Nu Videocast | Cristina Junqueira | Building a Global Brand | Marca Global

Thank you, Leila. It's a pleasure to be here. Hi, everyone.

Yeah, of course. I think there are two parts of that question. One is like, why are we doing this? And the second one is, why are we doing this now? Right? On the "why?", let me start with the "why now?". Brand building takes a long time. And we've been talking a little bit about how our next chapter is going to be, about going beyond Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. And for that, we're going to need to build the brand that we've built, initially in Brazil and then into these other countries. And that's work that takes a lot of time. It's a multi-year process, right? It's funny because somebody asked: "well, you know, why are you making these investments? You don't even have a business there." Yes, exactly. If we had a business, if people knew us, we probably wouldn't need this, right? So it's very exciting to be able to partner with these teams, with these franchises, and be able to already set the foundation for us to build the love brand that we have in Brazil. Right? We started some 13 years ago, and it's incredible for us to be the most admired brand in Brazil, the most loved brand in Brazil. And depending on the ranking, some of them will place us as the most valuable brand in Brazil. Some of them will place us among the top three or top five. But regardless, that's competing against brands that have been here for decades. Some of them have been here for over 100 years and suddenly we're as valuable as they are. Like, it's just mind-blowing. So this is work that's going to take years, is going to require some foundation. That's what we're starting early. And why are we doing like these specific deals? We spent the whole year last year or even before that, trying to map all the different territories that we could tap into to start building this brand internationally. And we looked into sports, we looked into culture, we looked into entertainment, we looked into many different aspects. And we very carefully chose these two. So let's start with Mercedes, which was the one that we announced first. So F1 is truly a global platform. Like, there's no other sport that you come into a team and they're immediately competing globally, right. All eyeballs from all over the world are there, in this one championship across 24 races around the circuit. And with truly global teams, global drivers, from all over the world. And it's a sport that is growing also a lot. And it's also one that adds immediate value to our current operations. Because for those that don't know, actually Brazil is the number one country for F1 in terms of number of fans. Mexico is also pretty high on the list because the races in São Paulo and Mexico City are very traditional. Our races have been around, the F1 calendar, for a very long time. So there's a huge fan base in Brazil. We have a long history of Brazilian drivers. It's a national passion. Absolutely. I grew up to Senna, but not just him. We have the Fittipaldi family. We've had Rubens Barrichello that ran, raced along with Schumacher and we've had Felipe Massa since then. So there's a long tradition of so many Brazilian drivers that have built this national passion beyond soccer. And Mercedes is a phenomenal team, when you look, since they've been in F1, since they've come back, which is a little under 20 years, no one has their track record. No one has won as many races as they have or as many championships as they have. So not only they have a very strong performance track record, but we are also very impressed by them, by Toto, by the drivers, we're big fans of the team, of their personalities, of their leadership style. The way that they run things. They're great people to be partners with. Very competitive, very, very competitive. Not unlike us, right? Not unlike us. That's something that we share. You know. But at the same time, very thoughtful, that really want to build this true partnership. We especially like the fact that Mercedes is the team on the grid that has the fewer amount of partners. They cherry-pick the people that they they'll do business with, that they'll bring into the team. Got to have that alignment, right? Absolutely. They're very keen on ensuring that we have an alignment of values, very keen on ensuring that this brand is going to connect, it is going to resonate well with their audience, and they were especially interested in our fandomship, you know, in how people love our brand in the markets that we operate in, and also in bringing like this B2C aspect, into Formula One that has been historically a territory of more like B2B brands and B2B activations. So we're very excited to bring something very interesting to life with them. And then the second one, oh my God, Inter Miami, can you believe that? Can you believe that we're investing on their team, this phenomenal team? So, similar story. Soccer is the number one sport in the world, right? It's a world sport. Inter Miami specifically, while it is technically a team in the US league, in the MLS, it's truly a global franchise. And one of the things, we spent the whole year of last year, a whole of 2025 discussing this partnership with them and building, shaping how this was going to look like. And I remember I went to Rome because it was the Jubilee year last year, and I was in the middle of the Vatican, inside Saint Peter's Basilica. And I look around, there's this family of like South Korean people, with three kids, all three wearing Messi jerseys from Inter Miami. So, you don't get more global than that. You're in Rome, with this South Korean family and we're there. It truly is like this international franchise as well. Inter Miami, similarly to F1, they have fans in Brazil, in Mexico, in Colombia. Inter Miami Jersey is, to the degree that we know, the number one jersey sold in Mexico. Is super well sold in Brazil too, they have a huge fan base. And in Latin America, obviously, and in a bunch of different markets that we're also interested in tapping into. And also the layers of the partnership are very interesting. We're not only going to be the main partner of the team, we're going to be on their jersey. On the jersey that Messi is going to retire on, which is also something brand new that we worked with them and with the league to bring to life. That's amazing. So we're going to be the first partner to be on the back of the jersey. We're going to be naming their stadium, which looks phenomenal, it's such a beautiful stadium and will offer such a phenomenal experience to guests when they come for live experiences, not just the matches, but also all the different concerts and events that they're going to be able to host. What else? This is part of Miami Freedom Park, the district, that is going to be the new upcoming, like, cool district in Miami, which is a city that has become like this international destination, is attracting so much wealth. So anyway, I'll pause here because I could talk about this for hours. And I could listen to it, but I'm really want to – I want you to ask the questions, but I could talk about this for hours.

Yeah, of course. So, one of the things that I told everyone, I guess, but let's take F1. F1 is known to be a bit of an expensive experience for people, right? There is a stat that says that less than 1% of fans of F1 will ever, in their lifetime, go to a race. So we're talking about over 100 million people worldwide. Less than 1% of them are ever going have that chance. I mean, we have the advantage that it's also nicer to watch on TV, I would argue. It's one of the best sports to watch on TV, because I've been on tracks my fair amount of times. Cars are racing very fast, you can barely understand who's passing you by. So it's actually a great experience for you to watch at home. And the way that we're thinking about this is like, sure, we're going to have some opportunities in key races. If you think about São Paulo, Mexico City, Miami is another one that we're going to activate this year, to bring guests, but there's only so many people that we are going to be able to bring. I think the true value that we're going to be able to add is activating these assets off-tracks. So we're very excited about creating experiences for fans beyond the racetracks, like in the cities, maybe where the races are coming, or even in cities that are not getting a race, but maybe they're getting an experience that fans can enjoy and, of course, digitally, right? We're very excited about creating content, creating experiences, creating ways that the fans can interact with those franchises and with our brand in a way that is very different, that is unique, that will allow them to really experience the passion that we want to bring into this, in a very different and unique way. So, we're also working on merchandise, which is something very exciting. That's something else that people crave. You know, it's very hard to have access to merchandise of F1. In some of our markets, it's often limited supply, it's very expensive. So we're going to try to work with them on interesting pieces. Anyway, there are many angles the fans can expect that we're going to bring this to life and to them.

That's the plan. That's the plan.

Yeah, this can look a little different, right? Than what we've done historically. But the way that I would think about this is like, it's not different, is additive. So everything that helped us build our brand, like in the beginning in Brazil and then, you know, in our other markets, in terms of having a phenomenal product, treating customers extremely well, designing the customer experience for people to really be delighted with the touchpoints that they have with the brand. All that is still here, and I would argue even more so. As we think about the next markets, because the world has been trying to catch up with us. So when we did this some 12, 13 years ago, this was very new, you know. No one had thought about this. But we've been giving people a lot of references over the years for them to try to copy us. So I think in a way, there's a lot of what we've done that we're going to keep that we're going to enhance that we're going to boost. And we do expect, as David says, that in a world full of choices, customers are going to choose the best product, the best experience. So we continue to deeply believe that. But at the same time, we are in a position today to accelerate that curve, to accelerate the awareness curve. To accelerate how fast people are going to know that we exist, how fast they're going to hear about us, how fast they're going to understand what is it that we stand for. So we are making some investments, like the ones that we described. But the way that I think about them, they're first, they're all above the line, as we call it. So they're about the brand experience, the brand foundation, the brand equity, and what we stand for. They're not bottomline conversion, like very aggressive. So that's a piece that we're not in a rush to build just yet, you know. So it's really about like building this foundation of the brand, fully acknowledging that, especially when we think about the US, which is the next market that we're coming into, it's a very competitive market that is very hard to cut through the noise. So we're really looking at this in a way that tries to answer the question: "what is the unique angle that we can tap into, that we can come into, that will make us, that will allow us to stand out and that will resonate with people?". And the way you do that is meeting people where they want to be, not interrupting them, not trying to get their attention while they're like, being entertained. It's about meeting them where they are. Yeah. It's not more noise, right? It's not more noise or interruptions, it's actually offering them something that they're interested in, that they're going to enjoy. So that's the spirit of what is it that we're trying to do here.

Yeah. So that's a great question and something that we've meditated a lot on before we decided to take this next step. We've always told this story about Mexico, even, when we first went to a country beyond Brazil. And we started thinking about Mexico many years before, but we felt that we needed to earn the right to go to Mexico. We felt that we needed to have things in Brazil a bit more stable, we want to have a clear path for profitability, for growth. That's when we decided to take the first step in Mexico. This is not unlike the story of how we're thinking about this now. We've been thinking a lot about this for a very long time. We feel that Brazil is in a great place, extremely profitable, extremely high ROEs which is great. Mexico, super on track about to become a bank to be operational, but also, with a balance that the – with a book that keeps growing in a very profitable way, not yet turning a profit because of all the growth but in a very profitable way that we're bringing that growth. Colombia has also been doing really well, and now feels like a good time for us to take the next leap. Having said that, the way that we think about these investments, again, one of the things that we're very excited about them is how they add value for Brazil, Mexico, Colombia from the get go. Right? So it's not just about putting a lot of money against our international expansion further than those three countries, but those are actually investments that we're going to be able to amortize across our current operations. Take Brazil, for instance. We've been building our "Ultravioleta" brand for a while now. Not for a while, I would say for three years now. And this is a phenomenal – those two assets are phenomenal assets for the high-income segment in Brazil that we're going to be able to work with. In Mexico, same thing, Mexico is a big soccer country, is a big F1 country. People are going to be very excited to be able to have access in some shape or form in the way that we're going to bring the fandomship to them. And this is going to help us accelerate the awareness curve, the consideration curve for the brand in Mexico. So there's a lot to like. There's a lot to like about how we're positioning these investments in the moment that Brazil, Mexico, Colombia are. In Brazil, we're at a moment in which, although we've been operating regulated entities for over ten years now, ten years, and operating as a banking conglomerate for a while now, we're also going to acquire or, we're going to – we're going to get a bank license this year, the final cherry on the top of our regulatory structure this year, we're about to become a bank in Mexico. So, very interesting moments, very interesting mature moments for us to layer these investments on top of, being able to amortize them while we're also paving the way for the future.

It is, the reality is, what we've learned after doing three of them, is that building a new country takes a lot of work. It's not easy, right? Of course we're getting better. And building Mexico was better than building Brazil and building Colombia was better than building Mexico. And we're working really hard so that building the US is going to be better than the previous ones. But it's a lot of work, of course. These are regulated sectors. We have chosen – there are different fintechs out there that chose a different path, they're not necessarily too keen on being regulated. We're on the other end of that spectrum, right? Like we've always embraced regulation. We've been operating regulated entities for over ten years now. The way that we do things takes a lot of effort. So, we wanted to find the moment in which we could afford to invest the capacity, which is not a big distraction to the company, we have less than 10% of the resources of the company actually dedicated to the international expansion and platformization. But at the same time, we said, well, if we're going to put in the effort, why not go for the opportunity that is the biggest opportunity? because building a country like the US that is huge, is the largest financial services market out there, it's almost the same work as building a much smaller – a country that is like, 5% of it. So even a sliver of the US market would be more meaningful to us than any other country that we could tap into right now. And even a sliver of it could make this business as relevant for us as Brazil is, because the reality is, there's one figure that we're always blown away by, which is: in the next five years, the U.S financial services market is going to grow the size of a Brazil. You have states like Texas or California, even Florida is about to surpass the GDP of Brazil. Wow. So when we put things into perspective, we don't have to get to where we are in Brazil in the U.S for this to be meaningful. Quite the contrary. Like we don't expect to come in and in ten years be where we are in Brazil, where 60% of the adult population is a customer. Sure. If we get there, it would be phenomenal. Amazing. Oh my God. But the reality is that even 5, 10 million customers in the US are already going to be so meaningful in terms of revenue, in terms of net income, in terms of what we can bring to the company.