Fool’s “Obscure Company Growing Faster Than Google and Facebook”

by Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe | October 23, 2017 11:02 am

What's being pitched as the stock Tom Gardner recommended on Friday?

Today we’ve got another pitch from the Motley Fool[1] to look at, all about Tom Gardner[2]’s “Latest stock pick” … so can we figure out what it might be?

Let’s check out the clues, Gumshoe-style. It’s a brief pitch that’s trying to lure you into subscribing to Motley Fool Stock Advisor[3] with their regular “you’re about to miss an important event” — which is, of course, that David and Tom Gardner “just released two new stock picks.”

Stock Advisor is the Fool’s “flagship” newsletter that features competing recommendations from Tom Gardner and his brother David each month (David’s way ahead, for what it’s worth, and tends to be the more “growth” focused advisor while Tom leans “value”). Stock Advisor has a very impressive long-term record of beating the market, though they are also extremely reluctant to sell, so their portfolio of covered stocks is huge after more than a decade of stock picking and they tend to let both winners and losers run, which frustrates some subscribers who don’t pick and choose the better ideas for their own portfolio — a decent chunk of the outperformance has come from a few dramatic winners (Priceline, Netflix, Marvel/Disney, a few others that rose by 1,000% or more).

So will this particular teased idea be another huge runner, or an also-ran? Here’s what we get from the ad:

“We hear over and over again from so many investors that they wish they’d gotten into stocks like Google or Facebook earlier…

“Well, Tom just gave the green light to a company only 1/200th the size of Facebook and 1/300th the size of Google…

“… but growing revenues 2X faster than either of these “can’t beat” companies!
And how is this company doing it? – By dominating a little-known niche of the advertising world.”

The only real rationale we get for this particular idea is that this company is similar to Google and Facebook years ago, before their advertising niches became major businesses… and it’s in yet some other niche of the advertising business.

And a couple more clues:

“… shares are already up over 69% in the past six months! And looking ahead to all the potential growth in front of this company, Tom is betting there is so much more to come!

“Lucky for you, Tom only unveiled this latest pick to Stock Advisor members yesterday! Which means the stock market was only open for 4 hours after it came out.”

OK, so we know it’s an advertising stock, with a market cap of about $2.5 billion (just doing that “1/200th” math in the pitch), and we know it went up 69% over the past six months and probably popped around Noon on Friday (that’s the “yesterday” in the spiel).

Is that enough? Well, maybe… let’s put the Thinkolator on the job. First we gotta wrestle get the dust cover off, add a little warm oil[4], pull the crank a few times… and voila! This is almost certainly… Trade Desk (TTD)

Trade Desk is not a precise match, because it actually rose 79% over the past six months, not 69%… but it is a small niche company in the digital advertising business, it has a market cap of about $2.6 billion, and it popped instantly by about 2% at Noon on Friday, when nothing else was happening and there was no other relevant news I’m aware of. So I’m pretty confident that’s Tom Gardner’s pick.

So why would he recommend Trade Desk? Here’s a Motley Fool free article[5] that gives some of the rationale, explaining the rapid growth TTD has had since coming public a little over a year ago (the disclaimer in that article also confirms that the Fool both owns and recommends Trade Desk, though it doesn’t specifically say when or in which newsletter, so this teased recommendation by Tom Gardner could be a re-recommendation in Stock Advisor, or it could have originally been recommended by Rule Breakers[6] or one of the Motley Fool’s other newsletters).

The Trade Desk just had an investor day a couple weeks ago, so you can review their presentations here[7] if you like — that’s certainly worth doing if you’re considering adding the stock to your portfolio… they are, to overly simplify, a provider of buy-side analytics and ad targeting for digital advertising, and they aim to be quite broad in scope while taking market share in digital advertising and presenting a compelling competitor, for ad buyers, to the “walled gardens” of Facebook and Google (though they presumably will also always have to work with both Facebook and Google as well).

They see their big growth areas as China[8] and “connected TV” (they see video overtaking mobile when it comes to digital advertising, and a continued important role for personalized video ads in the “over the top” digital video services). They also envision all advertising being programmatic — ie, all essentially controlled by self-service digital decisionmaking, and soon artificial intelligence, and they think they have a big role to grow into as a voice for and moderating influence for the buy side (ad buyers) in a world where ad sellers like Facebook and Google are widely thought (among ad buyers, at least) to be too powerful.

The stock is not necessarily cheap after the big run it had this year, but the company has been consistently profitable for years, which helps it to stand out in the “ad tech” marketplace (Criteo, which I’ve held for a while, is the only other ad-tech startup I’ve run across that’s smallish and sustainably profitable). They currently trade at 37X next year’s estimated earnings, but have also beaten earnings estimates pretty substantially in each of their first four quarters as a public company — so analysts are having some trouble getting a handle on the growth rate and have had to continually increase their estimates.

If that continues, the stock will keep going up — with smallish growth stocks like this it’s all about feeding the expectations beast, if they keep it up with the “beat estimates and raise forecasts” quarterly reports, the stock will probably keep rising. That gets a little harder now that the estimates are getting more aggressive (three months ago the forecast for 2018 was $1.34 in earnings per share, now it’s $1.70), but if you catch a company at the fairly early stage of that kind of growth it can be a really fun ride.

The downside, of course, is that sometimes the ride throws a rod — if Mr. Market builds a stock up into a “beat and raise” machine in your mind, the punishment that stock receives when they don’t “beat and raise” is severe — the shares could easily fall by 20-30% in a day if they come out next quarter and miss earnings by a few cents and fail to increase their forward guidance. So be aware that this is the kind of tightrope you walk with a growth company.

The good thing, of course, is that The Trade Desk is still very small in an industry of behemoths — so there is no shortage of revenue they could try to go after, and they are nowhere near maxing out on their potential market share. The positive I see is that they could get a fair amount of “buy side” buy-in if they can convince the Procter & Gambles and the WPPs and the other big ad buyers that they are the most viable alternative to being captive in the “walled gardens” of Facebook and Google content, and that’s both a possible economic incentive for the big advertisers and a strategic imperative to not be too beholden to one or two ad platforms.

The bad thing, of course, is that digital advertising is so dominated by Google and Facebook that they can get squeezed — much like Criteo (CRTO)[9], which is facing some challenge because they don’t “own” customers (like Facebook owns the data about its users) and therefore are worried about regulatory or product restrictions (like ad blockers, or changes to browser settings) that might cut into their ability to track behavior for advertising purposes.

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The Trade Desk is not nearly as dependent on a specific tracking technology as Criteo is, and in fact they partner with several technologies that offer that kind of user tracking across devices (and offer a variety of other services), but they are still a small player in a field where data ownership may be becoming more important and those who collect advertising data from people who are not their own customers may be sometimes pressured or locked out.

So there are plenty of risks — chief among them regulatory risk and the risk of being squeezed by the major content owners, and the risk that the stock is trading on momentum so could easily fall hard in an even slightly weak quarter. But I kind of like the “white knight” costume they can wear when they go in to talk to the big advertisers, who are all afraid of Google and Facebook and the power they wield, and all trying to figure out how advertising will work in the new non-linear TV world. Both Facebook and Alphabet are large personal positions for me, but I can certainly see ample reasons why advertisers would want to use service providers who might be able to help them counter that duopoly.

And, well, they’re profitable, not insanely overvalued (that’s an arguable point, for sure), and growing quite fast. Which makes me interested — so I’m going to do something I rarely do with a teased stock, and take a small taste of a position in this one so I’ve got enough “skin in the game” to pay attention as the story develops.

It’s your money that matters here though, not mine, so I’ll throw the question out to the group — what do you think of The Trade Desk? Look like a risk worth taking, or too pricey as they ride the momentum wave? Not interested? See some skeletons in that closet that are about to fall out and scare us? Share your thoughts with a comment below… thanks for reading

P.S. We’re always gathering reader feedback about investment newsletters they’ve subscribed to — have you ever tried Motley Fool Stock Advisor? Click here to let your fellow investors know what you thought.[10]

Disclosure: I now own a few shares of The Trade Desk, and also have positions in Facebook and Alphabet and call options[11] on Disney. I am not invested in any of the other stocks mentioned above, and will not trade in any stocks covered for at least three days per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules.

Endnotes:
  1. Motley Fool: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/motley-fool/
  2. Tom Gardner: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/tom-gardner/
  3. Motley Fool Stock Advisor: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/motley-fool-stock-advisor/
  4. oil: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/oil/
  5. Here’s a Motley Fool free article: https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/16/the-trade-desks-explosive-growth-continues.aspx
  6. Rule Breakers: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/rule-breakers/
  7. review their presentations here: http://investors.thetradedesk.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=254422&p=irol-irhome
  8. China: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/china/
  9. Criteo (CRTO): https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/crto/
  10. Motley Fool Stock Advisor? Click here to let your fellow investors know what you thought.: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/motley-fool-stock-advisor/
  11. options: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/options/

Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/motley-fool-stock-advisor/fools-obscure-company-growing-faster-than-google-and-facebook/


26 responses to “Fool’s “Obscure Company Growing Faster Than Google and Facebook””

  1. charlie1030 says:

    I made a small investment in TTD about a month ago based on a recommendation from another subscriber service and am up over 5% on this investment

  2. Aaron says:

    I’m bullish and been in for the long ride earlier this year. It has the right leaders and looks to be well positioned for continued rowth.

  3. Karen says:

    I am profiting with Trade Desk because a really wired in engineer friend of mine told me about it months ago. He is basically a value buyer, but he could not resist this one.

  4. kblyons46 says:

    I bought it a while back, too, on the original MF recommendation (you were right, they have already recommended it–in fact several times.) I think it’s a compelling story and likely to do very well. It’s also very much at the “sweet spot” of valuation, where it’s pretty obviously a going concern, but has a ton of room to run. If it stumbles, it stumbles, but I plan to hold it for at least several years. In fact if there’s a sudden drop due to a non-beat or something, I might buy more.

  5. Baja Pete says:

    You can purchase the 55/65 Nov 17 Call spread today for 625 and it may turn into 1000 (about a 50% return) in 25 days if the stock rises a buck and half.

  6. Rick says:

    Dear Gumshoe

    Could you please try this one out ?
    The $6 Million company wins patent verdict could sparl 28700%.

    https://pro.moneymappress.com/p/TIMCNR/ETIMTABG/?email=RICKZHU%40126.com&src=Groupd1&a=8&o=56416&s=82119&u=9899743&l=1854327&r=MC2&vid=LQg12p&g=0&h=true

    I guess it is about a gene editing company, but do not know the company name.

    Thanks

  7. And now Criteo is down 5% on an analyst downgrade that was itself precipitated by Apple’s moves to restrict tracking in its browsers, which is widely perceived as making things more difficult for ad tech companies, particularly Criteo but probably all of them, that (unlike Facebook and Google) don’t own their own customer data so have to collect it or track those customers through third party websites and services.

    That’s the same rationale that brought CRTO down almost 20% in May/June following the Apple preannouncement of this tighter restriction, then another 10% in September when we saw the actual new OS from Apple… and now another 5% as another analyst incorporates that fear into his numbers.

    The advertising industry is on Capitol Hill right now, also, trying to argue that their political ad business should be self-policing in the face of some serious interest in regulation… so who knows what else might come up in those hearings, or if it might impact the ad tech business. We’ll see.

  8. elancg says:

    Mamphilly has been promoting a Cybersecurity company, … one that is already developing renowned and proprietary technology used by some of the largest companies on the planet to guard their data.
    … with this early stage firm shooting up a minimum of 23-fold as the situation accelerates.” Do you have any idea what is he talking about?

  9. Bill Peterson says:

    Which calls on Disney are best?

  10. jozsika says:

    Dropped smartly AE. MF still sort of likes it.

    Do we?

  11. anastasia says:

    Who could provide an update analysis on the last days? Thanks.

  12. Eric says:

    Seems things have taken a turn for the worse since this article published.

  13. omegassociates says:

    Bought TTD July 24, 2018 at ~90/share. Right now it’s ~196/share. I invested for sentimental reasons — The Trade Desk’s HQ are in a renovated old building off Main Street in my former hometown, Ventura, CA — but also because I did my due diligence. Love and money, anyone?

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