dLocal Grew Operating Profit 15% In The First Half. The Guide It Did Not Raise Requires 38% To 48% In The Second.

by Yemi Abiodun · August 17, 2026

Guidance & Outlook Reporter, Earnings Dispatch

dLocal Limited reported second-quarter results after Thursday's close, and the guidance table did two things at once. The Montevideo-based cross-border payments processor raised its full-year 2026 total payment volume growth target to 60%-70% from 50%-60%, and raised full-year gross profit growth to 25%-30% from 22.5%-27.5%. The third line it left exactly where it has been since March: operating profit growth of 27.5%-32.5%. The release states it plainly — "Operating profit guidance maintained at 27.5-32.5% year-over-year." That untouched line is the one carrying the strain, and the arithmetic behind it is the most demanding figure in the company's own guidance table.

Start with what the quarter actually contained. dLocal processed $17.7 billion of TPV in the three months to June 30, against $9.2 billion in the same quarter of 2025 — growth of 92% on a reported basis. Revenue was $399.7 million versus $256.5 million, up 56% as reported and, the company said, 50% on a constant-currency basis. Gross profit reached $127.2 million against $98.9 million, up 29% reported and 23% in constant currency. Note the direction of the currency effect: reported growth ran ahead of constant-currency growth on both lines, meaning currency moves flattered the headline rather than depressing it. That is the reverse of the pattern most emerging-market reporters have shown this season, and it is not a one-quarter artefact — dLocal's full-year 2025 TPV growth was 70% reported against 64% in constant currency. The release does not present a side-by-side reported-versus-constant-currency table; the constant-currency figures appear only in narrative sentences, and those sentences are the source here.

Operating profit was $64.2 million, against $55.8 million a year earlier. That is growth of 15%. It was also 15% in the first quarter, when operating profit was $52.8 million against $45.8 million. Two quarters, the same number, and both of them roughly half the pace the full-year guidance calls for.

The guidance history matters here because the operating profit range has never moved. dLocal set it on March 18, when it published 2025 results showing full-year TPV of $40,816 million, revenue of $1,093.6 million, gross profit of $402.8 million, operating profit of $219.9 million and net income of $196.9 million. Alongside those figures it guided 2026 to TPV growth of 50%-60%, gross profit growth of 22.5%-27.5% and operating profit growth of 27.5%-32.5%. On May 14, reporting the first quarter, the company labelled the guidance unchanged. On Thursday it lifted two of the three ranges and held the third.

One point of housekeeping, because it changes how every figure below should be read. dLocal is a Uruguay-domiciled foreign private issuer and reports in US dollars under IFRS as issued by the IASB, not US GAAP. The operating profit and gross profit figures used throughout are IFRS line items straight from the company's statements, not non-GAAP adjusted measures. As of Monday, August 17 the company had not filed a Form 6-K carrying the second-quarter results, so the second-quarter figures here come from the release dLocal issued on August 13; the full-year 2025 base is taken from the fourth-quarter earnings release filed with the SEC as an exhibit on March 18.

Run the operating profit range against the base. Applied to 2025 operating profit of $219.9 million, growth of 27.5% produces $280.4 million for 2026 and growth of 32.5% produces $291.4 million. First-half 2026 operating profit was $116.9 million. Subtracting leaves an implied second half of $163.5 million to $174.5 million. The comparison period is second-half 2025 operating profit, which is full-year 2025's $219.9 million less first-half 2025's $101.6 million, or $118.3 million. So the maintained guidance implies second-half operating profit growth of approximately 38% at the bottom of the range and 48% at the top — after 15% in each of the first two quarters.

The raised gross profit guide points the other way, which is what makes the combination unusual. Growth of 25%-30% on the $402.8 million base gives full-year gross profit of $503.5 million to $523.6 million. First-half gross profit was $245.8 million, so the implied second half is $257.7 million to $277.8 million against $219.0 million in the second half of 2025 — growth of roughly 18% to 27%. First-half gross profit grew 34%. In other words, dLocal raised the gross profit guide to a range that still embeds deceleration, because the first half had already overshot the old one.

Put the two implied ranges together and the cost side becomes the whole story. The gap between gross profit and operating profit — every expense dLocal books between those two lines — was $128.9 million in the first half of 2026, against $82.2 million in the first half of 2025, an increase of about 57%. In the second half of 2025 that same gap was $100.7 million. Pairing the low ends of the two guided ranges implies a second-half 2026 gap of $94.2 million; pairing the high ends implies $103.4 million. The most permissive combination available — the top of the gross profit range with the bottom of the operating profit range — caps the second-half gap at $114.4 million, and the tightest, the bottom of the gross profit range with the top of the operating profit range, puts it at $83.2 million. Because the largest of those four corners is $114.4 million, every combination of dLocal's own two guided ranges requires second-half costs to land below the first half's $128.9 million in absolute dollars, having just grown 57% year over year.

Before calling that a gap in the story, it is worth saying plainly that dLocal flagged the shape of it five months ago. Among the key considerations attached to the original March guidance, the company listed a "New OPEX baseline post-2025 investment cycle, temporarily pressuring 1H26 margins but driving operating leverage improvements in 2H26." The second-half-weighted profile is not a discovery; it is the plan the company published. What the first-half results do is fix the size of the swing that plan now requires.

Where the gross margin went is disclosed rather than inferred. dLocal put gross profit over TPV at 0.72% for the second quarter, down from 1.07% in the second quarter of 2025 and 0.84% in the first quarter of 2026. Gross profit as a share of revenue was 32%, against 39% a year earlier and 35% in the first quarter. The company attributed the compression to a higher local-to-local share of volume, the ramp-up of large merchants, and the margin dynamics of scaling volume with established merchants and into new payment methods, products and countries. It also described structural volume-based discounting in its March guidance considerations as a sign of scale and of long-term merchant relationships. This is a business converting a rapidly growing top line into gross profit at a materially lower rate than it did a year ago, and saying so.

On the earnings call, according to the transcript published by Investing.com, management set out why it is comfortable holding the operating profit range. Chief executive Pedro Arnt said the company expects further operating leverage improvements to kick in over the next two quarters as it benefits from the deployment of the automation and artificial intelligence it has been investing in. Chief financial officer Guillermo López Pérez named three cost factors behind the first-half step-up: the annualisation of investment made in the second half of 2025; higher average salaries driven by the annual merit cycle and a limited number of senior strategic hires; and marketing spend concentrated in the first half, around a World Cup campaign and large merchant events. He separately pointed to higher credit loss provisions, higher operational losses and the prior-year tax adjustments as first-half items not expected to repeat. Susquehanna's James Friedman asked why the operating profit guide was not raised given the results; Arnt answered that, were the company to adjust out the prior-year tax item, it is likely it would have raised the operating income guidance as well, but that it would rather not make the adjustment. In setting out the maintained range, management said annual operating profit will be dragged down by the non-recurring prior-year tax item and by FX headwinds. Only one rendering of the call exists, so these remarks are paraphrased from the transcript rather than quoted.

That prior-year tax item is worth isolating, because it is the kind of one-off that contaminates a comparison in both directions. dLocal disclosed a one-off prior-periods tax adjustment of $9.7 million in the first quarter, related to instalment payment products in certain markets. Of that, $4.4 million sat in first-quarter operating expenses and therefore inside operating profit. Its own first-quarter presentation showed operating profit of $53 million at 15% growth as reported, and $57 million at 25% growth excluding the adjustment. Carrying the $4.4 million through the six months lifts first-half operating profit to roughly $121.3 million and first-half growth to about 19%. Cleaner, and still well short of the 27.5%-32.5% full-year range.

Two further figures deserve labels rather than headlines. Second-quarter net income was $54.8 million against $42.8 million, up 28%, and second-quarter diluted earnings per share were $0.18 against $0.14. For the six months, though, net income was $96.7 million against $89.5 million — growth of 8% — which means first-quarter net income of $41.9 million was actually below the $46.7 million of the year-earlier first quarter. First-half diluted EPS of $0.33 against $0.30 grew 10%, slightly faster than the 8% net income line, consistent with the 6.9 million Class A shares dLocal repurchased for $86.1 million through the end of the quarter under the $300 million programme authorised in March. All per-share figures here are diluted.

Arnt's comment in the release addressed the durability of the volume story directly, and did not skip the harder part. "TPV growth has remained above 50% year-over-year for seven consecutive quarters, with the last three quarters at or above 70%. Growth has also accelerated over the past five quarters, reaching its highest year-over-year rate in four years. Although the pace and scale of this growth will naturally create more demanding comparisons as we move through the second half of the year and into 2027, what we are seeing today reflects the positive returns on the investments we have made in our platform and portfolio of licenses. It is also a testament to the trust merchants place in us as they build and grow across emerging markets." The raised TPV guide carries the same implication as the gross profit guide: 60%-70% full-year growth on the $40,816 million base implies second-half volume growth of roughly 43% to 60%, against 83% in the first half.

In the session after the report, on Friday, August 14, dLocal's Nasdaq-listed shares closed at $14.17, down 4.00% from the previous close of $14.76, according to StockAnalysis data; the 52-week range runs from $10.64 to $16.78. Markets have not traded since. The number to watch when dLocal reports its third quarter is not TPV, which the company has now guided above its own prior expectations twice, and not gross profit, where the raised range still assumes deceleration. It is the gap between gross profit and operating profit, which on the company's own guided ranges has to shrink in dollar terms — not merely grow more slowly — for the one guidance line dLocal chose not to touch to hold.