has to take seriously, and it is worth stating before any indicator: the stock opened at US$15.28, traded down to US$13.995, and closed at US$14.17 — a full outside-day reversal on 5.07m shares, 2.58x the twenty-day average. The market gapped the print up, then sold every share of it. That is distribution, and it is the single most important input below.
| Component | Weight | Reading | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-timeframe trend | 30% | Monthly and weekly uptrend, daily technically a strong uptrend (14.17 > 50-day 13.85 > 200-day 13.37) — but hourly and 15-minute have rolled over hard. Weighted confluence 66. | 66 |
| Risk-reward | 20% | Favourable stop geometry: the 13.81–13.90 shelf (three swing lows, the 50-day SMA at 13.85 and the lower Bollinger band at 13.83 all cluster there) sits just 0.6 ATR below the price, so a tight stop is available. Offset by the setup being a fresh distribution day rather than a bounce. | 62 |
| Macro | 15% | Fed cuts priced out, a September hike near 44% implied, and a firming dollar working directly against dLocal's reported growth. The macro report's own DLO short-horizon signal is Neutral. | 45 |
| Sentiment | 18% | No rating change in thirty days — there were two actions, both
maintains: Goldman Sachs held Buy on 2026-07-31 and Truist held Buy on 2026-07-24. The last actual change was UBS’s
upgrade to Buy on 2026-07-01. The panel scored is FMP’s get_grades_consensus aggregate — 9 Buy /
3 Hold / 1 Sell, i.e. 69% bullish. That single Sell could not be corroborated: none of
FMP’s own fifteen most recent individual grade actions is a Sell, and Yahoo’s panel (n = 10, recommendation mean
1.50) carries none either. It is kept because it is the framework’s specified endpoint and discarding it would
flatter the score — but it is flagged as unattributed, and on either alternative panel this sub-signal would
score higher. Against all of that, the print beat revenue by ~8% and missed EPS
(US$0.18 vs US$0.19), and the tape’s answer was −4.0%. | 48 |
| Catalysts | 17% | Calm. The binary event just cleared; the next earnings date is 2026-11-11, eighty-seven days out. Nothing company-specific inside thirty days. | 78 |
Entry/Exit Timing: 61/100 — "Improving" by the framework's threshold (≥55), but only just, and the composition matters more than the number: it is carried by a calm calendar and a favourable stop, not by momentum.
get_technical_indicators and Yahoo daily
bars, never from get_stock_prices labels (see §15).| Date | Event | Impact | Forecast | Previous | Relevant? | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-19 | FOMC Minutes | High | — | — | ✅ Yes | The dominant driver of the dollar, and the dollar is dLocal's translation lever. A hawkish read strengthens the USD and mechanically trims reported growth. |
| 2026-08-25 | CB Consumer Confidence (Aug) | High | — | 90.8 | ⚠️ Low | US consumer sentiment barely touches dLocal — its consumers are Brazilian, Mexican and Nigerian. |
| 2026-08-26 | Core PCE Price Index MoM (Jul) | High | 0.3% | 0.1% | ✅ Yes | Feeds the September hike odds directly, and therefore the dollar. |
| 2026-09-04 | Non-Farm Payrolls / Unemployment (Aug) | High | 12K / 4.2% | −23K / 4.1% | ✅ Yes | The other half of the Fed's mandate and the other half of the rate path. |
| 2026-09-11 | CPI (Aug) | High | — | 3.4% YoY | ✅ Yes | Same transmission: inflation → rate path → dollar → dLocal's reported growth. |
| Date | Event | Actual | Forecast | Surprise | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-12 | CPI YoY (Jul) | 3.4% | 3.4% | In line | Neutral. Removed a downside catalyst for the dollar without adding an upside one. |
| 2026-08-13 | Producer Price Index MoM (Jul) | 0.0% | 0.2% | −0.2pp | Mildly dollar-negative, i.e. mildly positive for dLocal's translation. |
| 2026-08-14 | Retail Sales MoM (Jul) | −0.6% | +0.1% | −0.7pp | Large miss — but see the note below. Not a dLocal demand signal. |
| 2026-08-14 | Michigan Consumer Sentiment (Aug) | 51.0 | 54.5 | −3.5 | Miss, from 55.2 in July. Again: a US consumer signal, and dLocal has no US consumer. |
The 14 August US consumer break is not a dLocal event — and saying so is the discipline, not a dodge. July retail sales fell 0.6% against a consensus near +0.1%, and Michigan sentiment dropped to 51.0 from 55.2, both attributed to energy-driven cost-of-living fear. That pair cuts hard at anything needing a resilient US consumer. dLocal has none: it processes payments for global merchants from emerging-market consumers, and its named growth engines this quarter were Brazilian ride-hailing and travel and Argentine e-commerce and delivery. Marking the name down for a US retail-sales miss would be a category error.
What genuinely matters on this calendar is the rate path, and only because of what it does to the dollar. The FOMC minutes on 19 August and core PCE on 26 August both feed September hike odds, currently near 44% implied. A firmer dollar shrinks the translation tailwind that added roughly 6 percentage points to reported gross-profit growth this quarter. That is the transmission line to watch — and it is already why the macro report trimmed DLO's short-horizon signal to Neutral. As a medium-macro-sensitivity fintech with no high-impact event inside three days, no additional timing-confidence penalty is applied.
| Timeframe | Trend | Direction | RSI | MACD | Key S/R | Breakout | Vol |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | Uptrend ↑ | Bullish | 47.3 | +0.58 hist, rising | S: 10.64 R: 16.78 | Resistance breakout | 0.6x |
| Weekly | Uptrend ↑ | Bullish | 54.3 | +0.19 hist, rising | S: 12.16 R: 15.51 | Resistance breakout | 1.2x |
| Daily | Strong uptrend ↑ | Neutral | 46.3 | −0.13 hist, falling | S: 13.83 R: 14.95 | None | 2.6x |
| Hourly | Strong downtrend ↓ | Bearish | 46.6 | −0.04 hist, falling | S: 13.99 R: 14.43 | None | — |
| 15-min | Downtrend ↓ | Bearish | 48.4 | −0.02 hist, turning | S: 14.03 R: 14.43 | Support breakdown | — |
| Confluence: Mostly Bullish (65–79 band) · MTF Score 66 | |||||||
The higher timeframes and the lower timeframes are telling different stories, and the split is exactly where the print landed. Monthly and weekly remain in uptrends and the daily chart still satisfies the textbook definition of a strong uptrend — price 14.17 above the 50-day 13.85 above the 200-day 13.37. But the daily MACD histogram is negative and falling, price is below both the 20-day SMA (14.67) and the 20-day EMA (14.54), and the intraday frames have broken down outright. This is the classic shape of a healthy intermediate trend absorbing a sharp negative shock: the structure is intact, the momentum is not. That is why the confluence label reads Mostly Bullish on a score of 66 — the framework's 65–79 band — even though nothing about Friday's tape felt bullish: the score is carried almost entirely by the monthly and weekly frames, which together hold 55% of the weight and have not yet registered the print. The level that decides it is the 13.81–13.90 shelf — three swing lows, the 50-day SMA and the lower Bollinger band all converge there, and Friday's low of 13.995 probed toward it without closing through. Hold that shelf and the pullback is a buyable dip inside a live uptrend; close below it for two sessions and the whole daily structure changes character.
DLO daily closes, last 80 sessions to 2026-08-14, with the 50-day SMA. Raw unadjusted closes from Yahoo daily bars. The two vertical facts of this chart are the $10.64 low on 18 May 2026 — the trough after the Q1 print — and the 14 August reversal — a $15.28 open, a $13.995 low and a $14.17 close on 2.58× average volume.
The operating leverage arrives and the take rate finds its floor. Management said second-half operating leverage would improve, and the mechanism is credible: opex already fell 4% sequentially, the World Cup marketing spend was front-loaded into the first half, and the Mexican Tier 0 repricing annualises out of the comparison. Operating profit reaches the upper half of the maintained 27.5–32.5% guide, the gross-profit take rate stabilises around 0.70–0.72% as the local-to-local mix matures, and FY2027 EPS beats consensus at roughly US$1.20. On proof that near-doubling volume converts to profit, the multiple re-rates to ~17.5x — still barely half the warranted 27.7x. 17.5 × 1.20 = US$21.00, +48%. What confirms it: the Q3 print on 2026-11-11 showing gross profit over TPV flat or up sequentially.
Volume keeps compounding; the market keeps discounting the unit economics. FY2027 EPS lands near the US$1.08 consensus. The take rate keeps drifting — not collapsing — toward 0.68–0.70% as local-to-local grows. The market credits an exceptional volume franchise and refuses to pay a growth multiple for it while the take rate is falling, holding the shares around 16x. 16.2 × US$1.077 = US$17.45, +23%, which is also where the blended fair-value estimate lands. Note what this base case concedes: a 23% return over twelve months from a business growing volume at 92% is a de-rating in slow motion. That is the honest central case.
The second-half step-up fails and November brings a guidance cut. This is the scenario the arithmetic makes uncomfortably live. FY2025 operating profit was US$220m; the maintained 27.5–32.5% guide implies US$280–292m for FY2026. The first half delivered US$116.9m, up only 15%. That leaves US$164–175m for the second half against US$118.4m a year earlier — +38% to +47% growth, from a first half that managed +15%. Basis: reported to reported, which is the right frame because the guidance is struck against reported FY2025. Adding back the US$4.4m prior-year tax item that sat in Q1 FY2026 operating expenses eases the bar to +34–44% — lower, and still a long way from +15%. The argument survives either basis, which is why it is worth stating which one is used. If that fails, guidance is cut on 2026-11-11, the take rate slides toward 0.60% as Adyen and EBANX press on price and local-to-local keeps rising, FY2027 EPS resets to ~US$0.86 and the multiple de-rates to 12.5x. 12.5 × 0.86 = US$10.75, −24%. This is not a theoretical level: the stock traded at US$10.64 three months ago, on 18 May 2026, in the wake of the Q1 print — a 13.0% single-session fall on 15 May inside a 19.6% week. A repeat is a precedent, not a projection.
On the market-wide tail: the macro report carries an armed 'S&P 500 concentration / AI earnings-quality unwind' risk, with the trigger currently receding as breadth broadens. dLocal does not inherit it. It is not levered to AI capex or monetisation, is not an index top-weight, and its earnings carry no material non-operating mark-to-market (5.7% of net income). Firing a cohort de-rating leg here would be over-reading the rule; the bear above is entirely idiosyncratic.
Probability-weighted value: US$16.66 (0.25 × 21.00 + 0.50 × 17.45 + 0.25 × 10.75), or +17.6% against US$14.17. Worth noting what the distribution actually looks like: the upside and downside are close to symmetric in magnitude (+48% versus −24%) but the bear has a live, dated trigger on 2026-11-11 while the bull needs two things to go right. That asymmetry in timing, not in size, is why the short horizon is a HOLD and the ladder reads Half-Size.
Forecast: Technical group — the binding constraint. Two sub-conditions must flip. The MACD histogram is at −0.135 and has flattened over the last three sessions (−0.156 → −0.122 → −0.135); at that rate a cross back above zero needs roughly 2–4 weeks and requires price to reclaim the 20-day SMA at 14.67, 3.5% above. Basis: the 20-day SMA is falling ~0.02/day while the 50-day rises ~0.05/day, so the two converge toward ~14.4 by early September — a reclaim becomes progressively easier without price doing much. Confidence: Moderate. The pullback branch is the faster path: a tested higher low off the 13.81–13.90 shelf could satisfy the group within 1–2 weeks if the shelf is retested and holds. Confidence: Moderate — the shelf has three touches and Friday's low of 13.995 stopped just above it.
Catalyst group — unlikely before 2026-11-11. Catalyst-dependent by construction and the catalyst has just passed. The next chance is the Q3 print on 2026-11-11 (consensus EPS US$0.22, revenue US$395m — note both figures predate this print and the revenue estimate now sits below the quarter just delivered, so expect them to be revised up). Confidence: Unlikely in the next four weeks; dLocal's last two prints produced single-session reactions of −13.0% (15 May, on the Q1 print — part of a −19.6% week) and −4.0% (14 August), so the base rate for a >+5% move is poor.
Fundamental group — already met and expected to stay met. It would only fail if price rose above US$17.45 (+23%) or the driver score fell below 50, neither plausible inside a month.
The practical read: the ladder is at Half-Size and the realistic path to Full-Size runs through the 13.81–13.90 shelf holding, not through a breakout.
Forecast: Stop-loss — possible, not probable, inside 4–6 weeks. US$13.45 is 5.1% below the price and below a shelf that has held three times, but the ATR is 0.60 (4.2% of price) so the level is barely two average days away. A retest is likely; two consecutive closes through it is not, absent fresh news. Risk trigger: a hawkish FOMC minutes on 19 August driving the dollar higher.
Thesis invalidation — the one to diarise is 2026-11-11. Two of the four conditions could plausibly flip together on that date if the second-half operating-leverage step-up fails: a guidance cut, and gross profit over TPV breaking 0.65%. Two-of-N is the exit threshold. That single print is the highest-information event in this name's calendar, and the second half needs +38–47% operating-profit growth (reported basis; +34–44% adding back the Q1 prior-year tax item) against a first half that managed +15%.
Profit-target — unlikely in the next quarter. Requires +27% to US$18.00 and RSI above 70.
Position sizing not computed — specify your portfolio allocation and role for sizing guidance.
{
"ticker": "DLO",
"date": "2026-08-16",
"version": "v6",
"company": "DLocal Limited",
"brand": "dLocal",
"currency": "USD",
"reporting_currency": "USD",
"exchange": "NASDAQ",
"exchange_ticker": "NASDAQ:DLO",
"isin": "KYG290181018",
"api_ticker": "DLO",
"analysis_status": "donatien-pick",
"finder_ticker": "DLO",
"finder_exchange": "NASDAQ",
"sector": "Information Technology",
"gics_sector": "Information Technology",
"industry": "Emerging-Markets Payments / Cross-Border Financial Infrastructure",
"lifecycle_stage": "high_growth",
"price_at_rating": 14.17,
"price_asof_note": "2026-08-14 close (Friday). The run date 2026-08-16 is a Sunday; Friday's close is the latest print.",
"prior_price": 15.14,
"prior_report_date": "2026-07-31",
"signal_short": "HOLD",
"signal_medium": "BUY",
"signal_long": "BUY",
"primary_signal": "BUY",
"short_entry_confirmed": false,
"short_hold_reason": "technical_pending",
"short_cap_reason": "Short-horizon technical-confirmation cap. The Fundamental entry group is met on valuation, but Technical and Catalyst are both unmet \u2014 the 2026-08-13 print produced a -4.0% reversal on 2.58x average volume, not the >+5% the Catalyst group requires, and the MACD histogram was last positive on 2026-07-17 and has been negative for 20 consecutive sessions since 2026-07-20 \u2014 it was already negative on 2026-07-31, the date of the previous report, and on 2026-08-13, the date of the print, so the earnings reaction confirmed the loss of momentum rather than causing it. Buy on confirmation: a daily close back above the 20-day SMA (14.67) with the MACD histogram positive two days running, or a tested higher low off the 13.81-13.90 support shelf.",
"quality_score": 66,
"valuation_score": 78,
"timing_score": 61,
"driver_score": 70,
"quality_confidence": 72,
"valuation_confidence": 70,
"timing_confidence": 62,
"overall_confidence": 62,
"quality_detail": {
"industry_benchmark_name": "EM Payments (TPV growth + take-rate stability)",
"industry_benchmark_value": "TPV +92% YoY / gross-profit take rate 1.07% -> 0.72%",
"industry_benchmark_score": 58,
"moat_score": 60,
"moat_pricing_power": 32,
"moat_network_effects": 62,
"moat_switching_costs": 76,
"moat_cost_advantage": 56,
"moat_intangible_assets": 72,
"roic_percentile_vs_peers": 88,
"capital_allocation": 75,
"management_skin_in_game": 68,
"gross_profit_over_tpv_q2_2026": 0.72,
"gross_profit_over_tpv_q1_2026": 0.84,
"gross_profit_over_tpv_q2_2025": 1.07,
"gross_profit_over_tpv_fy2025": 0.99,
"gross_profit_over_tpv_fy2024": 1.15,
"net_revenue_retention_q2_2026": 153,
"tpv_retention_q2_2026": 188
},
"economic_alignment_stance": "Trend-Following",
"economic_alignment_conviction": 62,
"economic_alignment_pressure": "Neutral",
"economic_alignment_source": "watchlist-forecast (name-specific: DLO short N / medium O / long O)",
"macro_report_date": "2026-08-12",
"warranted_multiple": 27.7,
"actual_multiple": 13.15,
"val_multiple_basis": "forward P/E on FY2027 consensus diluted EPS of US$1.08 (FMP panel, n=4, dated before the 2026-08-13 print)",
"warranted_ratio": 0.475,
"val_band": "attractive",
"discount_rate_r": 9.13,
"risk_free_10y": 4.63,
"g_near": 15.0,
"g_term": 3.0,
"eps_trailing": 0.68,
"trailing_pe": 20.84,
"eps_forward_fy2026": 0.82,
"eps_forward_fy2027": 1.08,
"forward_pe_fy2026": 17.27,
"clean_pe": 13.15,
"clean_peg": 0.42,
"nonop_pct_of_net_income": 5.7,
"valuation_detail": {
"fcf_yield_q2_runrate": 7.1,
"fcf_yield_h1_annualised": 4.3,
"ev_usd_m": 3868,
"ev_basis": "market cap US$4,169.8m less CORPORATE cash US$369.1m plus financial liabilities US$64.6m and lease liabilities US$2.7m. The provider EV of ~US$3,275m nets TOTAL cash of US$794.9m, most of which is merchant float held against US$1,555m of trade payables and is not the company's to spend.",
"historical_valuation_decile": 3,
"sector_median_fwd_pe_est": 15.0,
"implied_growth_at_price": -2.5
},
"competitive_share_trajectory": "gaining volume, conceding price",
"competitive_threat_level": "elevated",
"timing_detail": {
"mtf_confluence": 66,
"risk_reward_score": 62,
"relative_strength_vs_spy": -6.6,
"relative_strength_vs_sector": -5.5,
"catalyst_clustering_score": 78,
"dynamic_macro_weight": 0.15,
"rsi_14": 46.3,
"atr_14": 0.6,
"sma50": 13.85,
"sma200": 13.37,
"sma20": 14.67
},
"relative_strength_vs_spy": -6.6,
"relative_strength_vs_sector": -5.5,
"relative_strength_sector_etf": "XLF",
"sector_mapping_note": "Deliberately split and disclosed in \u00a74: the valuation guardrail uses Information Technology (33x, the data providers' classification); relative strength and the macro row use Financials/XLF (the macro report's mapping). Neither is binding at an actual 13.15x.",
"local_to_local_pct_of_tpv": 61,
"local_to_local_pct_qoq_change": 6,
"composite_short": 66,
"composite_medium": 69,
"composite_long": 69,
"fair_value_est": 17.45,
"stop_loss": 13.45,
"target_price": 17.45,
"scenario_bull_target": 21.0,
"scenario_base_target": 17.45,
"scenario_bear_target": 10.75,
"scenario_bull_prob": 25,
"scenario_base_prob": 50,
"scenario_bear_prob": 25,
"scenario_weighted_value": 16.66,
"entry_groups_met": 1,
"entry_conviction": "Half-Size",
"exit_groups_live": 0,
"exit_action": "Hold",
"hard_gate_state": "caution",
"gates_caution": [
"Gate 5 - Regulatory / Binary Event: CAUTION, not triggered. No pending FDA-style decision, takeover or antitrust action, so the gate does not fire - but dLocal carries chronic elevated regulatory risk across its LatAm/Nigeria corridors, which is a standing elevated risk rather than a dated binary event, and is why the overall gate state is caution rather than clear."
],
"gates_triggered": [],
"do_not_buy_triggers": [],
"systemic_tail_inherited": false,
"systemic_tail_note": "DLO does not belong to the macro report's armed 'S&P 500 concentration / AI earnings-quality unwind' cohort: it is not levered to the AI capex or monetisation trade, is not an index top-weight, and its earnings carry no material non-operating mark-to-market (5.7% of TTM net income). The tail is not inherited into the Bear case.",
"analyst_consensus_target": 18.35,
"analyst_target_high": 21.0,
"analyst_target_low": 14.5,
"analyst_target_median": 18.0,
"analyst_bullish_pct": 69,
"analyst_coverage_count": 10,
"analyst_grades_count": 13,
"analyst_panel_staleness": "No price target issued in the last month (FMP lastMonthCount = 0; lastQuarterCount = 1). The panel predates the 2026-08-13 print \u2014 a recency discount is applied to the consensus sub-factor.",
"q2_2026_tpv_usd_m": 17694,
"q2_2026_revenue_usd_m": 399.664,
"q2_2026_gross_profit_usd_m": 127.15,
"q2_2026_operating_profit_usd_m": 64.161,
"q2_2026_net_income_usd_m": 54.775,
"q2_2026_diluted_eps": 0.18,
"q2_2026_adj_fcf_usd_m": 68.548,
"fy2025_operating_profit_usd_m": 220,
"h1_2026_operating_profit_usd_m": 116.933,
"fy2026_op_guidance_growth_pct": "27.5-32.5 (maintained)",
"fy2026_tpv_guidance_growth_pct": "60-70 (raised from 50-60)",
"fy2026_gp_guidance_growth_pct": "25-30 (raised from 22.5-27.5)",
"debt_definition_used": "Company-reported IFRS balance sheet at 2026-06-30: financial liabilities US$64.6m + lease liabilities US$2.7m. FMP's lease-inclusive totalDebt was NOT used. The US$150m senior unsecured facility signed 2026-08-12 (SOFR+200bp, matures 2029-08-14) post-dates the balance sheet and is disclosed separately.",
"next_update_date": "2026-08-31",
"next_update_basis": "default +14d (no impactful dated event inside the window; next earnings 2026-11-11). 2026-08-30 is a Sunday, rolled forward to the next trading day.",
"delta_vs_prior": "Price 15.14 -> 14.17 (-6.4%) across the 2026-08-13 Q2 print. The short-horizon signal is cut from BUY to HOLD on the technical-confirmation cap, so the Portfolio-Watchlist tile falls; medium and long stay BUY, so analysis_status keeps its donatien-pick value. THE CONVICTION LADDER WAS CUT: entry_conviction moved Full-Size -> Half-Size, entry_groups_met moved 2 -> 1, and short_entry_confirmed moved true -> false. The short entry path that the 31 July report recorded as confirmed is now closed; only the Fundamental path remains open. exit_action is Hold in both reports. Business Quality was marked down 6 points to 66, almost entirely on one sub-signal: the gross-profit take rate dropped again, to 0.72% of TPV from 0.84% last quarter, and pricing power inside the moat scorecard was cut with it. Valuation again scores 78 - the anchor still reads Attractive because the price fell faster than the forward estimate. Entry/Exit Timing eased 2 points to 61; the cause is NOT the print, since the MACD histogram went negative on 2026-07-20 and was already under water when the 31 July report was written. Separately the underlying-driver score rose 8 points to 70, because volume guidance was raised twice over and TPV growth accelerated to +92%.",
"layer1_self_audit": "Clean on arithmetic and framework compliance after one internal fix round (see Data Sources). Two residual judgement calls flagged for the independent auditor: (1) the forward multiple is struck on FY2027 consensus EPS from a panel that predates the print - the band holds on FY2026 (17.3x, ratio 0.62) and on a blended NTM basis (14.6x, ratio 0.53), so the Attractive read is not basis-dependent; (2) geographic concentration is scored on qualitative disclosure only - the quarterly release names seven markets but publishes no revenue-by-country split."
}
The calibration below is the machine-readable record this report is scored from, and the input to the next refresh's delta. The fields that matter most for the audit trail are the anchor set (warranted 27.7×, actual 13.15×, ratio 0.475, band attractive), the rate build (4.63 + 4.50 + 0.00 = 9.13, all in percent), the short-horizon cap fields (short_entry_confirmed false, short_hold_reason technical_pending) and the Donatien-Pick status, which is retained because medium and long remain BUY.
entry_groups_met: 2, entry_conviction: Full-Size and short_entry_confirmed: true. The ladder was cut Full-Size → Half-Size and the short entry path went from confirmed to closed. Corrected in the change log and in delta_vs_prior. The prior calibration was in hand when the claim was written, which makes this a process failure, not a data gap: no 'held' or 'unchanged' claim should be written without reading the prior file.short_cap_reason. The true figure makes the Technical group more clearly unmet, so the cap and the tile-fall are unaffected.