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Criteo S.A. (CRTO)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 10, 2014

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Transcript

Edouard Lassalle

Management

Good afternoon and good evening to all of you and welcome to Criteo’s Financial Results for the Third Quarter and September 30, 2014. Joining us on the call today are JB Rudelle, Criteo’s Co-founder and CEO and Benoit Fouilland, Chief Financial Officer. Please note that this call is being broadcast live on our Investor Relations website at ir.criteo.com. A replay of the call along with the earnings release issued after the close of the U.S. market today will also be available on our Investor Relations website. Before we begin discussing our earnings I would like to remind you that some of our discussions today will contain forward-looking statements. These may include projected financial results, our operating metrics, business strategies, anticipated future product and services, anticipated investment and expansion plans, anticipated market demand or opportunities and other forward-looking statements. As always these statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual results and the timing of certain events may differ materially from the results or timing predicted or implied by such forward-looking statements and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Also I’d like to remind you that during this course of this call we will discuss non-IFRS measures of our performance. Reconciliation to the most directly comparable IFRS financial measures are provided in the tables in the earnings press release published earlier today. Unless otherwise said all comparisons made in the course of this call are against the same period in the prior year. Now with this in mind let me turn the call over to JB Rudelle, Criteo’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. JB the line is all yours.

JB Rudelle

Management

Thank you Edouard. I am very pleased to present our third quarter results to all of you today. We just closed another record quarter of profitable growth. We exceeded the high-end of our guidance, both on revenue ex-TAC and adjusted EBITDA. In the third quarter our revenue, ex-TAC increased 67% year-over-year at constant currency to €78 million. At the same time we grew adjusted EBITDA by 73% at constant currency to from €20 million. Overall we continue to rapidly expand our position in the performance marketing space. Performance is the cornerstone of our company. We are focused on innovation with a single goal in mind, generating more sales for our clients. This rapid expansion of our results is a direct consequence of our obsession with delivering performance to our clients. One year after IPO is a good opportunity to look back and reflect on our achievements. At the time of our IPO road show we said that we were committed to a long-term vision to build a major new player in performance marketing. After four quarters as a public company, I feel increasingly confident that we are indeed on this path. We have grown very, very fast. At the same time, we have built extremely robust foundations to pave the way out for future growth. This rapid expansion is confirming the unique characteristics of our performance model the model which is quickly disrupting the digital advertising industry. Looking proudly at our achievements over this first quarter, this first year as a public company, our current base has grown very significantly from 4,000 per IPO to over 6,500 today. At the same time, we have very significantly improved our technology and grown our product portfolio. Among our many developments, we successfully launched our mobile and multi-screen solution and significantly enhance our…

Benoit Fouilland

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, JB. I’m also delighted to report another strong quarter today. I will walk you through our quarterly financial performance in detail as well as our guidance for the fourth quarter and the full year 2014. I would then open up the call to your questions. We delivered another record quarter of accelerated profitable growth, which exceeded our revenue ex-TAC on adjusted EBITDA expectation. I would start with our revenue for the quarter, which increased 71% or 72% at constant currency to €194.4 million compared with €113.8 million in the third quarter 2013. In the Americas revenue grew 92% in Q3 or 94% at constant currency to €58.6 million. In EMEA, Q3 revenue increased 57% or 56% at constant currency to €93.9 million. In Asia Pacific, revenue increased 78% year-over-year or 85% at constant currency to €42 million. As we have repeated in the past we consider revenue ex-TAC or revenue excluding the traffic acquisition cost based to our publisher, publishers as the key financial measure to evaluate and monitor our business performance. Our strong results in the quarter, reflects the continued rollout of our technology and products the steady growth in our client base as well as our success in growing our publisher base. Our global revenue ex-TAC grew 66% or 67% at constant currency to €77.6 million in the third quarter, compared with €46.8 million in the third quarter 2013. Our revenue ex-TAC margin in the quarter was 39.95% consistent with recent quarters. Looking at our performance from a geo standpoint, in the Americas revenue ex-TAC growth accelerated from 78% at constant currency in Q2 to 97% in Q3, to €23.1 million. In EMEA our revenue ex-TAC grew 52% or 51% at constant currency to reach €38.7 million. In Asia Pacific revenue ex-TAC increased 65% or 70%…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Today’s first question comes from Ross Sandler from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Ross Sandler – Deutsche Bank: Okay, great. Thanks, guys. I just had two quick little housekeeping questions and then, JB, like a high level question. So, on the housekeeping, can you guys just give us an update on how much of the client base and how much – what percent of the revenue is on the new Criteo engine at the end of the quarter? And then, Benoit, the APAC number also very solid, but I think you guys had called out last quarter or two quarters ago the impact from the Japan VAT tax change. So, maybe can you talk about comparing what you’re seeing in Japan versus other APAC countries? And then the last question, JB, you started off in the prepared remarks talking about how you went public about a year ago almost to this week, and at today’s close, shares are down $1.50 from the IPO level, yet you’ve raised your EBITDA numbers by about 65% in 2014. Two of your largest peers, Dotomi and Sociomantic, have been acquired for very healthy multiples. So, at a high level, what do you think investors are missing with your story, and what kind of message would you guys like to send in terms of your plans for 2015 to maybe recoup some of this investor enthusiasm around the story? Thanks.

JB Rudelle

Management

Thank you, so I would address the first question about our engine. Our enhanced engine is now live with over 78% of our clients.

Benoit Fouilland

Chief Financial Officer

So, with respect to APAC, yes, I mean, we have experienced very robust growth in APAC during the quarter. And this is on a much larger scale. As you can see, we have now APAC for presenting 20% of our global revenue ex-TAC. And Japan, continues to be the lion’s share of this. Obviously there is one impact in Japan that is we’re just keeping in mind for this quarter is that last year we for the first time accessed to new premium inventorying from Yahoo Japan, and that obviously was in the base of Q3 last year as impacted to the comparable.

JB Rudelle

Management

And coming to you third, your high level question. We’re indeed very happy to see the growth we had in the last 12 months. And all key indicators are trending all in the right direction. One of the most remarkable fact that we’ve seen is the growing gap where with our competitors that we are, we tend to grow much faster than most of them. So, we’re increasingly confident that we are on track to become this major performance marketing player that we’ve been pitching at the IPO time. And we’re very confident that the market is going to recognize this. Ross Sandler – Deutsche Bank: Great. Thanks, guys. Nice job.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Richard Kramer from Heritage Research. Please go ahead. Richard Kramer – Heritage Research: Thanks very much, a couple of questions. First of all, there seem to be folks in the industry questioning the long-term efficacy of retargeting, especially if some particular platforms seem to be trying to close off their dataset maybe for use by their own ad tech offering. Could you reflect on that as a medium term risk for the company, and whether you’re seeing the same thing? Second question is can you talk a little bit more specifically about how Criteo might be working with on-boarding to Facebook mobile, Facebook Audience Network? And maybe more broadly, can you be specific about the sort of inventory sources that you say you’ve added on this quarter? And maybe the third quick question, can you talk about the big increase in financial income this quarter and whether that’s going to be a feature of your adjusted EBITDA guidance going forward? Thanks very much.

JB Rudelle

Management

Okay. So, I will address the first question, the first two questions, this is JB. And so, you mentioned we’re targeting I mean, just to clarify, this is where we’re targeting this is where we started the business a number of years ago. Today, our business is much broader than that. We are covering the full performance panel of our clients, which include – we’re targeting discovery and mid-funnel. We’re also expanding in terms of number of channels we used to be focused only on display, now we do display mobile, native and e-mail. So it’s much more diversified portfolio of products. This said, our historical product we’re targeting is still growing very, very nicely. It’s leveraging first party data and we have this unique technical integration that we’re with our clients, where we are deeply integrated into their platform. And this creates very sticky relationship. And we are very confident that as our numbers are showing in terms of client retention rate that those relationships are expanding over time. Regarding your second question, we are actually working with Facebook on the mobile piece of the inventory, what people refer to WCA. And this is an area we are confident that we’re going to be able to enhance progresses in the coming quarters. Richard Kramer – Heritage Research: Okay.

Benoit Fouilland

Chief Financial Officer

Regarding the financial income, yes, you’re right. We had an exceptional impact this quarter which is primarily driven by the fact that we kept portion of the proceeds from the IPO in dollars. And we are the edge that with the cover that has been the end of the cover coincided with the moment where the dollars transcend. So we could benefit from transcending of the dollars, and Swiss euros. And that’s this impact that you can see primarily in the financial income of the quarter. This is I would say exceptional, we were just lucky by the timing of this increase in dollars while we were rolling our coverage. With respect to what we see future EBITDA guidance that we have expressed, I mean that EBITDA guidance doesn’t have any components from financial income included in it. Richard Kramer – Heritage Research: Okay, that’s very clear. And could you – maybe as a last point, could you talk at all about what sort of contribution e-mail might have provided this quarter, if it’s material at all? Thanks.

Benoit Fouilland

Chief Financial Officer

We don’t break down our revenue there on top of products. And we are, we don’t have this massive investment to scale the e-mail platform that we acquired to roll this across all our deals. And we believe it’s going to be one of the strong growth drivers for next year. And we are very excited by ability to disrupt the e-mail market, where we’ve been disrupting the display market same type of business model and same type of value proposition. Richard Kramer – Heritage Research: Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Ralph Schackart from William Blair and Company. Please go ahead. Ralph Schackart – William Blair & Company: Good afternoon. Just focusing on the U.S. market for a second, it showed significant acceleration with a 97% growth rate, which is obviously much higher than the acceleration you saw in Europe. I know that U.S. is coming off of a small euro base, and I think you called out mid-market clients on the call. But, it was such a standout metric, just curious if there’s anything else sort of unique about the U.S. market and sort of how you’re thinking about that market maybe going forward. Thank you.

JB Rudelle

Management

Yes. I mean, you were right to mention that U.S. is coming from a much smaller base. I mean, if you look at the total potential of the U.S. market, it’s close to 50% of the global market between 40% and 50%. And today Americas is still much lower percentage of our revenues. So there is, significant catch-up elements in this acceleration of the growth in the U.S. Also the U.S. is very large market where it takes more time to get to the critical size. And critical size matters a lot in an industry where there is a strong winner takes all dynamic. And once we reach this critical size which was roughly a year ago, we saw that we were getting the benefit of this critical size to leverage this winner takes all dynamic that would be ongoing in other regions. So you have this combination of these two effects about very large potential addressable market. And us getting to a stage where we have much more buying power in the U.S., much more liquidity on our platform, much bit awareness, but much more word of mouth of our successful clients to their peers and all of these elements are helping the business to accelerate. Ralph Schackart – William Blair & Company: Okay, great. I appreciate it. Well done.

JB Rudelle

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Brian Fitzgerald from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

JB Rudelle

Management

Brian.

Operator

Operator

Please ensure that your mute button is depressed, so as we currently can’t hear you. Brian Fitzgerald – Jefferies: Hello.

JB Rudelle

Management

Yes, we can hear you. Brian Fitzgerald – Jefferies: Sorry guys, I was on mute there. I had a couple of – maybe a follow up to the U.S. comments. As you look at the growth there, you’ve had nice additions from car rentals to Travelocity. Any color on the verticals where you’re seeing particular traction and strength? And then, when you look at the preferred inventory in U.S., how would you juxtapose that to the type of preferred inventory that you see in Europe? And then I have one follow up.

JB Rudelle

Management

So, in terms of vertical we see very good traction pretty much all across the board. So, in early days we’ve done this like in any country we intend to be a more concentrated in the U.S. than we were in Europe. But now as U.S. is getting bigger and bigger, we hear an expanding set of type of clients, which is the same pattern that we’ve seen happening in Europe, where from a base of highly concentrated customer base in retail, we’ve been expanding into travel, into real-estate, into automotive, into job boards, into telecom. And this is happening in all our geos as they are getting more and more mature. And we have bigger sales team with more expertise across the board. And anyway, the same story on the inventory side, where the more buying power we have, the more direct deals we can negotiate with publishers and negotiate better conditions. And same story in the U.S., now we’re getting to the critical side where our buying power is getting very strong. And we are in a much better position that we were 12 months ago to negotiate preferred partnership with big publishers in the U.S. Brian Fitzgerald – Jefferies: Great. And then, just to follow up on the same point in the Americas, in the U.S., you’ve mentioned before a majority of your revenue ex-TAC is uncapped budgets. Imagine it’s the same for the U.S. and the Americas as you grow there. Any update on dynamics you’re seeing there? And is there any gating factor in terms of tapping into those budgets even deeper?

JB Rudelle

Management

I mean, absolutely. We see this pattern of uncapped budgets across the board, in all our geos. And it’s coming from the same driver is because, at the end of the day they’re all looking at ROI whether on Europe or in the U.S. And I think this is particularly important as we enter the holiday season. As you know, the holiday season is particularly important in the U.S. compared to other countries where it’s less pronounced. So having negotiated, pre-negotiated those uncapped budgets in the U.S. was absolutely critical before entering the holiday season. Brian Fitzgerald – Jefferies: Great. Thanks, JB.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Charles Bedouelle from Exane. Please go ahead. Charles Bedouelle – Exane: Good evening, everyone. Congrats for your fantastic results. Two questions, if I may. The first one is investors talk a lot about mobile, the changes it brings to a company like yours. You’ve made a recent announcement on cross-device. Can you expand a little bit more maybe the hurdles or the constraints you are maybe facing today from inside and outside the company, and how you see that things are evolving in mobile? And the second question, slightly more tedious, is can you just give us an idea of the contribution of acquisition to revenues this quarter, please? Thanks.

JB Rudelle

Management

So, on mobile and I would say cross-device which is the two topics are very intimately related obviously. When it comes, as we said major trend that we’re seeing in the industry in general, which is a big concern for marketers is the fragmentation of audiences across multiple devices and screens. And the challenge is that the tracking system that was in place in the early days of the desktop only world was cookies. And cookies are well then emitted. So they are not very good tracking system when it comes to cross-device. So, to factor this we had to rebuild the whole of cross-device Criteo IV. And this is something we’re very excited about and that we could do only because we have the scale that we have now with our 6,000 plus advertisers, 8,000 plus publishers. And this is why we can have this unit of Criteo idea solving this early problem around cross-device matching. Acquisition, I assume you, the question is around EMEA?

Benoit Fouilland

Chief Financial Officer

No, I mean, as you know we don’t break down the contribution of acquisition. But what we can confirm is that EMEA was in line with our expectations this quarter.

JB Rudelle

Management

Absolutely. Charles Bedouelle – Exane: Okay. Thanks very much. And just a quick follow up question. You’ve had, obviously, fantastic success in Europe. The U.S. now is getting very strong, and Japan obviously last year. Where do you see the biggest next milestone in terms of, I would say, the new markets or call it emerging market? And where do you see that first and where do you see the most potential today? Thanks.

JB Rudelle

Management

Well, today we have a truly global footprint. We cover the EMEA, we cover America, we cover A-Pac it’s pretty much the whole world. And these are big regions where within those regions we have, with also new emerging countries like part of EMEA, we have Russia, which is a relatively new country for us where we see a lot of growth potential. In A-Pac we have a lot of new countries emerging. Very interesting things coming from Southeast Asia, for long time these were very small. And now we start to see very healthy growth in this area. So, based on our three big hubs, now we see a much more diversified contribution of growing number of countries to our overall numbers. Charles Bedouelle – Exane: Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Douglas Anmut from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Kaizad Gotla – JPMorgan: Great. Thanks for taking the question. This is Kaizad Gotla in for Doug. I was wondering if you could just help us think about what kind of increase in spend you might see from clients adopting cross-device tracking? And then, can you just update us on how many clients are using your mid-funnel products? And finally, was Travelocity live and running in 3Q? Thanks.

JB Rudelle

Management

So, clients who don’t have specific budget for cross device. At the end of the day, what they want is to maximize the opportunity to engage in converge users. So, cross device provides two very interesting things. One is the ability to increase the reach with the same user, now you can match in on different devices, so you have more opportunity to reengage with this user. So, think about this as expanding our inventory, very smooth way and with very, with almost no friction and no need to re-discuss with the clients the budget because we are as you know an uncapped budget. It has also a second very exciting features, is that you can now attract conversions on the different device than the original marketing channel so usually many more conversions. And it makes the ROI calculation much-much rate also flat lines. And at the end of the day, whatever the spent with that is based on the ROI calculation. So, the ability to have a much more precise and holistic view of ROI is also the opportunity for them to spend more on the platform. But we had very, very cool two combined values directly plugged into our system. What was the second question again?

Benoit Fouilland

Chief Financial Officer

Update on mid-funnel client adoption by trend. Kaizad Gotla – JPMorgan: Yes.

JB Rudelle

Management

The funnel, yes. Our clients they look at maximizing the opportunity to go after the user. So we are offering this good solution combining mid-funnel and lower funnel. And the two of them combine very well together. And a same business model similar like tradition typically on this funnel clients are willing to be a more aggressive in term of ROI calculation because those users are a bit more challenging to bring on the platform. But it creates a lot of additional business for them. And the two products combine very well together. Kaizad Gotla – JPMorgan: And was Travelocity live in 3Q?

JB Rudelle

Management

Travelocity, yes, it’s one of our new clients. I think we’re getting to the end of the one hour, so one last question.

Operator

Operator

Our last question comes from John Egbert from Stifel. Please go ahead. John Egbert – Stifel Nicolaus: Thanks for the question. Just digging in a little more on the cross-device tracking solution, I know it’s pretty early, but do you have a feel for how your offering stacks up with competing offerings from other players in the space? Specifically, how do you think your proprietary identifier compares to like a people-based marketing solution from a Facebook, for example? Thanks.

JB Rudelle

Management

I think this part is not competing with Facebook, it’s complimentary. Facebook identifier is great for Facebook inventory. And we work very nicely within, into this area. But there is, there are many other publishers that are on Facebook. And obviously for them, you need an identifier. So I think the two things are very complimentary. John Egbert – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay, thanks.