Michael Barrett
Analyst · Needham
Thank you, Nick. It’s been a busy 3 months spread since our last call, especially since we just hosted all of you on September 15 for our Investor Day, which if you missed, I would highly encourage you to review. [Technical Difficulty] formats and channels, which combined were up 89% as reported or 26% on a pro forma basis. Our results are strong, but were tempered with some late Q3 supply chain related ad cancellations, which we have also experienced early in the fourth quarter. Despite this temporary headwind as well as a tough political advertising comp from last year, we still exhibited very strong financial results again this quarter. I will first cover some quick performance highlights. CTV revenue ex-TAC grew 51% on a pro forma basis. Our DV+ business grew mid-teens revenue ex-TAC year-over-year on a pro forma basis, DV+ is comprised of our mobile and desktop businesses, which grew 18% and 11% respectively. Adjusted EBITDA margins on a revenue ex-TAC basis came in above expectations at 35% and we generated $34 million in operating free cash flow, which we define as adjusted EBITDA less CapEx. This quarter, CTV represented 38% of revenue ex-TAC and now represents the largest portion of our business. After closing the SpringServe acquisition this quarter, we are in an even stronger position to capture and gain share in CTV with the addition of a strategic ad server. The work we have done has created an industry leading CTV market position, with the ability to serve a broad set of customer types with many different products and services to fuel future growth as the only independent end-to-end monetization platform. It bears repeating that we now have significantly widened and strengthened the customer segments we serve across device OEMs such as Roku and Samsung, virtual MVPDs, such as Sling and Hulu, digital-first platforms, such as Pluto and Tubi, and of course, major broadcasters and programmers such as Discovery and Fox, creating deeper, more strategic, more durable partnerships. In addition, we have we have also meaningfully expanded our service offering to touch more inventory in transaction types. And our CTV revenue includes not only fees from Magnite managed auctions, but also fees from publisher direct sold deals, managed service revenue, ad serving fees and value-added service fees. And we now participate in every part of the CTV buying process, direct, upfront and programmatic through our technology solutions and our managed service offering. It is clear that IDFA removal has affected some industry players. I want to be clear we are not one of them despite seeing well over 80% adoption of iOS 14.5 on our platform. Our business doesn’t participate in app downloads and we have very little social advertising, thus limiting our exposure. Further underpinning this point, we have seen a shift from iOS to Android and spend and better than expected CPMs from iOS opt-outs, approximately 20% lower than opt-ins. Keep in mind that iOS revenue as a percentage of our total revenue ex-TAC is in the mid-single-digits and there is zero CTV revenue in iOS. As a reminder, on the third-party cookie front, Google continues to plan to eliminate third-party cookies in Chrome toward the end of 2023. We continue to believe that first-party publisher segments collected in a privacy compliant manner will be the future of identity solutions and that SSPs will be a driving force behind this transition. This is an area where we are positioned extremely well. Now, I would like to go into greater detail regarding the components of our ad spend to provide additional color. I will start with the strongest performing sectors in Q3. Tech, health and fitness, home and garden, retail and financial verticals continued to be the strongest performing year-over-year sectors and this is on top of a very strong Q3 2020. Year-over-year growth rates in this group range from 16% to 45% and compared to pre-COVID levels, the 2-year stacked growth rates are all above 45%, up to a high of 88%. These sectors also jointly comprise a significant portion of industry ad spend. One additional vertical that showed strength in Q3 was arts and entertainment, with the return of movies, live sports and TV productions, which was up over 70% year-over-year. While we are focused on moving large linear TV budgets over to CTV from leading national advertisers, we are also seeing traction moving smaller advertisers over to CTV, in particular with respect to mid-market and regional campaigns. REI started with us in Q2, tripled in Q3, is on pace for another big sequential increase in Q4. CDW, who works with us through GroupM, entered live sports CTV advertising this quarter and we ran CTV campaigns for the Tennessee Titans, Advanced Auto Parts and North Face. The weakest performing sectors in Q3 relative to last year were political, automotive, hobbies and food and beverage. Travel is also still down double-digits in a 2-year stack, but up over 50% off a low base in Q3 of last year. At a high level, we expect these trends to, by and large, persist into Q4. We continue to see strength in retail, tech and home and garden and weakness in auto driven by the chip shortages in travel due to ongoing COVID concerns. The team has been very busy this quarter and there is a number of key wins worth mentioning. We announced in conjunction with the Trade Desk and AMC Networks, a new solution that allows TV programmers to deliver addressable ads programmatically on linear TV. Quigley Simpson, a full-service agency specializing in brand and performance marketing, made a spend commitment and selected Magnite to serve as the agency’s preferred SSP; specifically, for our strength in CTV to address performance marketers’ needs. Fubo selected us this quarter as its preferred SSP with a focus on live sports in CTV. Network 7 in Australia successfully used our platform during the Olympics, leveraging our advanced tools to more effectively manage large bursts of inventory during live sporting events. In addition to these client wins, I’m proud to announce Magnite won two big Ad Exchange Awards last week at Programmatic I/O in New York. First, our CTV platform swept the best video technology for Media Suppliers Award, which recognizes innovative and powerful publishing facing tech in the video space. Our entry included success metrics from our work with AMC Networks in the Trade Desk. Second, we won the best seller-focused Technology Award for our Demand Manager solution. This award recognizes vendors that excel in helping publishers build stronger and more sustainable businesses and illustrates how demand manager helped the weather company, with their ad rendering speed, spend diversification and scale. As you can see, it’s been a very busy and productive quarter for Magnite. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Magnite team, we continue to deliver our customers a valuable and highly differentiated solution. We are the only scaled independent omni-channel solution in market and our confident that we will continue to gain and grow share in CTV and DV+ in the quarters to come. With that, I will hand things over to David who will go into greater detail regarding financial performance and expectations.