A Look Behind the Headline Numbers
Last night, Masters in Business host Barry Ritholtz interviewed Howard Marks at Bloomberg HQ.
I was grateful to attend, meet new people, and receive a free copy of his new book:
The candid conversation will be available on a future podcast episode.
As hors d’oeuvres were passed out, I chatted with someone about Uber.
Uber may go public by the end of this year but not as quickly as Lyft IPOs.
Uber still burns through a lot of (marketing) money, but Uber Eats keeps growing.
In India, Uber may be selling its food delivery operations to a local competitor, Swiggy:
In exchange, Uber will receive around a 10% stake in the $3.3 billion Indian-based company.
This reminds me of how Uber parted ways with China but still has a stake in the company Didi.
What will come from all of this global expansion will be more data and advertising potential for Uber.
Coincidentally, Walmart ($WMT) has made its plans to consolidate its own advertising as it’s become clear how much money Amazon ($AMZN) is making as it rivals Google ($GOOGL) and Facebook ($FB):
One company that has benefitted a tremendous deal from this deviation away from Mad Men agencies is The Trade Desk ($TTD):
“The Trade Desk just posted yet another expectation-beating quarter, growing revenue 56% year over year — an acceleration from 50% revenue growth in Q3. The quarter benefited from further sharp growth in customers’ spending on its platform for mobile, connected TV, and audio ads. In addition, strong growth internationally helped the programmatic ad platform’s growth.
With both revenue and profits coming in significantly ahead of analyst estimates, the stock jumped on the news, soaring more than 30% by the time the market closed on Friday. As investors digest the news of The Trade Desk’s robust fourth quarter, here’s a look beyond the headline numbers at what management is thinking. These top three excerpts from The Trade Desk’s fourth-quarter earnings call show three reasons The Trade Desk’s growth story is far from over.”
Amazon should be considered a top 3 advertiser right now:
How Uber, Spotify ($SPOT), and maybe Walmart and Pinterest, etc. shake out the rest of the top 10 is yet to be determined.
