Nu Holdings is down 33% from its peak. But it's still growing 40% a year.

Latin America's largest digital bank is earning more than ever, while its shares have lost more than a third of their value since their January peak. The market isn't questioning growth itself, but it has repriced the political, currency and credit risks that come with it. The key question is how much of the next phase of growth is already priced in.

Current price and market capitalization

Nu Holdings $NU shares reached their all-time high on January 29, 2026, when they hit 18.98 USD during trading. The highest closing price came a day earlier, at 18.76 USD. As of today, the shares were trading around 12.1 USD, having lost roughly a third of their value from the peak. More precisely, they are down 35.5% from their highest closing price. With roughly 4.83 billion shares (the number reported as of the record date for this year's annual general meeting), market capitalization is approximately 58 billion USD.

The decline was not even. By July, shares had lost roughly a quarter of their value, then climbed back above 16 USD in mid-August after record second-quarter results. The decisive blow came only on October 26. The day after the second round of Brazil's presidential election, in which Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won reelection, the shares plunged by double digits along with the broader Brazilian market and the real.

Twelve months versus the market

As of November 12, 2025, the shares closed at 16.18 USD. Over the past twelve months, they have therefore lost approximately 25%, while the S&P 500 gained roughly 10% over the same period. Other Brazilian assets traded in New York also fell, but Nu Holdings was hit by a combination of a high starting valuation and strong sensitivity to Brazilian sentiment.

Is the company really growing 40%?

The 40% growth claim is accurate when it comes to revenue. In the second quarter of 2026, gross revenue increased 39% year over year after adjusting for currency effects. In US dollars, it was even 50%, as the real strengthened during the year. Net income grew 49% in constant currencies and 67% in dollars. Customer numbers, on the other hand, increased by just 13%. The long-term pace is even higher: revenue rose from approximately 4.8 billion USD in 2022 to 15.8 billion USD in 2025, equivalent to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 49%.

A branchless bank that grew from a card

From a purple card to 139 million customers

Nubank was founded in São Paulo in 2013 by Colombian David Vélez, Brazilian Cristina Junqueira and American Edward Wible. Its first product was a credit card with no annual fee, managed entirely through a mobile app - a direct challenge to Brazil's banking market, dominated by five large institutions with high fees and slow service. In December 2021, parent company Nu Holdings went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Today it operates in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia and served 138.9 million customers at the end of June 2026. It has nearly 118 million customers in Brazil, 15.8 million in Mexico and over 5 million in Colombia.

Since the end of 2025, the company has reported a management statement alongside its IFRS financial results, breaking down gross profit by source. In the second quarter of 2026, lending (credit cards, personal loans and secured loans, including payroll loans) accounted for 41% of gross profit, 34% came from its deposit base (the so-called float, or the difference between the return earned on invested deposits and the interest paid to customers), and 25% came from fees, including card interchange fees, insurance, investment products and payment services. This mix explains why the company handles Brazil's high interest rates better than fintechs focused solely on lending: what it loses to more expensive funding, it partly makes up through returns on deposits.

Why its operating costs are so low

A key economic advantage is the cost of servicing each active customer, which has long remained around 1 USD per month, while average monthly revenue per active customer (ARPAC) reached 17.1 USD. The company has no branch network, and most customers come through referrals, so marketing accounted for only around 104 million USD of operating expenses totaling 806 million USD in the second quarter. The efficiency ratio is around 20%, while large Brazilian banks have long reported figures around 40%.

Its proprietary credit models are gradually shifting to NuFormer, an internal foundation model trained on customers' financial behavior. According to management, it already powers credit card approvals in Brazil and Mexico, as well as personal loans in Brazil. In practice, this means gradually raising credit limits: the company starts with a low limit, monitors the customer's actual behavior and expands the credit line only as trust grows. The model is difficult to replicate not because of the technology itself, but because of the scale of data on tens of millions of customers that traditional banks have never served.

Growth is shifting from customers to their wallets

Customers are growing more slowly, but still quickly

The company added 17 million customers in 2025 and roughly 4 million in each of the first two quarters of this year. Brazil is nearing saturation: the company serves approximately 62% of the adult population there, and the share of active customers exceeds 86%. Further customer growth will therefore increasingly depend on Mexico and Colombia, while in Brazil the focus is mainly on deepening customer relationships.

ARPAC has been the most important metric over the past two years. It was 12.5 USD in the second quarter of 2025, 15 USD at the end of the year and 17.1 USD in the second quarter of 2026, up 37% year over year. Some of this improvement reflects the stronger real, but most comes from higher credit limits, increased purchase volumes (43.4 billion USD in the second quarter versus 33.3 billion a year earlier) and broader product adoption among longer-standing customers. The cost of servicing each customer rose only from 0.8 to 1 USD. The gap between revenue and cost per customer is therefore widening, which is precisely the operating leverage at the heart of the investment thesis.

Loans and deposits

The loan portfolio reached 39.4 billion USD as of June 30, 2026, up 37% year over year in constant currencies. Credit cards account for 26 billion USD, unsecured loans for 10.3 billion and secured loans for 3.1 billion USD. Secured products are growing fastest, gradually reducing the portfolio's average risk. Deposits rose to 45.3 billion USD, of which 36.4 billion is in Brazil, 5.7 billion in Mexico and 3.3 billion in Colombia. The average cost of deposits was 88% of the interbank rate, 3 percentage points lower than a year earlier.

Monetization is keeping pace with growth

The data show that the company is not growing its customer base faster than its ability to earn from them. Quite the opposite: customer numbers are growing 13%, revenue 39% and profit 49%. The strongest evidence is Mexico, where, according to management, new customer cohorts have ARPAC of 12.3 USD at the same stage of development, compared with 5.6 USD in Brazil. The model is therefore monetizing more quickly in the new market than it did at home.