Not surprisingly, the stronger CEO, Michael Barrett of Rubicon, will lead the new company. TLRA has many followers/holders here. RUBI has been my choice, primarily due to the stronger leadership of Barrett. Now we are one.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rubicon-project-telaria-agree…
RUBI has been my choice, primarily due to the stronger leadership of Barrett. Now we are one.
Perhaps you’d like to tell us a bit more about why RUBI has been your choice?
There was a time when I was looking at Rubicon. This was while the company was posting great results and giving awful guidance, much worse than the typical sandbagging that goes on today. The stock ran up for a bit and then plummeted though I don’t recall the exact reasoning as I never bought any. Without looking I’d guess this was about 2.5 years ago.
Has RUBI resurrected itself and what do you think about the new, combined company?
If you wouldn’t mind elaborating a bit, I’m sure others would be interested.
Thanks,
A.J.
I could do some research later, but i really døn’t have much to add. RUBI, like TLRA, is a turnaround story in a competing steaming adtech business. Many of the favorable arguments made here for TLRA apply to RUBI, which serves both the buy and sell side, as i understand it.
People ask me to site my reasons often after i feel i have plainly stated them. My edge is in identifying outstanding leadership, capable of leading a much bigger company than the one i buy. Companies tend to grow or shrink to the size of their leadership, IMO. I have elsewhere defined what i mean by outstanding leadership. I use the work of the late Elliott Jaques to measure CEO capability. Integrity and shareholder friendliness is less scientific but i have ways i look at that, including modest CEO compensation and keeping commitments over time.
That is the dominant variable for me. I invest in people. I like also to look at the numbers and emerging global technology trends, but when my conviction of the leadership is high, that compensates for a lot.
I liked the fantastic vision of the RUBI founder Addante, but he couldn’t manage well i assume because he hated executive leadership. I bought RUBI at $6 in March after hitting upon the stock idea via TTD
and taking a good look at Barrett and the company history and that the interesting founder remained a top shareholder and a board member. I believe fully in Barrett’s optimism that he represents in the quarterly CCs.
Barrett is big enough to lead a much larger company, IMO.
Many of the favorable arguments made here for TLRA apply to RUBI, which serves both the buy and sell side, as i understand it.
You are correct. From CNBC: “Rubicon Project offers technology to automate buying and selling ads online, while Telaria is a software platform for managing video advertising.”
In June 2017 Mark Zagorski became CEO of Tremor Video. He renamed the company Telaria (a play on the word “talaria”, which is Mercury’s winged sandal.) He immediately sold off all parts of the business that were not focused on sell-side advertising. The point he made was that no company could effectively service both sides. It would be like a real estate agent being both the listing agent and the buyer’s agent. In that case neither party gets the best deal. Since Telaria was uniquely position as the only company dedicated to the sell side, that was their advantage. They were to be the sell side Trade Desk.
So it seems a bit odd that Telaria would take their entire sales angle and throw it out the window and become the company that does both again. I guess it bears watching.
Jeb
Good stuff. So Telaria up another 11% today after a huge increase yesterday.
I bought two starter positions of TLRA earlier this year given the intro on various public Fool boards. To me, the obvious leadership role TLRA is playing in CTV and sell side advertising (growing triple digits in CTV), the fact that they are becoming profitable, and the likelihood their revenue growth and profitability breaks out very significantly soon given market trends made this a sensible investment decision. The deal with RUBI will be accretive given synergies.
I think the growth story is evolving quickly here, and there appears to be growing sentiment in the market that this new merged and yet to be named company can become The Trade Desk (TTD) of the sell side. To put this in perspective, Telaria’s market cap is currently about $400M, TTD’s market cap is $10B-$11B. And I think TTD can grow like a weed during the next 10 years and become a $100B market cap. TTD is my largest position at 17%.
TLRA is now combining with RUBI, which will make their programmatic capabilities and broad appeal even stronger.
So is an investment in TLRA (or RUBI) a good investment/buying decision right now? Hell yes I say. It is already a 6% position for me, but I may add more moving forward and thought folks here might want to give this a closer look.
Read on: Why Telaria Stock Jumped (Again) Friday (https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/12/20/why-telaria-stock-…)
Fool on,
Rockleppard
I find this thread interesting but confusing. Help getting my confusions cleared up (more than one) is appreciated:
Rockleppard writes:
I think the growth story is evolving quickly here, and there appears to be growing sentiment in the market that this new merged and yet to be named company can become The Trade Desk (TTD) of the sell side. To put this in perspective, Telaria’s market cap is currently about $400M, TTD’s market cap is $10B-$11B. And I think TTD can grow like a weed during the next 10 years and become a $100B market cap. TTD is my largest position at 17%. [emphasis added]
Saying “the next XYZ” is always dangerous. Why is buy side (TTD) 25 times the size of sell side? Is that the wrong question? I did look at the relative performance of TTD vs. TLRA and TLRA does look promising and bulking up by buying/merging with the competition is usually a good idea
https://softwaretimes.com/pics/ttd-vs-tlra.gif
On the other hand, Jeb writes:
In June 2017 Mark Zagorski became CEO of Tremor Video. He renamed the company Telaria (a play on the word “talaria”, which is Mercury’s winged sandal.) He immediately sold off all parts of the business that were not focused on sell-side advertising. The point he made was that no company could effectively service both sides. It would be like a real estate agent being both the listing agent and the buyer’s agent. In that case neither party gets the best deal. Since Telaria was uniquely position as the only company dedicated to the sell side, that was their advantage. They were to be the sell side Trade Desk.
So it seems a bit odd that Telaria would take their entire sales angle and throw it out the window and become the company that does both again. I guess it bears watching. [emphasis added.]
Maybe he’ll sell the non sell side of RUBI…
What is the TAM of sell-side vs. the TAM of buy-side. IIRC The Trade Desk caters not only to advertising agencies but to the ad agencies large customers. Are there comparably large sellers of ad-space? The dead tree press is dying which is good for digital ad-space sellers but do they compare in size to the the likes of consumer goods, drugs, consumer electronics, and others? Does it matter or is the value only in the commission on ad-space sold.
On the other hand, TLRA being 25 times smaller than TTD, does it offer the same rate of appreciation with a much smaller TAM?
Denny Schlesinger
