I was just about to hit post to a new thread on TTD and see you beat me to it, so I’ll just past in reply to this one to keep everything together:
The Trade Desk also released Q3 earnings after market yesterday
https://investors.thetradedesk.com/news-releases/news-releas…
So far in 2020 we’ve seen several years of advertising disruption and innovation compressed into a few months. As a result, advertisers have become more deliberate and data-driven with every advertising dollar.
The market is liking it as the stock is up more than 23% today, currently, after being up significantly earlier this week as well. I took my own advice from last week’s October monthly portfolio writeup, and I bought some additional '23 LEAPS on Monday, despite TTD already being my biggest holding. I kind of can’t believe the stock is already up 200+ dollars per share four days later.
We all knew Q2 2020, at -13% revenue, was going to be an outlier, given the pandemic, but it was hard to gauge exactly how quickly, and by how much, it would reaccelerate in subsequent periods.
Revenue rose +32% in this quarter Q3, and they guided for about +35% next quarter in Q4, which I expect they will beat handily, especially with the political advertising this quarter. And don’t forget that TTD has been consistently profitable for quite a few years already, so their growth keeps adding more and more to the bottom line.
They specified that political advertising will only be “mid single digits” of their revenue this year, so that gives me some confidence we won’t see too bad a related comp headwind in Q3 and Q4 of 2021 next year when moving into a non-election year. Hopefully the Tokyo Olympics (and a related boost in advertising) moves forward next year, which will help smooth out the impact.
It’s such an interesting dynamic where they have had major headwinds and major tailwinds related to COVID. Advertisers spent much less than this year, which had a huge impact on their revenue, albeit temporary. However, COVID simultaneously greatly accelerated the shift to more targeted, cost effective, programatic digital advertising (TTD’s core business), which will have an impact for years to come.
I’ve said it many times before, but I really encourage anyone interested in this company to listen to their earnings calls. The founder/CEO, Jeff Green, yesterday, not only gave me reassurance that I should continue to have TTD as my biggest holding, but I feel stronger than ever that this company is taking over the world of advertising, and will be so much bigger, and worth so much more, a few years from now.
A lot of people call Jeff a “salesman”, but I sincerely just don’t hear that. He’s passionate and upbeat and optimistic, yeah sure. But what draws me is that he says things in such plain english that anyone unfamiliar with their industry, or technology, or their market, can understand everything, the first the time you hear him talk. Listening to the TTD call yesterday live and then shortly after listening to the replay of the Alteryx call, it was like night and day. The new AYX CEO did nothing to make me feel like Alteryx is inspired and going to move mountains in the way I feel that The Trade Desk will. I will note tho that I felt better and better about AYX as the call went on, and eventually decided I should continue to hold the majority of my AYX stake, although I’m considering reallocating a small portion to get back into SMAR, which looks really interesting to me right now.
Congrats to those of you that are still holding TTD. I think their future keeps looking brighter and brighter…
-mekong