Magnite Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 7, 2024

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Magnite Second Quarter 20 24 Earnings Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. After today's remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nick Kormeluk of Investor Relations.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Magnite's Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Joining me on the call today are Michael Barrett, CEO and David Day, our CFO. I would like to point out that we have posted financial highlights slides on our Investor Relations website to accompany today's presentation.

Speaker 1

Before we get started, I will remind you that our prepared remarks and answer to questions will include information that might be considered to be forward looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements concerning our anticipated financial performance and strategic objectives, including the potential impacts of macroeconomic factors on our business. These statements are not guarantees of future performance. They reflect our current views with respect to future events and are based on assumptions and estimates and subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from expectations or results projected or implied by forward looking statements. A discussion of these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions is set forth in the company's specific reports filed with the SEC, including our Q2 2024 Quarterly Report on Form 10 Q and our 2023 Annual Report on Form 10 ks. We undertake no obligation to update forward looking statements or relevant risks.

Speaker 1

Our commentary today will include non GAAP financial measures, including contribution ex TAC or less traffic acquisition costs, adjusted EBITDA and non GAAP income per share. Reconciliations between GAAP and non GAAP metrics for our reported results can be found in our earnings press release and in the financial highlights deck that is posted on our Investor Relations website. At times, in response to your questions, we may offer additional metrics to provide greater insight to the dynamics of our business. Please be advised that this additional detail may be one time in nature and we may or may not provide an update on the future of these metrics. I encourage you to visit our Investor Relations website to access our press release, financial highlights deck, periodic SEC reports and the webcast replay of today's call to learn more about Magnite.

Speaker 1

I will now turn the call over to Michael. Michael, please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Nick. It's been a very exciting 90 days or so since we last reported. We delivered strong Q2 results that once again exceeded our top line guidance and we reinforced our leadership in CTV with the Netflix win. We are absolutely thrilled to have been chosen by Netflix as a programmatic SSP partner. The deal has created significant momentum for our business with and existing partners and customers asking us how we can do more for them and help them move faster into programmatic CTV advertising.

Speaker 2

Our win in the competitive moat we have built is a result of our investment in numerous features and capabilities that took years to assemble, integrate and transform. It clearly demonstrates the breadth and depth of what we offer in CTV and validates the work we've been doing to create the world's leading holistic programmatic CTV platform. We look forward to supporting Netflix programmatic launch starting this summer and ramping throughout 2025 and we've been working at a feverish pace with them since the announcement in May. For the quarter, CTV contribution ex TAC grew 12% year over year and DV Plus contribution ex TAC grew 7%. Key drivers of CTV performance were strong overall ad spend growth, increasing programmatic adoption by the industry's largest players and ad serving strength.

Speaker 2

Our ad spend for the quarter continued to pace above 20%. Regarding CPM trends in CTV, we've seen slight decreases year over year. However, we believe these are supply driven by the largest industry players scaling their CTV inventory and not from a drop off in demand. Volume increases has significantly offset CPM reductions and we believe these trends of accelerating programmatic adoption will continue. The expansion of supply sources makes programmatic selling even more important.

Speaker 2

Lower CPMs and better targeting and programmatic CTV also help facilitate the entry of newer CTV buyers who may be more ROI and price sensitive. We believe these trends are very powerful in expanding industry programmatic participation and growing our accessible TAM. In addition to the Netflix win, I also want to highlight 2 of our other big partnerships. 1st is United Airlines, where we recently demonstrates our continued growth in the commerce media space

Speaker 3

with one

Speaker 2

of the largest airlines in the world choosing Magnite as their exclusive partner as they enter the programmatic advertising arena. The second is Roku, where we have announced an expansion of our 7 year partnership in support of powering The Roku Exchange connects to the programmatic ecosystem through an integration with Magnite. In addition to connecting Roku with 3rd party buyers, we are also providing them with incremental advertising opportunities through our Clearline and agency marketplace solutions as well as our demand facilitation team. Clearline, our self-service direct buying platform is continuing to gain adoption and we are seeing very good growth, albeit off of the small base. It has traction with numerous agencies and multiple brands that are in testing and early development.

Speaker 2

Our exclusive Media Ocean partnership also represents a big opportunity for Clearline and we are launching our first campaigns with them this quarter. Our deep and evolving partnerships with the likes of Netflix, Disney, Roku, Warner Brothers Discovery, Paramount, Fox, Samsung, LG and Vizio ensure we have a valuable long term role in the growth of the CTV market. In fact, some of the fastest growing accounts this quarter included Roku, Warner, Disney, LG and Paramount with much of the growth coming from our Spring Serve and Magnite Streaming SSP combination, which gives us a big advantage as a programmatic first partner relative to the competition and continues to differentiate us in market. Our tools are deeply embedded within our clients' workflow, whether it be creative review, ad potting logic or audience tools. And from the client's perspective, the combined implementation of our ad serving capabilities and SSP looks more like a typical enterprise software solution.

Speaker 2

We believe this stickiness creates a meaningful moat and barrier to entry for others. And in our case, the barriers not just workflow from ad operations is also in the form of superior monetization. Our strategic partners view us as part of their core ad operations platform and having more than one solution would complicate workflow and be comparable to running 2 ERPs or 2 CRMs. Now to DBplus. Q2 once again finished strong with contributions ex TAC growth of 7%.

Speaker 2

Our results continue to be driven by adding scale, improving efficiency through traffic shaping, improving monetization and performance with AI AI and by investing in formats such as native, audio, podcasts and digital out of home. On the AI front, you may have seen our release last Thursday about our new feature within Demand Manager using machine learning. The new feature finds the optimal configurations in the publishers pre bid wrapper per impression in real time and has the potential to rapidly enhance billions of impressions to improve performance versus manual configuration. In the broader industry, as I'm sure you're aware, Google recently announced they will not deprecate third party cookies. Frankly, we're not surprised with their decision given some of the challenges they've acknowledged with the rollout.

Speaker 2

In any event, we've done deep testing and work with Google so that we are prepared to support Privacy Sandbox for a future iteration of it for those that may want it. Although our position has always been that cookies being deprecated was not a meaningful risk for our business in the long term, we do believe the decision does relieve some short term uncertainty and potential CPM volatility. So we view it as a net positive. Regardless of Google's decision, we continue to believe that a decreased reliance on third party cookies and other non transparent who are better positioned to obtain user data and consent for implementing first party identifiers. In closing, we delivered a strong first half and are thrilled with the momentum in our business and the ever growing and we are excited about the acceleration in our growth rate in CTV for the remainder of the year.

Speaker 2

With that, I'll turn the call over to David for more details on financials. David? Thanks, Michael.

Speaker 1

We are very pleased with another strong quarter with our recent customer wins and with the resulting momentum we're seeing in our business. We believe we're continuing to take share as our ad spend growth is outpacing the market. As Michael mentioned, we again exceeded expectations for total and CTV contribution ex TAC, along with a strong performance in BB Plus. Total revenue for Q2 was $163,000,000 up 7% from Q2 2023. Contribution ex TAC was $147,000,000 up 9%.

Speaker 1

CTV contribution ex TAC was $63,000,000 up 12% year over year and above the top end of our guidance range. We saw very strong growth in ad spend and continued momentum with our SpringServe ad serving business. Our CTV outperformance was once again driven by our programmatic offerings. DV Plus contribution ex TAC was $84,000,000 an increase from $79,000,000 or 7% compared to the Q2 last year. Our contribution ex TAC mix for Q2 was 43% CTV, 39% mobile and 18% desktop.

Speaker 1

From a vertical perspective, health and fitness, automotive and retail were our strongest performing categories. Categories that did not perform as well were travel, technology and style and fashion. Total operating expenses, which includes cost of revenue for the Q2 were $153,000,000 a decrease from $224,000,000 for the same period last year. The primary driver of the decrease was the result of the SpotX acquired intangible assets that became fully amortized in the Q3 of last year. Adjusted EBITDA operating expense for the Q2 was $102,000,000 within our guidance range.

Speaker 1

The increase from $97,000,000 last year was primarily driven by higher personnel related costs due to annual merit increases and modest increased hiring and additional cloud computing expenses. Net loss was $1,000,000 for the quarter compared to net loss for the Q2 of 2023 of $74,000,000 Adjusted EBITDA grew 20 percent year over year and was $45,000,000 with a margin of 30%, which compares to $37,000,000 and a margin of 28% last year. As a reminder, we calculate adjusted EBITDA margin as a percentage of contribution ex TAC. GAAP loss per basic and diluted share was $0.01 for the Q2 of 2024 compared to a loss of $0.54 for the Q2 of 2023. Non GAAP earnings per share in the Q2 of 2024 grew 56% and was $0.14 compared to $0.09 last year.

Speaker 1

Reconciliations of non GAAP income and non GAAP earnings per share are included with our Q2 results press release. Our cash balance at the end of Q2 was $326,000,000 an increase of $74,000,000 from $253,000,000 at the end of the quarter. The increase was due to typical seasonality in our business. Capital expenditures including both purchases of property and equipment and capitalized internal use software development costs were $15,000,000 for the quarter. Operating cash flow, which we define as adjusted EBITDA less CapEx was $30,000,000 for the quarter.

Speaker 1

Our net interest expense for the quarter was $7,000,000 Our net leverage was 1.3x at the end of Q2, reflecting the expected improvement from 1.7x@theendofq1. The sequential improvement is due to the normal seasonality in our business. We expect to see net leverage improvements continue in Q3 and Q4 this year and expect to net leverage of 1x or less by the end of the year. In addition for our regular RSU vesting during the quarter, we utilized the withhold to cover method to cover employee taxes, thereby reducing dilution by withholding 385,000 shares for $4,000,000 Year to date through the Q2 using a folded cover, we've reduced dilution by 1,300,000 shares for $13,000,000 or nearly 1% of shares outstanding. We also had $125,000,000 of capacity available at quarter end in our authorized share or convert repurchase program.

Speaker 1

I will now share our expectations for the Q3 and full year. For the Q3, we expect contribution ex TAC to be in the range of $146,000,000 to $150,000,000 Contribution ex TAC attributable to CTV to accelerate to a range of $62,000,000 to $64,000,000 reflecting year over year growth of 20% at the midpoint. Contribution ex tax attributable to DBplus to be in the range of $84,000,000 to $86,000,000 We anticipate EBITDA operating expenses to be between $101,000,000 approximately 31% for Q3 at the midpoints. Our Q3 expectations across CTV and DBplus reflect a slow start to political ad spend in July due to the extraordinary circumstances surrounding both parties, although we've seen some improvement. For the full year, we are reaffirming that we expect contribution ex TAC to grow at least 10% with CTV to grow faster than DBplus adjusted EBITDA margin to expand 100 basis points to 150 basis points over 2023, adjusted EBITDA growth in the mid teens with an even higher growth in free cash flow, And we now expect total CapEx to be approximately $50,000,000 We also expect to be net income and EPS positive for the full year on a GAAP basis.

Speaker 1

Q2 was another solid quarter for Magnite. I'm particularly excited about our new relationship with Netflix and the opportunity we have to help them grow their advertising business. I'm also excited about growing opportunities in the commerce media space and our new relationship with United as a marquee example. We have significant momentum in our business and exciting opportunities ahead. With that, let's open the line for Q and A.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. Our first question comes from Shyam Patil from Susquehanna. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Hey, guys. Congrats on a great quarter and all the long recent partnership wins. I had a couple of questions. The first one was on some of the partnerships. Netflix, Roku, obviously, some really good partnerships.

Speaker 3

Can you maybe talk a little bit about how you expect them to ramp throughout second half of this year and next year? And kind of how we should be thinking about just the revenue contribution, the extent you can talk about that for both of those? And then second question, on political advertising, can you talk a little bit about how you're expecting that

Speaker 1

to look in

Speaker 3

the Q3 Q4, if there's any finer point you can put on that? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Sure, Steve. I'll take that. Yes, on those partnerships, we defer to Netflix on the timing of their ramp. They've discussed that they'll be launching this summer and into this fall and then really ramping in 2025. United is a fairly new partnership and that will take some time to ramp up.

Speaker 1

And so those 2, there are not significant impacts considered in our revenue for the remainder of this year. With Roku and that expansion, I think we're seeing some growth there and we're seeing some ramp up. Political is really interesting. With these really unusual events in July, there was a significant pause in political spending. So we're a little cautious on that front.

Speaker 1

What's challenging political is 80% of that spend occurs in the 8 to 10 weeks running up to the election. And so how much of that occurs in September before the Q3 cutoff versus Q4 is always hard to gauge. And so we're trying to be somewhat conservative given the potential volatility in the political spend. And in our quarterly guidance in that cutoff and trying to estimate where that will land. Michael, do you got anything else to

Speaker 2

add? No, perfect. Great. Thank you, guys.

Operator

The next question comes from Omar Dasky from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hey, guys. This is Arthur on for Omar. Thanks for over. Maybe just a quick clarification on guidance and I have a follow-up question if I could. In the press release, I think there was a commentary around that it was a commentary about like you guys expecting growth acceleration in the second half of twenty twenty four.

Speaker 4

I just wanted to clarify, are you expecting quarter over quarter

Speaker 1

Arthur, I think we lost you. Operator, I'm not sure if you still have Arthur on your end?

Speaker 4

Sorry. Can you guys hear me?

Operator

Yes. Omar, I can hear you.

Speaker 1

Operator, are you there, Jason?

Speaker 4

Yes. Can you guys hear me?

Operator

I can hear you.

Speaker 1

Okay. It seems like we've lost audio for the question that was being asked. Operator, can you hear us?

Operator

Jason, can you chime in and

Speaker 1

let us know if you're still there on the line?

Operator

I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Speaker 1

Can you hear me guys? I need to move to the next question.

Operator

Hi. Can you hear me, Nick? All right. We'll, let's try the next questioner.

Speaker 1

The operator says they can hear us. If everybody can just bear with us for a moment, we'll dial right back in.

Operator

All right.

Speaker 5

Everyone else has left the call. It looks like no one else is going to join this call. Goodbye.

Operator

Pardon us everybody while we try and reconnect with the speakers. Pardon me, everybody, we have reconnected with the speakers. You may proceed.

Speaker 1

I apologize all that we lost audio. Arthur, if you could recover your question, we'll jump right back into it.

Speaker 4

I just wanted to make a quick ask a quick clarification on the guidance. I think on the press release, there was a commentary around you guys expecting growth acceleration in the second half of twenty twenty four. I wanted to clarify, are you guys expecting quarter over quarter acceleration in 3Q and 4Q on a sequential basis? So 3Q would be an accelerating versus 2Q and then Q4 would be accelerating versus Q3? And then I have a follow-up question if

Speaker 2

I could.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Sure. Yes, I mean, and particularly focused on CTV growth, we guided to 20% year over year growth, which is an acceleration and will lead to compare the first half of the year to second half of the year overall acceleration. We're giving specific guidance on Q3 and not Q4, so more to come there, but we're really we feel really good about our CTV business. You can see that the CTV revenue growth, the gap between that and our ad spend growth is narrowing because of the accelerated growth in CTV revenue. And so, we're really bullish on our CTV business.

Speaker 4

Appreciate it. Thank you. And maybe just a quick follow-up question on CTV take rate. I'm wondering if you guys could talk a little bit about how CTV take rate has trended sequentially in the quarter. And just given some of the dynamics on the supply side with more Netflix and Prime Video inventory coming online, has your outlook on take rate changed if you're looking down, say, like 6 months or a year down the road?

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes. I think to we don't give specific take rates, but I think to continue on the narrative that we've had the last several quarters, The premium inventory that's still whooshing onto the market is coming in at our lower take rate earning levels. But we're lapping the most significant decrease from last year. And so the rate of decline in our average take rate, which is due to that continuing mix change, has slowed quite significantly. And so we're I wouldn't say we're bottoming out, but we're sort of hitting that point of stabilization.

Speaker 1

And that's why you see, as I commented earlier, you see this significant acceleration in our actual revenue growth, as over time, it will continue to come closer and closer to our ad spend growth in the CTV business. So we continue we expect those trends to continue. We expect continued adoption of programmatic in CTV, and so we expect those ad spend growth rates to remain by greater than 20% as we've had over the last handful of quarters going forward. Michael, if you have anything else you want to add?

Speaker 2

No, I think that captures it all. Got it. Thanks guys. Super congrats on Carter. Thanks.

Operator

The next question comes from Jason Kreyer from Craig Hallum. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Great. Thank you, guys. Michael, Netflix has been pretty vocal about deploying this programmatic ad strategy. Can you just talk about what you think that means for your role in the industry and maybe what that means for your existing relationships with other streamers?

Speaker 2

Yes. Hi, Jason. Thanks for the question. Yes, I think Netflix has been quite vocal about leaning into programmatic and I think you kind of see that trend line across all the big streamers. I think one of the takeaways from the recently completed upfront season was, I don't think everyone was all that pleased with the final CPMs, but it seemed like the numbers all kind of came in online, maybe slightly up for some of the big streamers.

Speaker 2

But programmatic, definitely a bigger piece of the spend puzzle. And we think that any dollars that haven't been deployed in the upfront are prime for programmatic going forward in kind of the spot market. So I think any time, focus, it focus, it's answering what buyers are wanting. And so I think that more and more you're going to see programmatic play a bigger role in terms of the streamers revenue just given the fact that that's what the buyers want. They want a more efficient way to buy, they want targeting and that's what programmatic supplies and Netflix is certainly part of that equation.

Speaker 6

Thank you. And then as you've been working with Netflix over the last couple of months, any learnings on their strategy or what they wish to deploy or any changes to your view of the size of the Netflix opportunity?

Speaker 2

No, nothing that we haven't already talked about in the script or that they haven't talked about. I think, as David said at the top of the call, we're we mark off of Netflix comps in this area. And so, they'll be the ones that will be giving you a better understanding of what their go to market strategy might be, timing, etcetera. But as it relates to what we feel Netflix could represent to us from a size of a client, I would say we still feel very comfortable with the kind of direction we've given there.

Speaker 6

One quick one just on DV Plus. The growth was a little bit slower this quarter. It seems like that's consistent with the Q3 guide. Is that related to political or is there anything else going on there?

Speaker 1

There's always some volatility in the DV plus line. We saw mobile a little lighter growth rate, but nothing to point a finger at. So we kind of put in that normal volatility bucket. I think we're also given all the macro swirl and concerns, we're certainly trying to be a little cautious perspective, geopolitical perspective and political perspective, geopolitical perspective and political perspective directly.

Speaker 2

Great. Thank you, guys.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Laura Martin from Needham. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Good morning. So again on Netflix. So, I think Netflix would love more ad revenue faster, but what they have found in the upfront market is that the brands they're talking to say they have to reach critical mass, round numbers 20,000,000 ad driven subs here in America, then they're under 10. So that is my question. Can they use programmatic when they're smaller than that sort of critical reach that they need for the upfront market?

Speaker 5

Or does ad buys even in your world require bigger reach than they have with their ad driven subs in the U. S?

Speaker 2

Yes, great question, Laura. And again, we'd defer a lot of that to the Netflix in terms of their answer to that. But my take on it is that, yes, as long as you can provide scaled audiences that folks want and it doesn't have to be households, it just could be demos. If you have a decent concentration of that demo, we see consistently in programmatic that folks are making those buys because by nature, in programmatic with targeting, you're looking at a smaller universe of individuals in ergo. I think that programmatic plays nicely into that as you start to scale up and be able to, have a big seat at the upfront table.

Speaker 5

And then back on DBplus, which I know is something that you were trying to turn around a couple of years ago. It's still quite a bit bigger than your CTV business. And I love this new business slide that you've given us for CTV. But is there a similar slide for DBplus and you just don't disclose it? Or is it the growth, the 7% growth you're getting in DBplus is all same clients, they just have to spend more.

Speaker 5

We're not getting new clients there.

Speaker 1

Yes. Laura, I think the slide you're referring to is actually the one on the deck that talks about our recent wins. And there is some on there that's also DD Plus. So that does cross over both. Specifically, United Airlines might have some mobile and desktop revenue that comes from, even though it's streaming television coming on a mobile CTG.

Speaker 1

But kind of the biggest near term wins on there do tend to focus more on TTV. Yes.

Speaker 2

And the Amazon one too as well. So being a preferred, SSP for Amazon's DSP, that's almost exclusively DBplus. But it's a great point you bring out, Lauren, and it's something we probably should consider in future earnings releases.

Speaker 5

Thanks, guys. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

Thanks. The next question comes from Ian Peterson from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thank you for taking my questions too, if I may. First, it would be great to get some color on how the managed services business trended in Q2 and how you expect that business to trend or implied in your Q3 guide, which has some pretty material acceleration in CTV revenue? And my second question is around you guys have signed a number of new partnerships in the quarter. Can you walk us through if these partnerships will require incremental investment spend or how we should think about investments Magnet needs to make in order to properly run these partnerships? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Great. I'll take that on the managed service front. Yes, I think managed service was down slightly in Q2. We expect it to be down slightly in Q3. And as we've discussed in the past, I think what you'll find is managed service, 1 is more it's always been a little more volatile.

Speaker 1

And so we're a little more cautious component of our overall revenue mix. Okay. And then just a follow-up on the component of our overall revenue mix. And so that's how we see that trending over time. From a partnership perspective, there's really no direct incremental investment needed for the new partnerships.

Speaker 1

The only thing I'd say is if you sort of pan back to the overall CTV opportunity that all of these partnerships represent, for example, live sports, I think on the margin, there is some modest engineering, product and engineering, hiring and a little bit of acceleration there that we think has a nice ROI. So nothing that changes fundamental dynamics of our margins or anything, but I think we'll look to accelerate some of that development because of the opportunity that we have ahead of us.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Matt Swanson from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Yes. Thank you guys so much for taking my question. Dave, if I can ask another one on the macro and just kind of how you're thinking about it in guidance. How much differentiation I guess is there between the macro you see in the CTV environment versus DBplus kind of just going back to that cyclical versus secular idea?

Speaker 2

Hey, Matt, it's Michael. I think if you look across the board, the categories that aren't performing as well from an ad spend standpoint tend to go across both platforms. And so I don't think that there may be some rare instances of, say, a managed service contribution. But generally speaking, when we say strength and weaknesses in categories of spend, it's meant for all of Magnate across the board and not just focus on CTV and or DBplus.

Speaker 1

Yes. I think that said, because of the expansion in CTV that general macro impact, whatever it is, probably would look a little more muted because of the gains that we're making in the CTV. So relatively speaking, let's say there was a macro slowdown, you'd probably see it a little more acutely on the DBplus side of the business than you would on the CTV side. But that's the only nuance I'd add to that.

Speaker 7

Yes. No, that's helpful color. And then, Michael, during the prepared remarks, you talked about increased interest from other partners after the Netflix deal, about people trying to figure out why you won, what you're doing for them and maybe how you can help. Obviously, you probably don't want to talk about specific names before these deals are launched, but if you could just give us some more color there, that'd be really helpful.

Speaker 2

Yes, Matt. I think the reference there was that the we work with just about every big player out there, and some will probably never work with, like a YouTube. But in the ones that we do work with, what we're seeing is kind of an increase in the same store sales and that kind of halo effect of Netflix in walking clients through how we won the business, what they want of our stack. We had talked we've talked in the past before about customizing offerings on a streamer need basis. So instead of having people think of us as, oh, they have an ad server, they have an SSP.

Speaker 2

Well, if someone wants 3 features that are ad serving features and 5 features that are SSP features, that's the kind of work that we're doing with these folks to get deeper into their stack, if you will, increase their monetization and increase our revenue participation. So I would say that I wouldn't look for huge announcements as a verification of the halo effect that we're receiving. It's more we get it through the revenue performance of CTV from the existing clients that we have.

Speaker 7

Thank

Speaker 2

you. Thank you, Matt.

Operator

The next question comes from Eric Martinuzzi from Lake Street. Please go

Speaker 2

ahead. Yes.

Speaker 8

Curious to get a layer deeper on the Media Ocean relationship there. The as far as the ramp up in Q3, is the kind of is the next step really educating the buy side here? Or are there things that you need to do on the plumbing, call it, behind the Clearline?

Speaker 2

Yes. Great question, Eric. And it has been all plumbing to date, right? So making sure it's integrated, making sure the workflow works, billing, reconciliation, collections, all that kind of stuff, had to make sure that was up for that was sound and in place. A lot of that dev work falls on Mediaocean, so it's kind of out of our controls.

Speaker 2

But now that there's water flowing through the pipes, we anticipate that we're in this next phase and that is activation. And you're right, there's an education process to it. But there's no additional resources that we need. We have our demand facilitation team that has all the relationships that exist. Mediaocean is leaning in on it as well.

Speaker 2

As we said, we're not converting dollars that are programmatic today going through a DSP and trying to take those monies and put them through this new path of work. This is really for that kind of linear insertion order business that would be sent over via an insertion order convincing those folks of the efficacy of the workflow of Clearline and the additional targeting that you can get from that, the reach and frequency balancing that you can get from that. And yes, we expect the sales cycle to be relatively mid term to it. It's not an easy flip the switch, but we're really encouraged with the response that we're getting in some of the tests that are taking place right now. Got it.

Speaker 2

Thanks.

Operator

The next question comes from Zach Cummins from B. Riley. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Most of mine have already been asked by other analysts. But just curious with improving cash flow that you see and especially here in Q2, how are you thinking about capital allocation when it

Speaker 2

comes to potentially repurchasing shares or retiring debt at this juncture?

Speaker 1

Yes, that's a good question. As we we're really happy with where we stand now from a capital structure, uses for our cash, I'll start first with the baseline that we'd like to have $175,000,000 $200,000,000 as normal kind of operational cash flow balance. Over the next year and a half, we'll we would like to or we would put aside another $200,000,000 to pay off the converts to come due in March of 2026. And so point, we will have some excess cash. I think we would lean much more heavily now to perhaps opportunistic repurchasing of shares, particularly with some of the volatility in our stock price.

Speaker 1

So that would certainly be on the table. We'll also keep some powder dry if there are some tuck ins, small acquisitions that might accelerate important CTV related product development. So that's how I think we think about our capital allocation right now.

Speaker 9

Got it. Well, thanks for taking my questions and best of luck with the rest of the quarter.

Speaker 1

Thanks. Appreciate it.

Operator

Our next question comes from Ross Compton from Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hi, Michael. With that on the press, by

Speaker 10

the way of the upcoming Google Ad Tech trial that sits on September, I appreciate it's going to be a long play here. But also looking at Google's network revenue, which has declined for about, I think, 8 quarters in a row, Are you seeing some competitive alleviation for you as an SSP to win in the space and helping DBplus results? Interested to hear your thoughts here on the moving pieces and the potential spin. Yes, anything you have to add?

Speaker 2

Yes, great question. I would say that over several quarters, if not years, since this investigation going on, we have definitely seen a far more level playing field as it relates to working with Google and Google's Adx and GAM and DV360. So I don't think that anything this quarter or last quarter, I think there's accumulation of practices that are more conducive to the open web, more conducive to a magnet. But I would say more on the margins. I don't think there's been any kind of sea change, where the opportunities that were not afforded to us are now abundant.

Speaker 10

Sure. Okay. That's super helpful. Thank you.

Operator

There are no more questions in the queue. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Michael Barrett for any closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Jason. I'd like to thank the Magnate team for delivering another great quarter that exceeded expectations. The strong performance of our team in the first half of the year has positioned us nicely for a strong finish in the 3rd and 4th quarters. We look forward to speaking with many of you at our upcoming investor events. Bank of America will host our post Q2 virtual investor meetings tomorrow.

Speaker 2

We will be attending meetings with Craig Hallum in Philadelphia and Baltimore on August 13 14. Nick will participate in the Cannonball IR Conference on August 16. We will be attending the BofA Conference in New York on September 4, the Benchmark Conference in New York on September 5th, the Citi Conference in New York on September 6th, the Wolf Conference in San Francisco on September 10th and the B. Riley and Lake Street Conferences in New York on September 12th. Following the conferences, Nick will be participating in investor meetings in LA on September 16 with Lake Street, Dallas on September 17 and Austin on September 18 with Stevens.

Speaker 2

San Diego on September 19, Lake Street, Toronto on September 24 with Benchmark, Montreal on September 25 with RBC and in New York on September 26 with SIG. Thank you all and have a great evening.

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Earnings Conference Call
Magnite Q2 2024
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