MNTN NYSE: MNTN reported first-quarter fiscal 2026 results that exceeded its prior revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance, with management pointing to continued adoption of its Performance TV platform and growing demand from advertisers that had not previously used television.
Chief Executive Officer Mark Douglas said the company delivered 25% year-over-year revenue growth in the quarter, along with 74% adjusted EBITDA growth and “record positive net income.” Douglas used the earnings call to reiterate the company’s positioning in connected TV, saying MNTN was founded to “democratize television advertising” by giving brands of varying sizes access to measurable streaming TV campaigns.
“That’s performance marketing applied to television,” Douglas said. “Choose your budget, your audience, your goals, and upload your creative. Everything is automated from targeting [to] the optimization, bringing digital marketing precision and accountability to streaming TV.”
Revenue, Margins and Customer Growth
Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pohlen said first-quarter revenue rose to $73.7 million, up 25% from a year earlier after adjusting for the divestiture of Maximum Effort on April 1, 2025. He noted that this would be the final quarter in which the company reports revenue excluding Maximum Effort.
Gross margin improved to 81%, up 1,220 basis points from the prior-year period. Pohlen said the company’s core Performance TV business improved by more than 980 basis points, with the remainder of the increase coming from the Maximum Effort divestiture and a full quarter of reduced hosting costs.
- Revenue was $73.7 million, up 25% year-over-year after adjusting for Maximum Effort.
- Gross margin was 81%, up 1,220 basis points from the prior-year period.
- GAAP net income was $8.8 million, or $0.12 per share.
- Adjusted EBITDA was $16.3 million, up from $9.4 million in the first quarter of 2025.
- Adjusted EBITDA margin was 22.2%, compared with 14.5% a year earlier.
MNTN ended the quarter with 3,874 active Performance TV customers, measured over the trailing 12 months, representing 46% year-over-year growth. Pohlen said the number of active customers can fluctuate from quarter to quarter because the company controls the pace at which it moves down market and evaluates whether new clients are a good fit for the platform.
The company’s expansion rate, which measures spending by current customers compared with those same customers a year earlier, remained “well north of 115%,” according to Pohlen. He said that metric continues to show customers increase budgets when they achieve their desired return on advertising spend.
Guidance Raised for Fiscal 2026
For the second quarter of fiscal 2026, MNTN expects revenue of $81 million to $83 million, representing 20% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. The company expects adjusted EBITDA of $19 million to $22 million for the quarter.
For the full year, MNTN raised its revenue outlook to a range of $347 million to $357 million, representing more than 24% year-over-year growth at the midpoint when normalizing for the Maximum Effort divestiture. The company expects full-year adjusted EBITDA of $96 million to $101 million.
Pohlen said MNTN remains focused on growth rather than maximizing near-term margins. He said the company will continue to invest in sales and marketing to increase penetration in what management views as a large, early-stage market opportunity.
“This may cause our EBITDA margins to bounce around from quarter to quarter, as the timing of our investments may not always match the slope of our revenue growth,” Pohlen said.
MNTN ended the quarter with $215 million in cash and cash equivalents and no borrowings outstanding. The company had 73.9 million shares outstanding at quarter-end.
QuickFrame AI Moves Out of Beta
Douglas highlighted the release of QuickFrame AI 3.0, the company’s AI-powered creative video platform, which exited beta the morning of the earnings call. He said QuickFrame AI has become one of the fastest-growing elements of the MNTN suite and is designed to help customers produce television commercials more quickly.
The latest version includes savable characters, a storyboard editor, collaborative editing and other capabilities. Douglas said the platform combines AI video generation with professional-grade creative controls, allowing marketing teams to produce polished videos, iterate creative and launch campaigns faster.
In response to analyst questions, Douglas said MNTN observed customers during the beta period and tracked metrics such as project starts, time to launch and go-live rates. He said the company saw particular benefits for small businesses because there are typically fewer approval layers than in mid-market organizations.
“We’ve kind of brought the effort down, the go-live rates up in terms of QuickFrame AI,” Douglas said. “We were seeing that people with less creative skills were increasingly more successful.”
Pohlen said MNTN has not built QuickFrame AI primarily as a separate revenue stream, but rather as an enabler of the core Performance TV business. He said the company now expects to track its impact more closely following the broader release.
Leadership Additions and Content Access
MNTN also discussed recent executive hires, including Garland Hill as chief revenue officer and Peter Blacker as head of content. Douglas said Hill previously led growth at TikTok, where he helped build a team from scratch to more than 1,000 people and billions in revenue, and had earlier led the CPG sales team at Meta. Blacker previously served as head of streaming at NBCUniversal, where Douglas said he built NBC’s streaming division.
Douglas said the hires support two areas of MNTN’s growth strategy: scaling revenue and expanding customer access to premium TV content. He said MNTN provided customers with access during the quarter to advertising across nearly all streaming networks, including March Madness, the NHL playoffs, Major League Baseball and reality programming such as “Housewives” and “The Traitors.”
On streaming partnerships, Douglas said the company views broad content access as critical to performance marketing because advertisers need to reach target consumers wherever they are watching. He said streaming networks view MNTN as a growth channel because, according to Douglas, 95% of MNTN’s customers have never advertised on television before.
SMB Focus and Competitive Positioning
Management emphasized continued expansion among small and midsize businesses. Douglas said MNTN’s mid-market business has been consistently growing, while the company is carefully managing the pace of small-business onboarding to ensure customers are successful and acquired at the right cost.
Asked about macroeconomic pressure on advertisers, Douglas said MNTN is seeing “nearly zero impact” from macro concerns among SMB customers. He said those advertisers remain focused on return on ad spend rather than broader economic headlines.
Douglas also addressed competition from larger advertising and connected TV platforms. He said MNTN is purpose-built for SMBs, citing AI-driven targeting, creative tools for companies that do not already have TV ads, a programmatic bidding engine designed around performance signals and a go-to-market model focused on smaller advertisers.
“You can’t just take an enterprise go-to-market motion and enterprise technology and just kind of say, ‘Now let’s offer it to small businesses,’” Douglas said. “You have to kind of build a whole new organization and technology platform for the small businesses.”
Douglas said the company’s priorities remain attracting new customers, launching new products, expanding use of AI and accelerating go-to-market efforts through sales and partnerships. He said more than 50% of MNTN’s headcount is in engineering.
About MNTN NYSE: MNTN
MNTN is a software platform specializing in connected television (CTV) advertising, offering marketers the tools to plan, launch and measure streaming TV campaigns. Its platform enables brands to reach audiences across major OTT and CTV channels, helping advertisers target viewers based on demographic, behavioral and contextual data.
The company's core product suite includes campaign management, real-time bidding and performance analytics. MNTN integrates with leading streaming services and ad exchanges, allowing clients to execute programmatic buys, track view-through conversions and optimize media spend through automated reporting dashboards.
Founded by experienced digital advertising professionals, MNTN is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and primarily serves brands and agencies across the United States and Canada.
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