r/valueinvesting
Nu Bank 是一项被低估的成就 $NU
Nu Holdings 是一项被低估的成就，拥有 1.14 亿活跃客户和传统银行无法复制的专有技术栈。
- 拥有 1.14 亿活跃客户的庞大规模，远超 SoFi 等美国新型银行。
- 从零开始构建了专有且高度可扩展的银行平台，形成了强大的技术护城河。
- 传统银行在结构上无法实现数字化以匹配 Nu 的低成本基础和服务水平。
这是我关于 Nu Holdings（Nu Bank）的总体看法，欢迎任何批评意见，因为这纯粹是我随口说出的想法，希望能从这里其他成员那里获得反馈，让我能用不同观点来检验自己的想法。
简而言之，Nu Bank 是巴西最大的银行，大约十年前从一家小型信用卡发行商起步。
第一季度，其活跃客户总数达到 1.14 亿。其中，1200 万来自墨西哥，400 万来自哥伦比亚。而 SoFi 在第一季度仅有 1400 万“会员”。我想你们中很多人会对 SoFi 相较于 Nu Bank 的规模感到惊讶。
但规模可能会误导人，因为 Nu Bank 所处市场的收入水平自然较低，导致每位活跃客户的营收也更低。Revolut 拥有约 5000 万零售客户（不清楚是活跃用户还是账户数量）。Klarna 也在同一量级。我找到的最接近的可比对象并非新银行，而是 Capital One，约有 1 亿客户，而 Nu Bank 的许多管理层此前正是在这家银行工作过。
让我特别注意的是，他们从零开始，自主研发了一套专有的银行平台，甚至赞助了一种冷门的开源编程语言，他们的系统就是基于这个语言构建的。他们将这套系统扩展到了所有新银行中规模最大的客户群体，并且是在一个比美国或欧盟市场更加动荡的经济环境中完成的。然而，仍有不少人轻视这一成就，总喜欢说传统银行“只需数字化”就能竞争。
我认为并非如此，这也是我核心观点所在：传统银行无法以同样的低成本基础，或同等服务水平进行竞争。永远不可能。我认为关闭几个分行、买个新前端界面根本解决不了问题。我觉得从头建立一家新银行，远比改造一家传统银行容易得多。这是我的强烈个人信念（意味着如果我错了，后果很严重）。在我看来，传统银行的服务和层级结构更像一个腐败的苏联政府机构，而不是一家现代科技公司。此外，我认为传统银行仍在从事购买或租赁办公室、雇佣大量人员做无用功的业务，靠那些本应免费的服务收取手续费赚钱。请看以下效率比率（即运营支出 / 收入，可理解为每产生一美元收入所对应的成本）：
Nu Holdings 19%
JPMorgan Chase 52%
BNP Paribas 61%
Deutsche Bank 72%
SoFi Technologies 81%（待确认是否与增长相关）
UBS 86%
由于讨论主题的性质，有必要做一些澄清。银行形态各异，业务差异巨大。宝马银行通过促成汽车贷款提供短期现金回报；一些投资银行只服务超高净值人群。而 Nu Bank 是一家商业银行。商业银行为普通客户和企业提供账户及信贷服务。商业银行最初的职能是吸收存款，这些多余的现金存款会被银行中介给需要贷款的客户，从而产生利息收入。除此之外，银行通常还会收取各种费用，这是银行的第二条收入来源。与大众普遍认知相反，投资银行主要靠收费盈利。瑞士巨头 UBS 只有 18% 的总收入来自利息收入。我认为银行的“核心”业务是客户资金的中介运作。Nu 银行 86% 的收入来自利息收入，而 SoFi 仅占 63%。
这一点值得注意。第一，它的低成本基础；第二，即便在以利息收入为主的情况下，依然保持了极低的成本结构，而非依赖手续费。
但银行终究是银行，天生就晦涩复杂，尤其从外部看更是如此。它们本质上是高风险投资，整个资产负债表可能在短时间内剧烈重估。在历次金融危机中，当重估结束时，许多人发现已无股权可言——银行破产了。
在我的个人现金流折现模型中，基于 10 年时间跨度的假设，我给出每股 25 美元的合理估值（翻倍）：
- 10 年后，全球（以美国为主）的市场规模将超过巴西-墨西哥-哥伦比亚组合；
- 10 年后，Nu 银行将覆盖墨西哥一半的银行业务；
- 净利润率和业务活动保持稳定；
- 每年 ARPAC 增长 6%；
- 用户增长率每年放缓 100 个基点。
我认为，对于这样一家杰出的企业，当前股价不算便宜，但绝对不算是高估。更可能的情况是，目前股价基本合理。在我看来，近期的回调为买入该股提供了合理的入场时机。
主要的看跌因素在于，市场似乎怀疑 Nu 能否进入美国市场，毕竟那里的竞争环境要激烈得多。此外，最近 CFO 因个人原因退出了职位。他在市场中备受喜爱，曾带领公司从 IPO 走到今天的位置。再加上，公司大部分业务仍集中在巴西，政治动荡和监管压力都处于高位。拉美地区的政治风险是每个投资该区域的投资者都必须高度警惕的问题。
尽管如此，考虑到金融服务对我们日常生活的重要性——我们每天都在使用这些服务——以及它们在我们生活中的结构性地位，我一直觉得奇怪：为什么至今没有一家银行市值突破万亿？在我看来，现在的银行都是管理糟糕的落后企业，是过时的残余物。抱歉了，Jamie。
While NU is amazing, I prefer MELI. Has the same business as a branch, with more levers for monetization.
I prefer Nu because it is focussed on one thing.
Valid, im sure both will be winners long term
I'm in 5k shares, might add more.
Aren’t most of their profits in Brazilian reals? If so, as a US investor isn’t the currency appreciation or depreciation vs. the US dollar extremely important to a long-term investment?
not only their profits! The entire economy of brazil is in reals!
For a 10-year view, short-term defaults are mostly noise unless they break a structural threshold. I'd change my mind if their funding cost advantage relative to local incumbents (like Itaú) starts shrinking, or if they have to dilute equity to cover credit losses in a severe Brazil cycle. If their customer acquisition cost stays under $10 and their deposit beta remains low, the long-term compounding thesis is usually intact. What's your constant discount rate target for them?
I mostly track Nu's 15-90 day NPL trends against BCB systemic defaults. The BCB data comes out monthly, so it shows macro shifts before Nu reports their quarterly cohorts. How do you adjust your discount rate when their early-stage defaults tick up?
Solid write up.
I like NU, but I'm already very concentrated in MELI. I like the fact that credit spreads are only one smaller component of the business, especially given the extremely debt-laden consumer in Brazil and the sky-high interest rates that underscore the whole system. Obviously NU has navigated this system extraordinarily well, but the vast majority of their business is built on this dynamic.
MELI gets to participate in that lucrative but high risk portion of Brazil's economy, but has a gigantic Ecommerce and Fintech wing that make money from listing fees, advertising, payment processing, etc. They are also more geographically diversified, and have narrowed the gap of active Pago users vs NuBank customers. Not a perfectly apples to apples comparison, but I think MELI is as good as it gets in LATAM, and I prefer the optionality.
Picked this one up almost randomly two weeks ish ago, looked over the chart first… the after reading into it more bought some shares, crashed like 10% immediately after so I dca’d down… read more. I took back some of the dry powder but next dip I’m going to dca in more, liking the emerging market and fintech double play it adds
I picked up a bunch of NU shares in May. I agree that it has a lot of potential. All of the companies out of Brazil are trading at a Brazil discount.
What the user-growth charts miss is that the card was never the business, it was a way to crush customer acquisition cost toward nothing. Once someone is in the app, the same account becomes deposits, lending, insurance and a brokerage with almost no new spend to sell each product. So revenue per customer keeps climbing on cohorts they already paid to acquire years ago, while those cheap deposits fund the loan book instead of borrowing wholesale. That stacked spread on already-acquired users is the engine, not the signup count.
If amazon only did AWS I would hold amazon
That’s NBIS
How or why can Nubank retain deposits? Why not switch to the next online bank which offers a slightly higher deposit rate?
Better yet, Mercadopago offers money market funds, why not switch to those? I think Nubank offers something similar to a money market rate but Mercadopago has been pretty aggressive in seeking deposits and they have some synergies with their commerce business so they might be willing to run a loss to gain those customers.
There are very high provisions at Nubank. Are they provisioning correctly? What is the typical default rate for a loan portfolio in Latin America in recent downturns?