Earnings Labs

Taboola.com Ltd. (TBLA)

Q1 2022 Earnings Call· Fri, May 13, 2022

$3.77

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Taboola’s First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference maybe recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today Jennifer Horsley, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jennifer Horsley

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Taboola's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. I'm here with Adam Singolda, our Founder and CEO; and Steve Walker, our CFO. We issued our earnings press release yesterday aftermarket and it is available, along with our Q1 Shareholder Letter in the Investors section of our website. Now, I'll quickly cover the Safe Harbor. Certain statements today, including our expectations for future periods are forward-looking statements. They are not facts and are subject to material risks and uncertainties described in our SEC filings. These statements are based on currently available information and we undertake no duty to update them, except as required by law. Today's discussion is also subject to the forward-looking statement limitations in the earnings press release. Future events could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated. During this call, we will use terms defined in the earnings release and refer to non-GAAP financial measures. For definitions and reconciliations to GAAP, please refer to the non-GAAP tables in the earnings release posted on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Adam.

Adam Singolda

Analyst

Thank you Jen. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us for our first quarter call. Q1 was a strong quarter, we beat our targets, delivering 31% ex-TAC gross profit, growth over Q1 of last year, right from the 4% on a pro forma basis. We also generated $35 million of adjusted EBITDA despite a very challenging macro environment. Before I walk through the highlights from the quarter though, I want to address the revised guidance we issued today in conjunction with our results. The revision was driven by basically two factors: the main factor is the economic uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine, which increased in the second quarter in a bigger way; and secondly advertising business in Europe. More than 30% of our revenue and global yields as many of our advertisers in Europe by all around the world, in many ways it's somewhat similar to what we saw in the pandemic, but obviously in a smaller scale where businesses slowed down their spending, but in this case mainly in Europe. The second factor is the launch of our bidder, which is now live and off to a good start, but still behind plan. Now that we're live and we're seeing real data and even more bullish and how much growth opportunity there is here, not only on Microsoft itself, but also on other platforms, which we do plan on integrating via header bidding in the short-term. Due to these two factors, we are lowering our full-year 2022 guidance ranges and expect gross profit to $595 million to $616 million and adjusted EBITDA to $152 million to $162 million. Steve will speak more about our guidance in a few minutes as well. I'm obviously not happy about having to adjust guidance especially after having a…

Steve Walker

Analyst

Thanks, Adam, and good morning, everyone. Let me address right upfront our revised guidance. As Adam discussed earlier there were two factors that caused us to reduce our guidance. The first and main one was caused by the war in Ukraine and subsequent macro weakness, the effect of that on our business has been a negative impact on our European advertising business, which is more than 30% of our overall revenue. The economic and political uncertainty caused by the war, caused advertisers to cut back on their spend in Europe. This reduced global yield since many of our European advertisers target users in the U.S. and other countries. We saw an initial dip when the war started, but yield seem to recover in March before declining again towards the end of the month and in early April. We have also seen a related effect impact our growth, which is a weakening of the euro against the U.S. dollar. This translates into lower U.S. denominated revenue when we convert our euro revenues into dollars. We estimate the foreign exchange rate impact on our growth in Q1 was 1.5% and we'll have a similar impact for the full-year of 2022. We felt it was judicious to be cautious and therefore factored both the conservative outlook on yield for the balance of the year and the weaker euro into our forward-looking guidance. The second factor was the bidder that launched 100% on Microsoft on April 1st. While it's off to a good start it is behind our plan. We have factored current performance levels of the bidder into our forward-looking guidance. We believe there is potential upside to this as we have identified opportunities to improve the bidder and we also will start using the bidders to compete for display inventory via header…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Stephen Jue with Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

Stephen Jue

Analyst

Okay, thank you. So Adam, can you give us a little color on the bidder product that you called out as being behind plan. What is it designed to do? And what do you think is the reason for what sounds like a slower pace of customer activity? Do you think it's a product or an ROI problem? Or do you think this is an awareness problem. And I guess the -- in regards to weakness you cite in Europe, did the overall activity just stepped down on the heels of the war and not really recover thereafter. And does the guidance basically assume at this point that Europe, back of the envelope math, it seems like it's down about 25% versus where you guys had planned before and that persist for the balance of the year? Thanks.

Adam Singolda

Analyst

Sure. Hi, good morning, Steve and good morning everyone. So about the bidder and Steve can take the financial part in Europe. So as an update, I'm happy to say it's fully live now, so we have developed over the last year or so the bidder, the team has done a really good job integrating that with Microsoft supporting us in designing that. I would say we're seeing the few things that are doing even better than expected and others that are behind. But overall it's down our expectation, but off to a good start and from here we believe that as we look forward on Microsoft specifically and even outside of Microsoft there's a lot of growth opportunity for us, because if you recall, we mentioned on the Investor Day that Microsoft was kind of drag in our growth in past years, that will not be the case as we look into the future. So I'm really happy that the team was able to build the technology that in such a quick time, you know, is doing what some other companies have done in 10-years building a bidder and from now I think we have a lot of opportunity with them. The second thing is the bidder over the next, short-term really will be start integrating into other inventory beyond just Microsoft, so header bidding and things of that nature. So, overall the bidder will become a nice growth opportunity for Taboola.

Stephen Walker

Analyst

Yes, and Stephen regarding Europe, so I think what the way to think about what happened in Europe is that you can think of it almost as a small pandemic except in Europe, not in the world as a whole. And what happens is advertisers when they see that economic uncertainty, we see two things from them. So, one is we see less spend, so in some cases they cut down on budgets, they reduce what their activity and also we end up earning less-per-click, because the way to think about that is, we've always talked about the fact that our yields are driven by three factors click-through rates, cost per click and conversions. And basically they become worried that their consumers are not going to buy as much from them so they reduce how much they're willing to pay-per-click to adjust for the fact that they're not going to make as much on it. So we see all those effects and then what happened with us is, because our European advertising business got softer, it actually impacted our global yields, not just Europe, because basically the European advertisers in many cases are trying to reach U.S. consumers and Asia Pacific consumers and others. So it actually impacted our global yields. So when you mentioned that Europe was down 25%, it's really our global business gets impacted not just the European business, and in fact our yields, which is where it affects our full business, so that's the way to think about kind of what happened there.

Adam Singolda

Analyst

But Stephen from a moving forward perspective, we think both the bidder and the case in Europe are single one-time events and the guidance we've revised includes everything that we think has happened and from now you know it's only one way up.

Stephen Walker

Analyst

Yes. And I just want to mention that we do or the fundamentals of our business are still strong so we still expect to generate $150 million plus of adjusted EBITDA, and we expect to generate significant positive cash flow to the tune of high 10s of millions of dollars of cash flow this year as well.

Stephen Jue

Analyst

Right.

Steve Walker

Analyst

Thank you.

Stephen Jue

Analyst

Thanks.

Jennifer Horsley

Analyst

Operator, we'll take the next question.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Laura Martin with Needham. Your line is open.

Laura Martin

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

Good morning. I'll ask two, let's do one at a time. So I want to ask about trade desks open path. I understand that you guys are supply path optimized, because you have direct relationships with buyers and sellers. But my question is, isn't really trade desk open path essentially doing your job in a way, but in the open Internet meaning, if somebody if these journalistic companies like Washington Post adopt to open path and is really not going to charge for it is just going to do it at cost just it’s doing cost really they don't really need -- doesn't that take business away from you or isn't that harder than for you to take a customer away from open path, because they basically have optimized the supply chain, which is one of your big brand promises when you sign up a new customer, could you sort of speak to that.

Adam Singolda

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

Yes, so first of all, and good morning Laura, hi. So first of all, it's important to remember that Taboola's supply and Taboola's demand are both unique to us. So if you think about, if you go to ESPN or CNBC or BBC or any one of our publisher partners what we actually create the real estate we create on those publishers does not look like anything that the trade desk is looking to achieve with open path, right? So we serve two things both editorial recommendations, as well as paid recommendations, you cannot replace that with any form of just in our banner or single ad. So from a supply perspective, it's very unique, it's very native, so that's from that perspective, the demand is also unique, because most of it is performance advertising, supplemented by about 15% of brands and agencies. So both of those dynamics make it quite unique and not something that we believe is in the same addressable market is what the trade desk is looking to replace. The second point I'll make is that over time, as I look into the next 2022 -- the next 10-years, in any case I suspect banners are at risk of being dissolved, because if you can imagine, and I mentioned that in my letter, we're seeing really good momentum replacing banners with this sort of carousel experiences that are half editorial and half paid and the paid portion is either e-commerce, video or native advertising. And if you think of from a publisher perspective, any banner I have, homepage, middle of the page, section front that anyone can potentially buy would I prefer to sort of a banner or would I prefer to make the sentiment of money or more and then have half of it actually engage my users with editorial content. And that's a very hard competition, so we're seeing good momentum there and I mentioned in E-Online, NBC Sports, South East and others and I think over time that is where Taboola will grow the most, which is 10s of billions of dollars of banners that will be replaced by basically this paid recommendations and editorial recommendation.

Stephen Walker

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

Let me just add one other thing in addition to the unique supply and unique demand that Adam mentioned, we also have unique data. So if you remember, we've talked about in the past, but what we have, that the trade desk doesn't have is we know what people are reading about. We know what they're interested in, it's a different form of data. So I think that also makes -- gives the advertisers something different with us than they get from the trade desk, because it's a different way of targeting consumers with that highly contextually oriented data.

Adam Singolda

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

And that's why 9% of the revenue SmartBid.

Stephen Walker

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

Right.

Laura Martin

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

That's super helpful. Thank you for that. Okay, the other thing is that is, Steve you said you're going to keep costs in line even though revenue is going to be a little softer. And Adam you said in one area, you're going to double your engineering resources over the next year. My question is around hiring, have you had issues hiring and if you've been able to hire and ramp up your spending as quickly as you wanted given the tight labor market.

Stephen Walker

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

Yes. So it is tight for sure. And I think especially when it comes to tech resources, it's a very challenging environment. So, so far this year we're a bit behind on our hiring plan, but April for instance was our best hiring month basically in the last 18-months. So it could be that things are opening up a bit and we do expect to kind of higher at something close to what we had initially targeted by the end of the year. So I'd say bit behind, but we think we can close that gap and definitely, it's competitive still, but it could be that things are loosening up based on our recent experience.

Adam Singolda

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

And we're also taking our international strategy to expand our tech sort of hubs, right. So we have Israel initially. We have an office now in LA as part of the Connexity that's growing fast. And then also in Taiwan, we're seeing a lot of good momentum. So in general, we're also looking to expand our international, sort of, tech hubs to be able to attract great talent.

Laura Martin

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

We've been hearing that back to office. If you let people be distant, it’s easier to recruit. What's your in-office policy Adam?

Adam Singolda

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

Well, you know, we -- first of all I would say that we don't force anyone to come back, we give the local leaders, sort of the opportunity to decide, what -- we have -- we work in 22 countries and it's very different. I was just in Israel and Israel people are half their offices in Israel, every day, so that's hundreds of people coming to the office in other regions much less, in China, people are at home. So I mean it's very regional. So we want to empower our leaders to decide. Personally, I can tell you my opinion is that being in the office, seeing the people, we hired north of 400 people last year. So you can imagine seeing them, interacting with them, showing empathy to each other is such a boost in culture and eventually execution. So I think it's important to see each other. I think over time companies that will be too aggressive and being remotely will suffer from execution gaps, so I choose culture and in person. But that will take time, I come to the office.

Jennifer Horsley

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

Thanks, Laura.

Laura Martin

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

Thank you.

Jennifer Horsley

Analyst · Needham. Your line is open.

Operator next question.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from James Kopelman with Cowen. Your line is open.

James Kopelman

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

Good morning. As you look across industry verticals, can you talk about where you saw advertiser strength during the quarter? In which verticals have held up the best into April and May versus which verticals saw the most impact from macro and other factors that you cited. Any color around the conversations you're having with advertisers would be helpful? And secondly, in terms of your forward guide you mentioned taking a conservative approach, what do you view as the two or three biggest factors that could drive upside over the quarter and through the remainder of the year? How much of potential upside could come from macro or broader digital market improvement versus execution on your growth initiatives, including Connexity or new features like SmartBid. Thanks.

Stephen Walker

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

Thanks, James. So I'll address the verticals. First of all, so I think the way first of all, we've seen the most impact geographically rather than on certain verticals. So as we talked about Europe has been weak, there has been much less of an impact in the U.S., although there has been some flow-through but less of an impact on advertisers in the U.S. and Asia Pacific and Latam. So generally speaking, it's been much more of a regional impact and in Europe for instance, it's pretty, it's been impacted pretty evenly across the board. The one thing, I would say is that it definitely has impacted brands and agencies more than performance advertisers. So for instance in Europe, I was talking to our VP of EMEA yesterday and he was telling me that they've had almost every single brand in Europe said, please don't show me on any pages about the war. So they've cut back significantly on what they want to be shown on, they've cut spend, they reduced targets, whereas, he said not a single performance advertiser has had that same conversation with them about not being on war pages. So just to give you a sense, it's definitely more brands and agencies. We are also seeing a bit of softness in e-commerce mostly, due to supply chain issues. So that has been a little bit softer than again our core performance advertising, but not by a lot. So generally speaking, it's relatively across the board, but with a little bit more impact on brands and agents branding dollars then performance and a little bit more on the e-commerce than our core performance.

Adam Singolda

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

Yes, I can take the second one, so not assuming like we said, the guidance assumes that those two one-time events are in the past and from here with execution, we believe we can meet and beat our people's expectations. So just to share a few execution opportunities for us that are within our control. One, there is very strong publisher pipeline, you've seen the recent success. We know with PMC and others people choose Taboola thanks to our technology and revenue advantages that we have in the market, but also our wins are becoming greater impact to our business, because we're not just winning by methodical where we traditionally operated. We're also winning banner, real estate. So we have a bigger vertical growth with those publishers that we win, and I spoke about banners move into Taboola. I also mentioned that performance advertisers we're taking and have a huge ambition and a dream here to really become what I believe is the fifth company in the history that -- and that was very unique in performance advertising success outside of Amazon, Google, Snap. So I think, and Facebook. So I think we have a huge opportunity in performance advertising and I mentioned the investments we're making on AI and engineering, so that's just on the publisher and advertising fund the core. Taboola News has -- is basically experiencing explosive growth, it's a three-digit growth for us. We're seeing great momentum. You've seen that on Investor Day, Samsung on stage speaking about it hopefully we'll be able to share more soon publicly, but I'm very excited about the financial impact it's making and this is, sort of, a fact is growing basically part of our business. The bidder, the bidder is live there is no more uncertainty about what's going…

Stephen Walker

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

Yes, let me just add two things on the -- from a numbers perspective on those four, the four upsides that Adam talked about. So first of all, on the bidder, he mentioned that we -- that there is an opportunity to improve the bidder. And also to take it to header bidding on other publisher sites. Just to be clear, in our current guidance, we factored in current bidder performance, which we already are seeing improvements on. So we think that is definitely upside as we improve the bidder over time. So I think that's, we've tried to be very conservative in terms of what we factored in there and we did not bake header bidding into our guidance at all. So that's pure upside if we are successful with that. The other thing I would say on the new publisher supply that Adam talked about and winning new publishers. We're currently forecasting that this year will be our second best year for new publisher revenue in our history other than 2019, which was exceptional, most of you know the story there. So it is shaping up to be a very good year from a new publisher supply perspective.

Jennifer Horsley

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

Thanks, James. Operator next question?

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Andrew Boone with JMP Securities. Your line is open.

Andrew Boone

Analyst · JMP Securities. Your line is open.

Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. I've got guidance questions and then just an operational question. So I think Microsoft historically was around 20% of gross profit ex-TAC. You guys had highlighted that Europe is 30% of revenue. Can you just help us size the two impacts as we think about guidance is how do we think about the difference between the two? And then secondly, given softer demand, can you remind us the amount of contracts that are fixed CPM versus percentage of revenue, in other words, how should we think about softer demand rolling through to take rates? And then lastly and more operationally hopefully a little bit more time. Adam, you highlighted the investment in performance advertising. What's missing right now from your advertiser suite. What are you going to focus these new engineering resources on? Thanks so much.

Stephen Walker

Analyst · JMP Securities. Your line is open.

All right, so let me start with the split between like the impacts of the different components here. So first of all, I kind of said in my prepared remarks that foreign currency exchange rates is about 1.5% drag on our growth. So that is directly comes off of our forward-looking guidance. A majority of the rest of it was the European demand softness due to the war. The launch of the bidder was a factor, but a smaller part of the overall reduction. So without getting into specific numbers, that's how you can think about the three different components. To your second question about guarantees, so we in our Q1 filings, I believe, we said that the Q1 percentage of TAC that was paid out under guarantees was 9%. We expect that to be consistent with Q2, so just to give you a sense in April, we paid out TAC at 9% of our base 9% of our TAC was paid out under guarantees again. So we expect that to be relatively consistent, maybe it trends up very slightly, but we don't expect it to go up a lot. So that's, we don't see risk to our business from that perspective.

Adam Singolda

Analyst · JMP Securities. Your line is open.

Yes. Hey Andrew, and then you're going to ask me an advertising question. So I'm happy you did. So let me just say, you know, as I think about the opportunity we have on the advertising side Google and Facebook, Weibo to get to millions of advertisers, Amazon as well we just saw they just quashed a $30 billion in advertising, which is mostly performance as well, a big amount of advertisers, Snap I believe it's quarter million advertisers, we had 15 and I believe the rest of the companies in advertising space have less than us. And I'm talking about direct contracts not problematic, people that's -- the clients who work directly with that rely on your technology and you're there. That is the main thing I'm talking about. So to me to be the fifth company to me, you know, as far as I understand it, that is able to make a huge amount of advertisers successful and by successful I mean, they come to us, they tell us what is their goal whether that's an acquisition cost or whatever go to trying to reach. They give us some credits to make create the craze for them, they may have them and we do the rest and we were able to drive the most amount of sales for them much like they can rely on search and social with Google and Facebook, that is what I want Taboola to be. And as part of that we're doing a lot of interesting things in terms of the product roadmap, but also, like I said, investing in engineering and AI, so that we are very well positioned to be the fifth company that has ever done it. Now that will be a multi-year journey, right? But upside here is unlimited, I mean, because I think the yield effect as we continue to be successful, and that's one would be very impactful.

Jennifer Horsley

Analyst · JMP Securities. Your line is open.

Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew Boone

Analyst · JMP Securities. Your line is open.

Thank you.

Jennifer Horsley

Analyst · JMP Securities. Your line is open.

Operator next question.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Steven Roman with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Jason Helfstein

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Hey, it's Jason, hey guys. So I guess two questions and they're kind of related. So I guess, help us understand, look the theme right now obviously is everyone thinks we're going through a recession and more and more we're seeing companies cut back on spending, you're treating not to cut back so help us understand what you will gain by not cutting back? And then the second is the market seems to, kind of, question your business, model even prior to this current concern about macro that we're now some of that relates to what Laura talked to, some of it is still just people are focused on some of the early days of the business where there was more click paid as opposed to the content recommendation, which is the business today? So I guess like help us understand you're a meaningfully cash flow generating business, you just talk to us, how you plan to narrow the intrinsic value of what the stock is worth versus, you know, how the market is valuing you within the tools of your control? So again a two-part question, what do you think you're getting out of making investments, while others are cutting back? And then two, how do you ultimately get the market to reward you for the value you're creating. Thank you.

Stephen Walker

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Great, thanks. I'll start with the first question, which is spending. What are we getting for by not cutting back. So as we talked about at our Investor Day and as many of you probably know disproportionate amount of the investments that we're doing in our business, the growth of our operating expenses is going towards R&D. So what we're gaining from that is obviously new products, new services things that we can bring in terms of value to our advertiser and publisher partners. So -- and frankly expansion into the growth areas outside of our core business. So where that translates for us in terms of our business is in terms of growing our core business, it's growing yield by bringing on more advertisers making them more successful, driving up our overall revenue to our individual publishers by growing that yield. It's new publisher tools for our publishers, for instance, will continue to invest in homepage for you, which has been very well received by publishers and it's something that we want to double down on and really add value to our publisher partners with that. And then in the growth areas, Adam mentioned a few minutes ago that Taboola News is the single fastest growing part of our business, it’s triple-digits percentage growth rates this year. That's something, that two years ago, if we had not been investing like we have in R&D that wouldn't be a significant portion of our business. So that's the type of thing that we get by continuing to invest in our businesses, growth in new areas that frankly we wouldn't get without that investment. And as we said, we think that great companies invest through downturns, and that's what makes them unique and special and we're fortunate enough in our case that the fundamentals of our business are strong. I mentioned we plan -- we still expect to generate over $150 million of adjusted EBITDA and high 10s of millions of dollars of free cash flow this year. We're in a strong financial position, we think it would be a big mistake for us at this point in time in our kind of advantage position with generating positive cash flow to cut back now. Now is the time to invest.

Adam Singolda

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Yes. And about the second question, I think it goes back to where you think the industry is going and what you think is the addressable market that we have and also the fact that we're a large scale company already and we have advantages as we continue. So if you unbundle that, over time I do think this is going to be a company that over $10 billion in revenue in the open web, side by side to the walled gardens, but just which doesn't exist today, right. So the open web does not have a big scale over $10 billion revenue company, so that advertisers can really rely on that channel, side by side to search and social. So that's something that I think is going to happen. And the way it's going to happen in my belief is that it's going to be replaced in traditional advertising formats that were invented when you and I watch DVDs with a feed of personalized recommendations like we see on the homepage of Amazon. That is what our children will experience. I do not think they will see more cubes that 0.1% of people click on. So that is -- I'm very bullish on that future. Secondly, I think as you look into the people that we partner with publishers, publishers need a very, very good friend and we are the best friend, you can get we empowered the entire organization, it's more than just money, the editorial team get newsroom and help it’s for you they get commerce strategy, subscription opportunities and that's why you're seeing five to 10 year partnerships, which I believe no other company on the Internet has ever had. So I also think it's -- we're well positioned to become the open web's best friend,…

Jason Helfstein

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Just let me quick follow-up. So to your point on like not being focused on the stock price short-term understand you're taking a long-term view and clearly with the answer. I mean is it a concern at all from employee retention. Do you have to -- do you have employees who are now looking at their compensation and saying, I'm making a lot less money, because whatever I'm massively out of the money, my stock options or RSUs?

Adam Singolda

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Yes, I can tell you, first of all, I know it when we became a public company. The first thing that happened is you have almost 2,000 people that become traders and that's a new thing, but it's also new thing for me, because we only are used to build and ship and dream. And now we also have this reflection from the public market. So it’s definitely a new thing and we're adjusting to it. We don't speak about the stock in all-hands, we have in all-hands every two weeks I don't speak about it. I answer questions if someone asked, but it's not the things that I focus on, because that can short-term, we can't control it. People care, of course, it's stocks, but it is there, at least, you know, we're not alone there are many great companies like Taboola that are also going through these dynamics. And I can tell you what people and I've been doing this for a long time, what people care about the most when they think about where they want to be from a career perspective, they care so much more than money and things of that nature. They care about who's their manager, how is their career going to be developed, how will they be able to reinvent himself over the next three to five years, as an employee and Taboola is an amazing place for people to be part of, it's a great culture, we're very diversified, we're global and people care about that more than I think the stock price.

Jason Helfstein

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Thank you.

Jennifer Horsley

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Thanks, Jason. Operator, I think we have one last question.

Operator

Operator

Yes. Our last question comes from Shyam Patil with Susquehanna. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hey guys, this is Jared on for Shyam. Thanks for taking the question. Digging in on Connexity a little bit we saw that this represented about 15% of ex-TAC gross profits in the quarter, roughly in line with 4Q? How did this performed versus your own expectations? Are you pretty comfortable with that range of ex-TAC gross profit in the near-term. And looking ahead a little bit do you think that Connexity sensitivity to macro factors is pretty similar to that of the core business or is there anything to call out there.

Stephen Walker

Analyst

So yes, Connexity. Thanks for the question Jared. Connexity has performed basically in line with our expectations. So we're, we're happy with where we're at. I think Adam talked a little bit in his prepared remarks about some of the positive things that we're seeing and some of the positive trends that we are seeing. He also talked a bit about the fact that we still believe strongly that this is going to be core to the publisher revenue in the future. So we still think it's going to be a third of publisher revenues in the future. So we're still very bullish on it and in the short-term, it's performing up to expectations and that, by the way, is despite the fact that there are some headwinds around e-commerce in terms of supply chain challenges and you saw Amazon had a down year-over-year quarter for the first time in forever for them. So there’s some headwinds, but we're happy with the performance it's roughly in line with our expectations and we feel good about where we're at and we're very bullish about the future.

Jennifer Horsley

Analyst

Thanks, Jared.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Jennifer Horsley

Analyst

Now, I'll hand it back to Adam to wrap up.

Adam Singolda

Analyst

All right. So, thanks everyone for joining us today I will look forward to spending time with all of you in our investor base over the next few weeks. So let me just start by saying that I'm very bullish about Taboola's growth. The fundamentals of the business are very strong like they were before this revision. We had two one-time events, they are now in the past and they are fully factored in our guidance. Trust me we do not want to do this again. As I look into the rest of 2022 and the future of the Internet, I'll say three things, one, we've replaced banners and we are replacing banners with native, personalized experiences like all of us in Amazon homepage, Twitter, Instagram go and checkout NBC Sports, Online, Altice and others and you'll see exactly what I mean. Two, e-commerce will be a huge part of the Internet and our business. People would need trusted publishers to make decisions about what to buy and they want to connect with direct-to-consumer brands as they do it. Three recommendation engines will be everywhere. We see explosive growth here and we had amazing partners like Samsung, Xiaomi where over time we'll be in every TV you buy and every car you drive and I don't think traditional ads will make it like we will. A growth -- our high gross margin, I think is a proxy, that will not only just winning, because something that everybody needs. It also shows our competitive advantage. We're generating over $150 million of adjusted EBITDA, high 10s of millions dollars of free cash flow in 2022 and my team is energized like never before. Now as the American rapper Fat Joe says and I will quote him from here, it's all the way up.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.