Fourth Quarter and 2018 Business Highlights Include:
Continued Share Gain: 2018 gross spend on the platform was over $2.35 billion, a 51% increase from a year ago. According to Magna Global, total real-time-bidding programmatic was estimated to increase 22% in 2018.
Continued Omni-channel Growth: Omni-channel solutions remain a strategic focus for The Trade Desk as the industry continues shifting toward transparency and programmatic buying.
Specific channel spend highlights include:
Mobile (in-app, video and web) grew 69% from Q4 2017 to Q4 2018.
Connected TV grew over 525% from Q4 2017 to Q4 2018.
Connected TV grew over 9X from 2017 to 2018.
Audio grew over 230% from 2017 to 2018.
Mobile video grew over 130% from 2017 to 2018.
Mobile in-app grew over 90% from 2017 to 2018.
Strong Customer Retention: Customer retention remained over 95% during the quarter, as it has for the previous 20 quarters.
“2018 was a huge year for The Trade Desk. Revenue growth accelerated to 55% in 2018 from 52% in 2017. In 2018, we surpassed $2.35 billion in gross spend on our platform resulting in $477 million in revenue. Our fourth quarter revenue growth also accelerated, growing 56% to a record $160.5 million,” said Founder and CEO Jeff Green.
(I would have liked slightly higher guidance, but they always beat.)
Full Year 2019:
Total Gross Spend of at least $3.2 billion
Revenue of at least $637 million
Adjusted EBITDA of $182 million or about 29% of revenue
First Quarter 2019
Revenue of $116 million
Adjusted EBITDA of $18.3 million
(my guess is they finished closer to $675-700m, keeping pace for 2020 to be close to $1b in rev)
Slightly up in AH. I think the huge beat is offset slightly by sandbagged guidance for an overall wash. Which I will completely take over a bit ER drop. In 2018, almost all TTD gains came after the May and Aug ER’s, and hopefully we see a bit of that again in 2019.
Slightly up in AH. I think the huge beat is offset slightly by sandbagged guidance for an overall wash. Which I will completely take over a bit ER drop. In 2018, almost all TTD gains came after the May and Aug ER’s, and hopefully we see a bit of that again in 2019.
This was a blow out quarter in my opinion. The guidance is quite muted though which isn’t abnormal from CEO Green. I’m surprised it is up in the after hours, but will take it if it holds tomorrow.
I had bought a nice chunk of TTD earlier this week after doing my “relative valuation” analysis where it came out as potentially the least expensive of the stocks I compared. When the price was getting smacked down yesterday, I rolled the dice a bit and added some short call options too. Those should look very pretty at the open tomorrow!
Obviously the short term timing (to get a good price yesterday after the analyst downgrade and then the pop tonight/tomorrow) was largely luck, but the continued operational success in these results looks like a sign of a continuing trend and upward trajectory of their business performance that could make TTD a long term winner for years to come
I apologize in advance for hitting this board with this post given that we generally avoid options talk here, but I really phrased that poorly above so I want to clarify. I should have said “short term” (not “short”). Sorry for any confusion.
I’m more surprised by how seriously people take the handholding guidance… it’s a joke!
No one in their right mind thinks this company that just reported accelerating revenue above 50%, will somehow drop to 33% or so growth in 2019. Esp when you eyeball all the key metrics they give you… all of them are up huge - triple or quadruple growth.
And once again some bozo analyst comes out yesterday with a well timed downgrade.
I’m learning more and more that whenever one analyst comes out day before earnings and the stock get hit, just buy the shares or add to your position as I did at 146.5.
I certainly didn’t expect this kind of pop, but still just the big drop yesterday was a gift by Wall Street talking heads that have no idea what they are talking about.
