Oppenheimer Raises Trade Desk Price Target On Stronger Business Trends

Trade Desk Inc TTD's management's tone at various recent events has been positive, target clients perceive the company as a leader and industry checks indicate healthy programmatic advertising spending activity levels, according to Oppenheimer.

The Analyst

Analyst Brian Schwartz maintains an Outperform rating on Trade Desk and is raising the price target from $130 to $160.

The Thesis

Trade Desk has made good progress in evolving into a broader enterprise-scale SaaS platform in digital advertising, Schwartz said in a Friday note. (See his track record here.) 

This has driven strong growth and profitability, while management has enacted a “sustainable technology advantage with a core platform refresh,” the analyst said. 

Q4 results could beat expectations given Trade Desk's tone on the its business and healthy trends in programmatic advertising spending, he said. 

The digital ad platform has the advantage of a large total addressable market and has been making steady share gain, Schwartz said. The company has also entered new markets.

Trade Desk is likely to generate over 30-percent growth in revenue, EBITDA and cash flow over the next one to two years, driven by frequent platform technology updates,  the analyst said. 

Since market share gains could be a “drawn-out process” and the company’s share price has jumped around 200 percent in 2018, investors should “scale up TTD positions opportunistically based on the future growth expectations,” according to Oppenheimer. 

Price Action

Trade Desk shares were up 1.47 percent at $141.04 at the time of publication Friday.

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