•
Dec 31, 2020

Trade Desk Q4 2020 Earnings Report

The Trade Desk announced financial results for Q4 and fiscal year 2020.

Key Takeaways

The Trade Desk's Q4 2020 revenue was $319.9 million, a 48% increase year-over-year. Net income was $151.9 million, or $3.05 per diluted share, while Non-GAAP diluted EPS was $3.71. The company saw record ad spend of $4.2 billion on its platform in 2020.

Gross spend on the platform was approximately $4.2 billion in 2020, a 34% increase from a year ago.

Customer retention remained over 95% during the quarter.

The Trade Desk is building support for Unified ID 2.0, a new industry-wide approach to identity.

The Trade Desk and TikTok announced a new advertising partnership covering key Asia Pacific markets.

Total Revenue
$320M
Previous year: $216M
+48.1%
EPS
$0.37
Previous year: $0.15
+146.7%
Gross Profit
$268M
Previous year: $169M
+59.0%
Cash and Equivalents
$437M
Previous year: $131M
+234.2%
Free Cash Flow
$151M
Previous year: -$42.1M
-459.3%
Total Assets
$2.75B
Previous year: $1.73B
+59.3%

Trade Desk

Trade Desk

Forward Guidance

The company expects its business performance could be impacted by issues beyond its control, such as changing economic conditions or additional shelter-in-place orders that may or may not occur. Assuming that the economy continues to recover and we do not have any major COVID-19 related setbacks that may cause economic conditions to deteriorate, we estimate the following:

Positive Outlook

  • First Quarter 2021 outlook summary: Revenue range between $214 million and $217 million
  • Adjusted EBITDA of at least $55 million

Challenges Ahead

  • Our business has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic that has significantly impacted advertiser demand.
  • Like many companies that are ad-funded, we are facing a period of higher uncertainty in our business outlook.
  • We expect our business performance could be impacted by issues beyond our control, such as changing economic conditions or additional shelter-in-place orders that may or may not occur.
  • We have not provided outlook for GAAP Net income or reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA guidance to net income, the closest corresponding U.S. GAAP measure, because net income outlook is not available without unreasonable efforts on a forward-looking basis due to the variability and complexity with respect to the charges excluded from these non-GAAP measures; in particular, the measures and effects of our stock-based compensation expense that are directly impacted by unpredictable fluctuations in our share price.
  • We expect the variability of the above charges could have a significant and potentially unpredictable impact on our future U.S. GAAP financial results.