Sarah Glickman
Analyst · Truist Securities
Thank you, Megan, and good morning, everyone. Starting with our financial highlights for Q3 2022, Revenue was $447 million, and contribution ex-TAC was $213 million. Reported contribution ex-TAC reflects significant financial exchange headwinds. The weakening of currencies against the U.S. dollar resulted in a year-over-year $28 million unfavorable ForEx impact. At constant currency, Q3 contribution ex-TAC grew 14% on top of a tough comp with 14% growth in Q3 2021. This includes organic growth of 5% and growth from IPONWEB of 9%. Our organic growth was driven by Retail Media, up 32% and Commerce Audiences, which we previously referred to as audience targeting, up 29% as part of Marketing Solutions, up 1%. The growth of Retail Media and Commerce Audiences, combined with the addition of IPONWEB accelerated the shift of our top line mix with non-retargeting solutions representing 41% of contribution ex-TAC in our third quarter, up from 33% in Q2 and up from 28% a year ago. Client retention remained high at close to 90%. Turning to our business segments in Retail Media, revenue was $41 million and contribution ex-TAC was 32% at constant currency to $37 million. As a reminder, we had 65% growth in Q3 last year, including our Mabaya acquisition for online marketplaces. Our growth this quarter was primarily driven by our U.S. client base and CPG, our largest and fastest-growing vertical. This was partially offset by lower online traffic on certain retailer sites and softness in France. Growth from existing clients remained strong with same-retailer contribution ex-TAC retention at 133%. We are excited about our new retailer wins, which we expect to fuel our growth in 2023 and beyond. In Marketing Solutions revenue was $387 million, and contribution ex-TAC was up 1% at constant currency to 180 -- sorry, $158 million with growth in Commerce Audiences partially offset by lower retargeting. Retargeting was down 5% year-over-year or up 4% when excluding the impact of the suspension of our Russia operations earlier this year and the impact from the loss of signals. This quarter, we saw a $14 million signal loss impact, including iOS, as expected, and a faster-than-expected rollout of explicit consent in Europe. Our underlying growth in retargeting was primarily driven by continued momentum in travel, including client win backs, solid performance in Asia Pac and most markets in EMEA, partially offset by softer trends in France and for certain large clients in the U.S. Overall, our full funnel value proposition allows us to capture incremental budgets with an increasing number of clients transitioning to always-on audience strategies to acquire and retain customers. 33% of our live clients use more than 1 Criteo product today compared to 29% a year ago. We expect to continue to benefit from more upselling and cross-selling activities with our integrated go-to-market strategy. Lastly, IPONWEB delivered mid-teens growth for its 2 months of contribution this quarter, in line with our Q3 guidance. We delivered an adjusted EBITDA of $50 million in Q3 2022. As expected, non-GAAP operating expenses increased 15%, including investments in sales, R&D and product talent. Moving down the P&L, depreciation and amortization decreased 14% in Q3 2022 and share-based compensation expense increased 59%. Our income from operations was $4 million and our net income was $7 million in Q3 2022. As you recall last quarter, we accrued EUR 60 million as a provision for loss contingency related to the CNIL regulatory matter. We are now in the process of submitting our response. This is an accrual and will be reviewed each quarter as we move through the administrative process. We anticipate resolution of this matter in 2023. Our weighted average diluted share count was 63.2 million which resulted in diluted earnings per share of $0.10 and adjusted diluted EPS of $0.53 in Q3 2022. In a difficult macro environment, we benefit from a strong financial position with solid cash generation and no long-term debt, including about $744 million in total liquidity as at the end of September, and financial flexibility to execute on our growth and capital allocation strategy following the acquisition of IPONWEB. We entered into a new and expanded 5-year revolving credit facility of EUR 407 million in September, which replaces our former EUR 294 million facility. This underscores the confidence of our global banking partners in our balance sheet and our business outlook. The primary goal of our capital allocation is to invest in high ROI organic investments and value-enhancing acquisitions and to return capital to shareholders via our share buyback program. Since the beginning of 2022, we have repurchased 2.2 million shares at an average cost of $26.70 per share. We have accelerated our share repurchases since the completion of our IPONWEB acquisition and have $121 million left on our share buyback authorization. Turning to our financial outlook, which reflects our expectations as of today, October 28. We remain prudent given the persistent uncertainties in the macro environment. For 2022, we now expect contribution ex-TAC to range between 10% to 11% at constant currency. This comprises organic growth of approximately 5% and inorganic growth from IPONWEB contributing approximately 5% to 6%. Organically, we now expect contribution ex-TAC growth of approximately 35% for Retail Media given softer online traffic, lower brand spend and a slower integration of some of our newly signed retailers and contribution ex-TAC growth of approximately 20% to 25% for Commerce Audiences. We now expect our 2022 adjusted EBITDA margin to be approximately 28% to 29%, reflecting the lower contribution ex-TAC in Q4, which is our largest quarter and the lower EBITDA profile of IPONWEB. As we communicated at the start of 2022, with our focus on sustainable growth and our continued transformation to a commerce media platform, we have invested in high ROI projects, including new skill sets. Clearly, we also have initiatives to enable productivity and efficiency. Given the tougher macro and the IPONWEB integration, this is a heavy focus area. Given the further weakening of the euro and yen against the U.S. dollar, we now estimate the impact of ForEx to lower contribution ex-TAC by $90 million for 2022 or approximately 10 percentage points compared to our previous forecast of $60 million. This includes $10 million in Q1, $21 million in Q2, $28 million in Q3 and an estimated $31 million impact in Q4. As a reminder, close to 30% of our contribution ex-TAC is exposed to the euro and approximately 10% of our contribution ex-TAC is exposed to the Japanese yen. There is no change to our capital expenditures, and we continue to expect free cash flow conversion of about 45% of adjusted EBITDA. For Q4 2022, we are cautious given the impact of the slower macro environment on consumers, our clients and the expectation of lower budget, especially in retail. We expect Q4 contribution ex-TAC of $275 million to $280 million, growing by 11% to 13% at constant currency. This assumes flat organic growth and IPONWEB inorganic growth. Importantly, we expect Retail Media to continue to show strong growth despite the challenging macro environment. We assume a loss -- a signal loss impact of approximately $9 million. We expect adjusted EBITDA of $90 million to $95 million, reflecting the lower top line. Looking ahead to 2023, while there is macroeconomic uncertainty, we expect to continue to deliver growth, healthy profitability and solid cash generation. We expect our broad and diversified client base and our performance-driven offering to contribute to the relative resilience of our business. We are disciplined in managing our head count and our expenses and we have a clear plan for the integration of IPONWEB. We expect our adjusted EBITDA margin to remain in line with 2022 levels given the full year impact of the IPONWEB business. Over time, we have a plan to drive operating leverage from scaling and transitioning to more self-service solutions as well as synergies. As I've said before and as with any transformation, our path won't be linear, but we remain focused on the execution of our strategy to create the world's leading commerce media platform to drive long-term sustainable growth and shareholder value. We look forward to sharing more at our Investor Day on Monday. And with that, I'll turn over to the operator to begin the Q&A session.