$NU: is Nubank Capital One in 1994 or Capital One in 2006? | Vanshap Capital

Nubank ($NU) has 140 million customers, roughly 60% of Brazil's adult population, an efficiency ratio around 20% versus 40-60% at the legacy banks, and ROEs in the 30s. Evan Vanderveer of Vanshap Capital has owned it for four years and thinks the market is still treating it like a risky EM bank instead of what he thinks it is: a tech company that happens to hold deposits, with a founder (David Vélez) who controls it and a runway that runs through Brazil's $100 billion banking profit pool, Mexico, Colombia, and eventually the US.

My pushback is the Capital One question. Capital One was the smartest data-science lender in the room, IPO'd in 1994, went up 13x in 12 years, and then spent the next 20 as a mature bank that lagged the market. Nubank was built by ex-Capital One people, so is this 1994 or 2006? We also get into what the right cost of equity is for a Brazilian bank trading at high-teens earnings with a 30% ROE, whether MELI and Kaspi tell you EM fintech never gets a big multiple, the 13,000-customers-per-employee stat, Brazil NPLs at 15-year highs, the wave of senior departures, whether any banking fintech has ever expanded across borders, Vélez joining OpenAI's board, and my bigger worry that AI eventually commoditizes every financial product and competes away the 30% ROE.

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