The Trade Desk crawls back, nearly erases day's declines
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The Trade Desk (NASDAQ:TTD) managed to get back close to positive territory, Wednesday, amid a broad market decline that came after the company's fourth-quarter earnings topped Wall Street consensus but disappointed investors accustomed to heavy quarterly revenue growth.
After falling as much as 11%, The Trade Desk (TTD) got back to its breakeven even point after reporting revenue that grew 24% from a year ago, to $395.6 million. However, it was the first time in six quarters that revenue growth dipped below 31%. Net income fell on a GAAP basis, to $8 million from $151.9 million, as headline expenses nearly doubled. Thanks to a $158 million CEO stock-based compensation expense, G&A rose to nearly $219 million from a year-ago $54.4 million.
Adjusted EBITDA, though, rose to $191.5 million from $152.9 million, with a 48% margin, and non-GAAP net income rose to $208.1 million from $184.8 million.
"The launch of Solimar, our most important new platform to date, along with major progress in areas such as CTV, identity and retail data, enabled us to gain more share of the data-driven advertising market," says CEO Jeff Green.
As a result, we generated nearly $6.2 billion of total spend on our platform, nearly $1.2 billion in revenue and over $500 million in adjusted EBITDA in 2021 as we continue to scale the business with profitable growth.
For the first quarter, The Trade Desk (TTD) is guiding to revenue of at least $303 million and EBITDA of about $91 million. Analysts had earlier forecast the company to post revenue of $287 million.
The Trade Desk and its industry peers are also seeing negative pressure today on news that Google is acting to limit ad identifiers on its Android operating system, following on from Apple's privacy changes.
The revenue growth of 24% had outstripped expectations Macquarie had set up coming into earnings season; market reaction is indicating some disagreement with the firm's take that The Trade Desk's valuation had gotten high but looked "more approachable" now.