PubMatic Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 8, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Revenue grew 6% year-over-year in Q2 with omnichannel video up 19% and mobile app over 20%, while monetized impressions rose 12% and CTV impressions nearly doubled.
  • Performance was partially offset by a large DSP’s shift to first-price auctions, causing a $2 million Q2 headwind and an estimated $3 million drag in H2, plus about $5 million of macro softness in tech, auto, travel and entertainment verticals.
  • Secular growth drivers remain strong: over 50% of ad spend uses Supply Path Optimization (SPO), and emerging products like Activate, OpenWrap and Commerce Media are gaining traction, with Activate helping clients like Mars exceed incremental sales goals by 126%.
  • For Q3 the company projects $65–67 million in revenue (+4% YoY) and full-year revenue of $288–292 million (+9%), targeting ~31% adjusted EBITDA margin, supported by $166 million cash, no debt and $75 million remaining in its share repurchase plan.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
PubMatic Q2 2024
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

Skip to Participants
Operator

Hello, everyone, and welcome to PubMatic's second quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Annabeth Ferris, and I will be your Zoom operator today. Thank you for your attendance today. As a reminder, this webinar is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Stacy Clements with The Blueshirt Group.

Stacie Clements
Head of Investor Relations at The Blueshirt Group

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to PubMatic's earnings call for the second quarter ended June 30, 2024. This is Stacy Clements with The Blueshirt Group, and I'll be your operator today. Joining me on the call are Rajiv Goel, Co-founder and CEO, and Steve Pantelick, CFO. Before we get started, I have a few housekeeping items. Today's prepared remarks have been recorded, after which Rajiv and Steve will host live Q&A. If you plan to ask a question, please ensure that you've set your Zoom name to display your full name and firm, and use the Raise Hand function located at the bottom of your screen. A copy of our press release can be found on our website at investors.pubmatic.com.

Stacie Clements
Head of Investor Relations at The Blueshirt Group

I would like to remind participants that during this call, management will make forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding our future performance, market opportunity, growth strategy, and financial outlook. Forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions regarding our business, the economy, and future conditions. These forward-looking statements are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict. You can find more information about these risks, uncertainties, and other factors in our reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission and are available at investors.pubmatic.com, including our most recent Form 10-K and any subsequent filings on Form 10-Q or 8-K. Our actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. We caution you, therefore, against relying on any of these forward-looking statements.

Stacie Clements
Head of Investor Relations at The Blueshirt Group

All information discussed today is as of August 8, 2024, and we do not intend and undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments, or otherwise, except as may be required by law. In addition, today's discussion will include references to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, non-GAAP net income, and free cash flow. These non-GAAP measures are presented for supplemental informational purposes only and should not be considered a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in our press release. Now I will turn the call over to Rajiv.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

Thank you, Stacy, and welcome everyone. We continue to deliver strong growth in key secular areas. Revenue from omni-channel video, which includes CTV, mobile, and desktop devices, grew 19% over Q2 last year. Mobile app grew even faster. Driving this was significant growth in monetized impressions. We expanded existing customers and partners such as Haleon, Omnicom Media Group, and Mars, and we signed new marquee customers like Roku and Disney+ Hotstar. Looking beyond these rapid growth areas, our revenue in the quarter was impacted by some macro softness and a large DSP buyer on our platform that changed their bidding approach, as mentioned on our call in May. We now expect activity from this buyer to stabilize in the coming months. Importantly, the growth we've delivered outside of this one buyer highlights the momentum we're seeing in the rest of the business.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

The programmatic market is rapidly maturing as content creators and media buyers build out their ad tech stacks, and I'm confident that the solutions we offer today and the investments we are making in supply path optimization, CTV, commerce media, audience targeting, and performance marketing will drive long-term, profitable revenue growth. It's no coincidence that content creators and buyers are investing in these same areas to scale and grow their businesses. As inventory expands and ad budgets shift to digital, there's a fundamental shift towards programmatic. To better illustrate this, we need only look at some of the key outcomes of the recently concluded upfronts. With the growing onslaught of streaming inventory now available, the market is maturing, bringing CTV prices down and attracting a greater share of advertisers' media budgets as they see higher ROI from this channel. We are benefiting from this lift.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

In the second quarter, CTV growth accelerated significantly in both monetized impressions and revenue growth. Adding to the opportunity, many of the biggest names in streaming, like Netflix, Disney, NBC, and Roku, are opening up programmatic access to their premium inventory, and many of them are leveraging PubMatic technology to do so. programmatic is also reshaping ad buying across the open internet. We have seen an accelerated pace of conversations with walled gardens and social companies as they seek access to unique ad budgets and premium inventory available via PubMatic's platform. For example, PubMatic has expanded its work with Amazon Ads to include enhanced API integrations that provide streamlined access to PubMatic's SSP inventory and participation in the Certified Supply Exchange program, which enables advertisers using the Amazon DSP to create unique deals to reach Amazon audiences on PubMatic inventory.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

None of these major industry shifts would be possible without the use of sell-side technology. PubMatic enables content creators to have full control and transparency to bring their inventory to market. Our solutions facilitate data-driven targeting across their supply, create liquidity for their inventory, and ultimately drive yield in conjunction with their insertion order-based direct sales. We also offer scaled access to ad budgets. In many cases, we are signing new publishers because of our strong media buyer relationships built over many years via supply path optimization. While early investments with agency holding companies continue to deliver growth in SPO, we are also seeing tremendous success with independent agencies and direct brands. Haleon, the consumer health company with a portfolio of household name brands, including Advil, Tums, and Centrum, is on a journey to optimize the quality of their media while reducing the carbon footprint of their media buying operations....

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

To solve these challenges, they needed to get closer to the publisher and directly control their media supply chain. They selected PubMatic to create a global marketplace that meets Haleon's inventory quality targets, resulting in a significant increase in the number of impressions won, while improving the environmental sustainability and effectiveness of their campaigns. Underpinning the growth in SPO activity is Activate. Omnicom Media Group in the Netherlands recently expanded its SPO relationship to include Activate. With Activate, PubMatic offers OMG curated marketplaces for scaled access to multi-publisher deals, as well as direct inventory access to premium inventory. The greatest testament to the strength of Activate is the impressive results clients are seeing. When Mars Petcare was seeking to build awareness and consideration for Greenies pet treats, they and their agency, GroupM, tapped Activate to create an optimized path to premium CTV supply.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

Key to enabling this is Activate's ability to make the entire digital advertising supply chain more efficient by reducing the overhead caused by multiple technology platforms for each ad impression. Jonathan Tuttle, Associate Director of Media for Mars Pet Nutrition North America, explained that leveraging Activate to go direct to media supply was a game changer for the brand, allowing them to invest more of their budget in working media. In his own words, "One of the primary goals of our media at Mars is to drive business efficiencies through new and innovative approaches to the way we buy and deliver our media. We were able to accomplish this in spades by leveraging PubMatic Activate." Ultimately, Mars exceeded its sales lift goal by 20% and exceeded incremental sales goals by 126%.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

The greenfield opportunities we see for Activate are amplified by the growing trends in programmatic advertising across streaming media. These trends mirror what we are seeing across our business with our rapidly growing CTV publisher footprint, many of which are scheduled to go live in the second half of 2024. We recently onboarded Disney+ Hotstar, India's streaming platform, offering a wide range of content across Indian and international titles, as a preferred SSP. This summer has been a boon of live sports content coming to streaming devices with the Olympic Games in Paris, the T20 Global Cricket Tournament, Copa America, and the Euros, all occurring within a few weeks' span. On top of that, the active political cycle is bringing more eyeballs to streaming media. With premier publisher relationships and media buyers already on our platform, we are participating in the CTV consumption tailwinds.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

Additionally, I'm excited to share that we recently integrated into Roku's newly announced Roku Exchange, providing advertisers with access to their highly engaged audiences across premium live and on-demand programming. PubMatic brings the strength of our SPO relationships, as well as unique budgets from Activate, to maximize demand for Roku's streaming ad inventory. As I mentioned last quarter, we believe we are in the early stages of a new CTV and online video flywheel for growth. Adding to this momentum is an increase in mobile app, which is the vast majority of mobile ad spend. Our mobile app revenue grew over 20% for the third straight quarter, nearly double 2024's expected year-over-year market growth rate of 13%. PubMatic has a decade of experience providing mobile solutions, empowering app developers, and providing buyers with a more efficient and controlled path to deliver ad experiences on mobile devices.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

Together, these have resulted in mobile app market share gains. Major apps like Dwango, NewsBreak, and Talkatone are seeing success through their integrations with our tech. We see mobile app as a key differentiator for PubMatic amongst our peer set. We are one of the only omni-channel SSPs to have a scaled SDK footprint integrated directly into publishers' apps. This provides us with increased performance, along with greater control of the ad experience for the end user as we render the ad in the mobile device. Programmatic mobile app advertising is nearing an inflection point of growth. All of the major mediation layers, including AppLovin, Google AdMob, and Unity, are moving away from waterfall auctions to embrace unified auction technology. This is exactly what our OpenWrap software is built to enable. OpenWrap SDK showed strong growth, doubling in revenue from a year ago.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

All of this opens up ad opportunities for more buyers, including performance-oriented brand buyers looking to drive outcomes and ROI within mobile app environments. Our existing SPO relationships provide us with direct access to advertiser and agency budgets to fill this inventory and take advantage of this growing opportunity. This is one of the reasons Roblox chose to partner with PubMatic. Together, we are implementing programmatic media buying with select buyers and expect to expand access to more buyers later this year. Targeted investments in commerce media are adding significant long-term opportunity and contributing to growth. Our technology enables commerce companies to build their ad businesses by unlocking the value of their shopper data and ad inventory, both on-site and off-site. The commerce media market is growing faster than any other form of digital advertising.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

Our conversations with retailers and transactional commerce companies have accelerated over the past few months as we continue to scale our commercial and engineering teams dedicated to this line of business. We have an active pipeline of over 100 commerce media companies in every region, and one consistent theme has emerged. Commerce media networks are increasingly in the market for leading SSP technology like PubMatic's. Leading retail media companies, Instacart and Klarna, which we announced in early Q2, are expected to launch later this year. Ridesharing apps also present a huge opportunity. For example, Uber's advertising business is on pace to exceed $1 billion this year. We see this as a growing customer segment for PubMatic, and in Q2, we signed Rapido, an Indian ride-hailing service for 10 million people across 120 cities.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

Rapido selected PubMatic initially for our monetization and unified auction technology, with the opportunity to expand to on-site and off-site audience monetization as they evolve their commerce media offering. I couldn't be more excited about the breadth of opportunities ahead of us in commerce media. We see this line of business as a natural extension of our omni-channel platform. As a sell-side technology leader, we continue to invest and innovate, unlocking new avenues for growth. As digital advertising becomes increasingly programmatic, both media buyers and content owners are choosing to build their advertising businesses on our platform, with several large, exciting partnerships set to launch over the coming months. Our product portfolio supports the key secular growth drivers across the industry: supply path optimization, CTV, mobile app, commerce media, and addressability. I'll now turn the call over to Steve for the financials.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Thank you, Rajiv, and welcome everyone. Revenue grew 6% over Q2 last year, which was lower than expected, largely due to the changes made by one large DSP buyer in late May. This impact was approximately $2 million, primarily in desktop display. Late quarter weakness in several ad verticals represented an additional $1 million shortfall. Based on the timing of the DSP changes, our software optimizations will continue through Q3. In the coming months, we expect activity from this buyer to stabilize. Note, this was the last major DSP to make this shift to exclusively first-price auctions. Nearly all impressions on our platform are now transacted via this bidding approach. The majority of our business delivered strong results, which helped partially offset this impact. Excluding this DSP buyer, our business in aggregate grew nearly 10% year-over-year.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Our omni-channel video, mobile, and emerging revenue products all grew well above our expectations. This outcome highlights the value of our diverse omni-channel platform and productive multi-year investments in key secular growth areas. Looking at quarterly highlights, ad buyers are consolidating spend on our platform. SPO activity, which drives greater visibility and incremental margin, was over 50%. Monetized impressions across all formats and channels grew 12% over last year, and overall CPMs were stable year-over-year. Q2 was the fourth quarter in a row where our total monetized impressions grew in double-digit percentages year-over-year. Emerging revenue streams, comprised of new products like Activate and growing data partnerships and enterprise software integrations, almost doubled year-over-year and contributed two percentage points of growth.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

We added 25% incremental gross impression capacity on our platform year-over-year, while at the same time lowered the trailing twelve-month cost of revenue per million impressions by 14%, driven by ongoing software optimization. Our cost management and productivity improvements allowed us to keep our GAAP cost of revenue flat year-over-year. Gross profit was $42.1 million, an increase of 10% year-over-year, and Adjusted EBITDA was $21 million, or 31% margin. Overall, the positive results were seen in the growth areas of our business and the advertising ecosystem's accelerating shift towards programmatic platforms position us well for long-term, profitable growth.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Breaking Q2 down by format and channel, we saw continued secular growth above market rates for omni-channel video revenue, which includes CTV, mobile, and desktop devices, which grew 19% over Q2 last year, driven by an increase in monetized impressions of over 50%. CTV monetized impressions nearly doubled over last year. Our mobile app business across video and display continued to perform strongly and grew over 20% year-over-year for the third quarter in a row. Total mobile, inclusive of web, app, video, and display, increased 12% year-over-year. We expect continued growth in mobile as we ramp up our partnerships with Roblox and others. Display faced the largest year-over-year headwind from the combined DSP change and the Yahoo business challenges that emerged in Q3 last year. Despite these challenges, display increased 2% year-over-year.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Excluding the DSP change and Yahoo impacts, display revenues exceeded expectations and increased 21% year-over-year. For reference, the year-over-year decline in Yahoo revenues in Q2 was approximately $2 million. Beginning this Q3, we will have lapped the step down in the Yahoo business. Across the globe, all regions grew in the second quarter. We also expanded our existing publisher revenues on a trailing twelve-month basis, with net dollar-based retention at 108%. Excluding Yahoo, net dollar-based retention was 117%. Looking at growth in ad spend, 6 of our top 10 ad verticals in aggregate grew above 20% year-over-year: shopping, business, food and drink, personal finance, health and fitness, and style and fashion. At the same time, we saw a notable slowdown in other verticals: technology and computing, automotive, travel, and arts and entertainment.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Overall, the top ten ad verticals combined increased by 18% over Q2 last year. Our long-term relationships with buyers continued to expand as activity from SPO climbed to over 50% of total activity on our platform. Underscoring the long-term strategic value and stickiness of these relationships, the trailing 12-month net spend retention rate from SPO partners with at least 3 years of spending on our platform was 120%. In February, I outlined our key operating priorities to lay the foundation for delivering multi-year accelerated revenue growth and incremental margin expansion. I'm happy to share that we have made significant progress on these priorities. First, we continue to invest in supply path optimization, adding buyer-focused sales team members to address the large greenfield opportunity within SPO from independent agencies and direct brands.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

We're also focused on creating additional value for publishers and buyers by expanding the breadth of our emerging products, such as OpenWrap, an important solution as we differentiate in mobile. We have also responded proactively to Google's change in plans to keep third-party cookies and are selectively reallocating resources from Google's Privacy Sandbox to other growth areas of the business. For example, we are reallocating resources to Connect in our data targeting efforts to take advantage of the rise in performance media and commerce media. We are confident that the use of alternative targeting solutions will continue to increase as buyers seek higher ROI and publishers seek incremental ways to increase monetization, leveraging their valuable data assets.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Second, we remain focused on optimizing our infrastructure and making prudent investments in CapEx to keep pace with the success we've had in increasing monetized impressions while improving our margins and unlocking dollars to fund new products. Two-thirds of the incremental capacity we added in Q2 was the direct result of software optimization as opposed to CapEx. Our team is driving tangible cost savings while optimizing via software and AI to deliver incremental efficiencies across our owned and operated infrastructure. For example, our engineers are continuously deploying software revisions that improve the throughput of our ad service. Because we own and operate our own infrastructure, we are able to customize our infrastructure to process high volumes of ad impressions while minimizing our hardware and operating costs. These savings allow us to make investments to drive revenue growth while delivering strong margins.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Moving down the P&L, GAAP operating expenses in Q2 were $46.1 million, lower than Q1 and a 2% increase over the prior year. Note, last year's Q2 included $5.7 million in expense related to the bankruptcy of one of our DSP partners. Our OpEx reflects both prudent cost management and targeted investments in technology and sales. Across these two areas combined, we've increased full-time employees by 17% year-over-year. Q2 GAAP net income was $2 million or $0.04 per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA was $21 million or 31% and included other income related to our work to build and test integrations with the Google Privacy Sandbox. This income was received in part to offset Privacy Sandbox development costs we already incurred during the first six months of 2024.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

We have a strong balance sheet that supports our long-term capital allocation strategy. We ended the quarter with $166 million in cash and marketable securities and 0 debt. Year to date, through July 31, 2024, we have repurchased 2 million shares of Class A common stock for $41 million in cash. Since the inception of our repurchase program in February 2023, we have bought back a total of 6 million shares for $100 million. We have $75 million remaining in our repurchase program, authorized through December 31, 2025. We generated $12 million in net cash provided by operating activities and delivered approximately $7 million in free cash flow. Note, over the next couple of quarters, we expect an increase in DSOs as our accounts receivable mix changes as a result of the bidding changes made by one of our large DSPs.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

We view this as a short-term phenomenon that will work its way through our working capital by mid-next year. Now, turning to our outlook. We are adjusting our full-year outlook based on our latest assessment of the DSP bidding change and recent macro trends. First, the timing of the DSP bidding change in late May prevented us from offsetting the impact in the quarter. This impact was approximately $2 million. Because we operate in a real-time environment, our planned software changes could not be tested at scale until the DSP made its change. Given the complexity of these changes, optimization efforts have continued into the third quarter. Related to this change, we are reducing our full-year revenue outlook by $5 million, comprised of the $2 million impact in Q2, plus an estimated $3 million impact in the second half of the year.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

We expect activity from this buyer to stabilize in the coming months. Second, we are also factoring in into our full-year revenue guidance, an estimated $5 million impact related to macro softness based on trends we saw in several ad verticals in Q2. $1 million of this impact occurred in Q2, and we are estimating an additional $4 million impact over the second half. Despite these two factors, we are encouraged by the rapid growth we're seeing in key secular areas of the business, notably Omni-channel video and mobile app. Emerging revenue is also building momentum, growing sequentially quarter-over-quarter. We also see upside in Q4 from several major customers newly integrated or soon to be integrated onto our platform.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

In addition, political spend and recent upfront deals with a growing mix of programmatic ad spend will command greater proportions of ad budgets in the second half of the year. For Q3 revenue, we expect $65 million-$67 million, or approximately 4% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. For the full year, we expect revenue to be between $288 million and $292 million, or 9% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. In terms of costs, we expect GAAP cost of revenue to increase sequentially each quarter in the low single-digit %. We also expect GAAP operating expenses to increase sequentially in the low single-digit % for both Q3 and Q4, as we continue to invest for long-term growth.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

With our revenue guidance and expected cost structure, which is largely fixed in the near term by design, we expect Q3 Adjusted EBITDA to be between $15 million and $17 million, or approximately 24% margin at the midpoint. For the full year, we expect Adjusted EBITDA to be between $87 million and $91 million, or approximately 31% margin at the midpoint. Our full-year CapEx projections remain in line with our prior expectations of $16 million-$18 million, with a bias to the higher end of the range as we take advantage of the continued strong growth in omni-channel video and mobile app impressions. Most of our CapEx will be made in Q3.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

In terms of Q3 and Q4 free cash flow, the timing of this CapEx and earlier reference change in DSOs, our free cash flow will be somewhat low in the short term, but revert back to historical trends next year. In closing, Q2 demonstrated our ability to deliver strong growth in key secular areas of the business while achieving robust profitability. Looking ahead, our strong financial profile and proven durable business model positions us well to manage through the current environment and take advantage of the significant opportunities ahead in programmatic advertising. With that, I'll turn the call over to Stacy for questions.

Stacie Clements
Head of Investor Relations at The Blueshirt Group

Thank you, Steve. As a reminder, you can ask a question by raising your hand located on the dashboard. If you're on your phone, please press star nine. In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit your question to one and one follow-up. Let's get going. Well, our first question comes from Ian Peterson at Evercore. Please go ahead, Ian.

Ian Peterson
Ian Peterson
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Thank you for taking my questions. Two, if I may. First, it'd be great to get just a little bit more clarity on the DSP headwind. Did that $2 million impact to Q2 come in in line with your expectations or below your expectations? And how should we think about that $3 million headwind contribution to Q3 and Q4? Will it be spread evenly between the two or more so in Q3? And then my second question is, it would be great to get some more color on which verticals you are seeing softness in in both Q2 and Q3 to date. Thanks.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Sure.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

Hey, Ian. So, maybe I can just start a little bit, and then I'll turn it over to Steve on some of the financial aspects of your question. So we're seeing strong growth in a number of secular areas, as we talked about, but that is being overshadowed by the DSP bidding change in the near term, where that DSP converted all of its auctions to first price auctions, where historically, that DSP used a combination of first and second price. And the good news is that these changes make their methodology consistent with the rest of the industry, you know, which had made this change over the last several years. So let me turn it over to Steve now.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Sure. Good to connect, Ian. So with respect to the impact in the second quarter, because of the timing, very late, relatively speaking to what we'd assumed, we just didn't have time to optimize at scale because we operate a real-time auction environment. So it was slightly worse than we had expected. So that $2 million is a function of sort of the timing. Now, when I think about the impact in the coming months, I think it'll be more weighted to the third quarter than the fourth quarter. Because, as I said, you know, we have fully engaged on a real-time basis, optimizing, and we see some really good progress and outcomes as a result of those efforts.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Now, with respect to the softness, there's a couple verticals that we start to see softness right at the tail end of Q2. And, the reason why we are looking at it closely is that they were on a very strong trajectory, you know, fourth quarter, first quarter, and then we saw some weakness emerge, and that has continued into July. So, ad vertical number one is the technology area. You know, strong growth up until, let's call it, around June, and then on a year-over-year basis, basically flatlined. In terms of other areas that we saw some softness, we saw softness in automotive, travel, and arts and entertainment.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

And all told, you know, those are important verticals for us, and do reflect, you know, what we've seen other companies comment in terms of softness they're seeing relative to specific verticals. Now, having said all that, we also saw a really good, robust growth in very important verticals for us. Shopping, business, food and drink, personal finance, health and fitness, all grew above 20% in the second quarter. So we see this as a, I'll call it an air pocket, not really a significant impact to the second half. And you can see that in the guidance that we've given. It's really just $2 million to reflect that.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Then the last thing I'll say, you know, ultimately, we feel really good about the core growth of our business, the omni-channel video, mobile. These are areas that we've been investing in, you know, extensively. The transition in terms of this one DSP, we obviously see as a short-term phenomena and feel that it's gonna be something that'll be looking in the rearview mirror, you know, early next year.

Ian Peterson
Ian Peterson
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Thank you.

Stacie Clements
Head of Investor Relations at The Blueshirt Group

... Thanks, Ian. Our next question comes from Shweta Khajuria at Wolfe. Please go ahead, Shweta.

Shweta Khajuria
Shweta Khajuria
Analyst at Wolfe Research

Hello. Thanks for taking my question. Okay, Rajiv or Steve, Trade Desk just reported, and Magnite reported yesterday they did not call weakness out or any softness out. So any particular reason that you're calling it out in the third quarter guide? Thanks a ton.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Sure. I'll take that. So, you know, as we always endeavor to do, we are transparent in terms of the trends that we're seeing, so I can't comment on what other companies are seeing. You know, the reality is we are a very broad scale SSP, omni-channel. We have 20+ ad verticals. We're a global business, so we really do see a lot of activity across the globe. And these specific ad verticals, you know, wouldn't be normally sort of called out unless we saw some trend in the near term. As I said a moment ago, we're not sensing this is a major change, but we, as we always try to do, is put together a prudent guidance reflecting the puts and the takes.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

So, you know, that's what we've seen recently. At the same time, you know, from our perspective, we have many other areas that are growing very rapidly, and I have called out the ad verticals that are performing strongly.

Shweta Khajuria
Shweta Khajuria
Analyst at Wolfe Research

Thanks, Steve.

Stacie Clements
Head of Investor Relations at The Blueshirt Group

Our next question comes from Matt Swanson at RBC. Please go ahead, Matt.

Matthew Swanson
Matthew Swanson
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Yeah, thank you. Maybe if I could start on some of the commentary around some of the emerging products and the cross-sell into the SPO. Rajiv, I think you had one good customer example there. Could you just talk a little bit more about the SPO install base and just, I guess, how much traction there is with the emerging products and kind of getting, you know, more leverage, I guess, out of those SPO relationships?

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

Sure, yeah. Why don't we talk about... I'll talk about emerging revenue streams, emerging products, broadly, and then we can get into, into Activate and SPO in particular. So we've obviously been, you know, talking about these products for quite some time, our OpenWrap solution, Activate, Connect, Convert, so that's for data and, and for e-commerce. And collectively, what we're doing is building, you know, new innovative solutions, bringing those solutions to our customers that are already on our platform, delivering value for them, and also creating leverage, within our business. And this is all, you know, done via cross-sell and up-sell into the existing customer base, in some cases on the buy side, and in some cases, on the publisher side of the ecosystem.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

And in the case of commerce media, you know, bringing in a new type of customer in terms of commerce media networks or transaction or retail, based companies. So we're really excited about the progress there. Steve commented on the contribution to revenue growth. When we look specifically at SPO and Activate, you know, we're seeing, I think, really, really good progress. So as a reminder, with Activate, we're creating a single layer of technology for buyers to connect with publishers, really for high-value, transactions like CTV and online video, and it's roughly a $65 billion TAM expansion. And there's been very strong and positive feedback on our vision and capabilities, so it's resonating.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

The Mars group and case study, you know, that's, I think, a great example, and indicates that the product is real, and it's capable. It's definitely not mature or full-featured yet, so we're working on a lot of new capabilities all of the time, but it's clearly delivering, you know, on the promise or the value proposition. And now we're also scaling it up, so, we're seeing a lot of good pipeline, and traction in every region, across multiple buyer customer types, you know, agencies and advertisers. We're signing up agencies at a pretty good pace. Omnicom Netherlands, expansion of SPO relationship, to utilize Activate is a good example of this. And the product really came from, you know, listening to the ecosystem, right?

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

So with SPO, as we're spending more time with buyers, we heard about some of the challenges, and you know, thought about opportunities that we have to build specifically to help them, you know, create more efficiency, create more leverage in their business, around you know, some of these transaction types that had not yet moved into programmatic. So we're really excited about it. I'll turn it over to Steve, if he has any comments as well.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Yeah, I think, you know, just to build on that perspective and excitement that we feel. We first and foremost, you know, this set of products has really shown great momentum over the last year, but we see growth every quarter sequentially. That as a category contributes two percentage points of total company growth, all of which, you know, have the potential to continue to grow and be much bigger parts of our business in the future. And the other facet that, you know, we've shared in the past, but is really important to understand in terms of, you know, the impact on our bottom line, is that we are repurposing and leveraging our existing cost base.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

The marginal profitability of these offerings is quite high, and so it gives us opportunities to reinvest for further growth and obviously add to our incremental profitability.

Matthew Swanson
Matthew Swanson
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

That's great. And then maybe just a quick one on guidance for you, Steve. I know this isn't, like, the biggest contributor, but it's been a very odd political season from a seasonality standpoint. How are you thinking about when political revenue might come in, you know, Q3 versus the full year guide?

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Sure. The way that we have put together our forecast around political spend is really take a look at the last presidential cycle—you know, four years ago. You know, obviously, we have a lot of contact buyers, publishers in the ecosystem. And our latest thinking is that, you know, there's gonna be relatively little contribution in the third quarter, and the bulk of it will be coming through in, let's call it the last month-and-a-half-ish, you know, of the presidential cycle. So primarily, fourth quarter, benefit. And it's really just a function, you know, of getting in front of people close to when they're gonna vote.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

So from our perspective, nothing's fundamentally changed in terms of our confidence in delivering, you know, a very nice uptick as a result of political. You know, a couple things to call out. You know, four years ago, we did not have a CTV business. We then built a business that's growing very rapidly. As we shared, you know, the monetized impressions are growing double digit. In fact, last quarter, it doubled. And so that CTV business positions us very well to take advantage of political spend, which we do believe, you know, will index more on the CTV vector. So overall, we're feeling good about political. It's still early in the cycle, but we do anticipate to get our fair share of political spend.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

Thank you.

Stacie Clements
Head of Investor Relations at The Blueshirt Group

Our next question comes from James Heaney from Jefferies. Please go ahead, James.

James Heaney
James Heaney
Analyst at Jefferies

Great. Thank you, guys, for the question. Can you just talk about the trends that you're seeing on the pricing side? Is it fair to say that that's where most of the softness is showing up? And then, any commentary you can provide on just pricing versus volume growth for the rest of the year, and then I had a follow-up.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Sure. So from our perspective, we're actually very positive about the trends that we're seeing. Number one, you know, our progress, you know, for the majority of our business is all volume driven. As I just mentioned a moment ago, omnichannel video is seeing double-digit growth in monetized impressions on a year-over-year basis. And we're delivering, you know, close to 20% revenue in the second quarter. And so when I look at that part of our business, you know, through the rest of the year, I expect that we're gonna continue to see very similar patterns, double digit growth in revenues and double digit growth in monetized impressions.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Now, in terms of where we're seeing CPM pressure, is really related to sort of the display format, particularly desktop, not surprisingly, and that's sort of what I'll call the instantiation of what we saw from the change with the DSPs bidding approach, that those such CPMs were impacted. But overall, our overall company CPMs were stable to up in the second quarter, and that really underscores the value and the benefit of our omnichannel platform, number one. Number two, the benefit impact from, you know, having a mix moving towards higher value formats, i.e., video. So overall, our expectations are double-digit growth in the fastest growing areas of our business.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

I anticipate display will probably be in the single digits through the balance of the year, mostly coming through pressure of CPM, but offset by monetized impression growth. The last thing I'll comment, and I shared it in the script, and that is, the core display business that we have is doing quite well. So if you strip out the impact of Yahoo and strip out the impact of the DSP, our display revenues actually grew 20%. So what that means is that we are getting the benefit of consolidation, and more and more publishers are relying on us to monetize, you know, this very important format.

James Heaney
James Heaney
Analyst at Jefferies

Great, and then maybe just to follow up, you know, looking at your Q4 revenue guide, it does look like pretty decent sequential growth and acceleration on a year-on-year basis. Could you just talk about the factors driving that, whether that's some seasonal factors or just improvements that you're expecting?

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Sure. So, to frame it out for you and for others on the call, last year, fourth quarter, our Q4 versus Q3 grew over 30%. And so, the number you were referencing in our guidance, the implication is that we would grow our fourth quarter 36% versus the third quarter. And so the build-up of that is a couple things. First, you know, the very strong secular growth that we're seeing in omnichannel video and mobile, and that's gonna continue, as I said. We also are anticipating the incremental benefit of political, $2 million that will supplement that. In addition, you know, we're gonna see the incremental benefit from our emerging products, Activate, OpenWrap, et cetera.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

And then, Rajiv called out on the call, a number of major customers that are either integrated or will be integrated, that will add incremental revenues in the fourth quarter. So overall, we feel very good about our ability to step from the third quarter guide into the fourth quarter.

Stacie Clements
Head of Investor Relations at The Blueshirt Group

Great. Thanks, James. Our next question comes from Steve Orman at Oppenheimer. Please go ahead, Steve.

Steve Orman
Steve Orman
Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co.

Hi, this is Steve asking for Jason. So just two questions from us. So one, why did the change only impact one DSP? Do you have different protocols for different DSPs? And secondly, more of a housekeeping: Does your full-year CapEx guide include capitalized software? Thanks.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

So, Rajiv, you want to take the first one, and I'll take the second?

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

Sure, yeah. Yeah, so Steve, on your first question, so this impact, this is really the last DSP of any significance to make the shift from first and second price auctions to first price only. And all other DSPs, you know, have made this change over the last several years. So that's why on that, on your first question, it really only affects this one DSP.

Steven Pantelick
Steven Pantelick
CFO at PubMatic

Now, with respect to the housekeeping, the CapEx is solely related to PPE, property, plant, and equipment. You'll see in our financials the incremental related to software capitalization.

Steve Orman
Steve Orman
Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co.

Great, thank you.

Stacie Clements
Head of Investor Relations at The Blueshirt Group

Great. At this time, I'm gonna turn the call back over to Rajiv for closing remarks.

Rajeev Goel
Rajeev Goel
CEO at PubMatic

Thank you, Stacy, and thank you all for joining us today. Content creators and buyers are turning to sell-side technology and choosing Programmatic to build their advertising businesses. With numerous new customers, and expansion of existing customers already on the platform, we believe secular areas like omnichannel, video, connected TV, commerce, media, and mobile app will continue to drive our growth. With SPO activity climbing to over 50%, our opportunity will disproportionately grow as the market continues to shift to programmatic. We look forward to meeting with many of you over the next month at various investor conferences. Thanks, and have a great afternoon, everyone.

Executives
Analysts
Powered by Quartr