posted this earlier on NPI, wanted to share here for any TTD fans.
I bought about 30% of my former TTD position back in just now.
So it should tank over the next week/month.
To anyone looking for a entry point - you are welcome in advance.
My goal is to add on dips and get it back up to a top-3 position.
Love the company and execution long-term…just really didn’t expect the Q1 pop to hold (and advance) as steady as it has.
I don’t know if anyone has access to real-time short interest info, as the latest is always 15 days behind. So on Nasdaq, if you google “TTD short interest” you get a Nasdaq link to their short interest in 15 day increments. They peaked around 8m in time for the May 10th ER.
As of May 15, they were still at 7m, which absolutely stuns me, and explains the sustained rally a bit. The massive amount of volume was likely existing/new buyers mixed with day/penny traders, and the core shorts just weren’t able to unload fast enough. Will be very interesting to see the current (May 31st) short interest update, to see how many of the 7m shorted shares still remain.
Thx for update, Dreamer. I got uncomfortable having too man tech-oriented stocks and sold not long before the mega-pop. Brutal. But I’m fine with some stable companies like Old Dominion, Sherwin Williams and Texas Roadhouse.
I think comparing TTD and HUBS to the stocks favored on this board would be invaluable and I hope to find the time to do this. TTD and HUBS are two companies that are well managed, well respected, have large addressable markets, strong visions and have been very successful stocks, yet don’t make the cut. My guess is there’s a ton to learn about why they are, to quote Willy Loman, “Liked but not well liked.” My guess is its the rate of revenue acceleration.
I don’t follow HUBS closely enough to speak to them.
But TTD grew 60% y/y in last ER, so revenue is actually accelerating, which was always predicted based on a deeper understanding of their market focus in Intl/China, Mobile, and CTV.
They were a profitable, well-run, and fast growing company just on legacy digital “display” adtech revenues. But those 3 areas above represented smaller segments of revenue that were growing faster.
Now they have finally started catching up. Mobile is now leading revenue stream. Intl is growing twice as fast as US biz, but from a smaller 10-15% of total number. And CTV growing ridiculous 500-1000% type numbers, but off smaller rev base.
So the growth will only accelerate. As to why others on the board don’t like them, I won’t speak for them, except to say that common refrains I here (not just at TMF) are that they “can’t compete against Google/FB and walled gardens” which misses the whole point of where they are focused in the market. Another is “ad-tech companies haven’t done well” which is like saying Google shouldn’t have done well since no one hears about Lycos or Excite or Yahoo all that much anymore. Another issue is “they are tied to heavily to the agencies and could lose a ton of business quickly” which has some validity to it, but misses the bigger picture that they leveraged agencies to build their business as much as agencies now want/need to leverage TTD to provide programmatic/CTV adtech services to their clients. They can’t just come up with a cool ad campaign and run it on tv, radio, and newspapers anymore while they smoke cigarettes and have martinis at lunch. The ad world has moved to digital and programmatic, the brands know this, and the agencies are playing catch up so as not to be displaced by the Consultants of the world (Accenture, etc…).
Other than that, I read all the news articles on them, follow their twitter feed, scan their glassdoor, listen to ER conf calls and/or comb over the conf call notes again afterwards, and generally try to really understand the business, who competition really is, who they are really partnering with (and if those businesses are doing well) and if their founder/mgmt keeps executing on what they say they will do.
The reason I only have a small pos is like you stated, they are tied too much to only a few ad agencies. I just feel like they need more rev streams to make me feel comfortable in a full pos.
I held mine through the pop and it is small, might buy some more if your lack of luck works and we get a drop.
Heh. I bought TTD for 52 right before the pop because of DreamerDad saying he would at the last minute if it hit 50. It is now up 74% since then, thank you very much!
I’m sitting on some gains and plan on holding longer term. I would guess that it will take a little while to consolidate recent gains before moving up further. I might add if it drops another 10% though.
I’m sitting on some gains and plan on holding longer term. I would guess that it will take a little while to consolidate recent gains before moving up further. I might add if it drops another 10% though.
dave
I am also ready to add more at 70-75 it is dips that low. Or I juat wait until right before next ER and decide how much of my original position to buy back at that point.
Well fargo downgraded but raised price from 75 to 88.
He also listed a decline in desktop display ads as a reason for downgrade, which is about the oldest part of TTD business and kind of irrelevant when TTD focus is on Mobile, Intl/china, and ctv.
I don’t know where the price is headed, but there are two recent, very strong, chart patterns that may conspire to bring the price back to about $52.50. There was a mid-May gap up from near $52.50 to about $67.50, and a triple bottom breakdown occurred today. If the price approaches the low 70s, the probability of filling that huge gap increases.
Mostly we avoid so-called technical analysis here, but it may at least be worth pointing out that “filling the gap” is not a guarantee, especially given the pop was on earnings, as this blog entry points out:
I am not a technical trader. A look at long term chart seems to show the Nov 2017 gap down was the anomaly. I see the recent May short squeeze as getting the stock off the artificially low/shorted levels of Nov 2017.
The consistent execution and fundamentals seem to support a stock price in 70s or 80s right now.
They are on pace for about $450m in revenue, have been profitable for years, and grew at 60% in last Q on y/y basis.
There areas of focus are also growing the fastest, and will continue to comprise more of future revenues.
They will be under a P/S of 5 if they get back to $50s later this year. With those growth rates, that seems unlikely.
But if it happens I will be buying a truckload just to make an easy 100% gain all over again.
I still see TTD at $120/share by end of 2019, based on 2019 projected revenues of $675m, which would be a P/S around 8.