Teads Holding Co. (TEAD) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, and welcome to Teads' First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Teads Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Teads' first quarter results. Joining me on the call today, we have David Kostman and Jason Kiviat, the CEO and CFO of Teads. During this conference call, management will make forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions, including statements regarding our business outlook and prospects. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. These risk factors are discussed in detail in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, as updated in our subsequent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the call's original date, and we do not undertake any duty to update any such statements. Today's presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. You should refer to the information contained in the company's first quarter results announcement for definitional information and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP financial measures. Our earnings release can be found on our IR website, investors.teads.com, under News and Events. With that, let me turn the call over to David.

Thank you, Dani. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before we dive into our Q1 highlights, I want to frame our current market position. One year into the combination of Outbrain and Teads, the new Teads has evolved into the definitive omnichannel outcomes platform. By combining our premium video and performance heritages, we've created the connected tissue between the living room and the mobile screen, delivering the precise accountability that today's advertisers demand across CTV and the open Internet and from branding to performance. To understand our scale, it's best to look at the two distinct advertiser bases that fuel our platform. First, our enterprise business, which is composed of global brands and major advertising agencies. In 2025, these generated approximately $900 million in revenue, accounting for approximately 80% of our Ex -TAC due to its higher margin profile. About half of this, roughly EUR 450 million, is driven through the world's leading agencies like Publicis, Omnicom, Havas, Stagwell as well as brand direct relationships. Our enterprise brand roster includes icons such as Apple, LVMH, Stellantis and Nestle. We now manage approximately 50 global joint business partnerships, which moves us beyond vendor status into strategic territory involving data collaboration and large-scale spending frameworks. In 2025 alone, these JBPs represented over $200 million in spend. These partners activate through Teads Ad Manager or TAM, for both brand and performance goals across CTV and the open internet. While we compete with major DSPs, we win because of our end-to-end stack. One, we have created exclusive supply. We offer premium environment others simply can't access. Second, first-party data. Our code on page provides unique signals for cookie-less world. This data is augmented by strategic data and measurement partnerships. Third, AI-driven creative. We optimize the big idea for any screen. Fourth, our global scale. In a world of consolidation, brands want a scaled global partner they can trust. Second, our direct response engine. This represents approximately $500 million in revenue and 20% of our Ex-TAC and includes affiliates direct-to-consumer brands, search-focused buyers and others. These are what we call elastic buyers. They are always on as long as we hit their ROAS targets. Primarily activating through our amplified platform, which is the legacy Outbrain stack. This business is a high-volume efficiency play. We differentiate here through superior algorithmic performance and AI-led content optimization and workflows. In this space, we compete against some of the legacy Outbrain competitors. What makes the new Teads truly unique is that these two worlds are now converging in our favor. We are integrating Outbrain's industry-leading performance algorithms into Teads Ad Manager, TAM. This creates a powerful, unified workflow. And for the first time, a holding company agency can manage a high-gloss branding campaign and a high-velocity conversion campaign within a single seamless environment. In CTV specifically, we are seeing a clear shift. Advertisers are no longer just looking for reach. They want video that drives action. Our ability to leverage AI for creative optimization and performance tracking across both CTV and the web is a unique value proposition that we are starting to scale. To see how this works in practice, I'll bring you one example. If we look at Gucci Beauty's recent omnichannel campaign for its Gucci Flora collection. They deployed a premium attention-driven strategy, combining CTV home screen and in-Read placements to stand out in the crowded luxury fragrance category. By aligning media delivery with high-interest environments like fashion and travel, Gucci achieved market-leading incremental gains across the entire funnel. Awareness, this campaign delivered a 175% increase in top-of-mind awareness compared to the control group. In terms of attention, which is a key KPI we deliver. We saw 29% higher consumer attention versus standard beauty benchmarks. On the ad recall front, Gucci Beauty achieved 2.8x higher ad recall than the category average. And on consideration, this strategy drove a 3-point lift in brand consideration and preference over its competitors. This is one recent example, but it demonstrates that Teads can deliver a unified journey that most point solutions simply cannot replicate. Teads can do this due to the breadth of our offerings across screens and the depth of our offering from branding to performance. Turning you to our Q1 results, this was a pivotal quarter of execution. We exceeded our Ex-TAC revenue guidance. We saw good indications from partners that Teads is on a strong path to becoming an essential AI-powered global platform for the modern advertiser. We executed with a new leadership team in a focused and effective way, putting behind us many of the integration challenges we experienced in 2025. To illustrate how this strategy is translating into results, here are a few data points. Our CTV revenue grew over 50% year-over-year, with particularly strong momentum in EMEA and APAC. We've solidified our home screen leadership through partnerships with LG, Samsung and Google TV. We believe this gives us the largest footprint of this high-value inventory globally. 13% of our campaigns are now omnichannel, compared to 8% in Q1 of last year, as more clients realize the benefits of the full funnel approach I just described. We successfully renewed partnerships with many enterprise brands, including McDonald's, Heineken, and Volkswagen. In our direct response business, we launched vertical video formats and continue to drive CTV campaigns. And we continued the aggressive adoption of AI in our product solutions, engineering teams, and across internal functions. To sum it up, the foundational integration work of 2025 is behind us. We have a new leadership team in place. Our product road map is focused and truly differentiated value proposition, and our client base is validating our strategy. We are operating according to our plan and remain confident in our trajectory. I will now turn the call over to Jason to review the financials.

Thanks, David. As David mentioned, we exceeded our Q1 guidance for Ex-TAC gross profit and achieved our guidance for adjusted EBITDA. Revenue in Q1 was approximately EUR 266 million, reflecting a 7% decline year-over-year. As I noted in our last update in March, we've seen a more stable top line to start this year. We continue to see progress in our areas of focus, and David touched on a lot of this in his remarks. Importantly, we're starting to see that in our results as we continue to drive towards a return to year-over-year growth by Q4 of this year. Ex-TAC gross profit in the quarter was EUR 108 million, an increase of 5% year-over-year. We closed the acquisition in February of last year, on a pro forma basis, this represents a decline of 11% year-over-year, as compared with the 19% decline we reported in Q4. So we're starting to see some progress, and particularly in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Excluding the U.S., we grew revenue from enterprise customers year-over-year, and we believe we will see a greater positive impact in the U.S. in the coming quarters from the changes we've made in our operations. Based on the dynamics of the prior year headwinds, we have our hardest comparison period of the year in Q2, but forward is expected to significantly ease in Q3 and Q4, mainly due to the quality-related cleanups we did in our direct response business last year, which started having a material impact in Q3 of 2025. As noted last quarter, this is expected to be a headwind of approximately $20 million of Ex-TAC year-over-year, with the vast majority in H1, phasing down to a minimal amount by Q4. We expect to continue to make progress on our turnaround in Q2. But as you'll see in our Q2 guidance, this is partially muted by the comps and is expected to right itself in H2. Note that Ex-TAC gross profit growth is outpacing revenue growth due to a net favorable change in our revenue mix post acquisition, with more business from enterprise advertisers and agencies, as well as the continuation of improvements to revenue mix and RPM growth that we've seen for several quarters. Other cost of sales and operating expenses decreased year-over-year, largely driven by one-time costs in the prior year period, the realization of gear-related synergies, and the additional cost reductions we discussed and implemented last quarter. Looking back, our restructuring efforts have reduced our compensation run rate by over 20% year-over-year. This was offset partially in Q1 by the impact of the shorter comparison period in the prior year, including increased amortization of the acquired intangibles, as well as an unfavorable FX impact. On the whole, we have a streamlined cost structure and a more efficient operation. We expect a similar cost level for the balance of the year, with some seasonality mainly in Q4 and additional opportunities to continue to drive efficiency through ongoing integration. Adjusted EBITDA for Q1 was approximately $1 million and adjusted free cash flow was a use of cash of $41 million in the quarter. The use of cash was driven by the timing of our semi-annual bond interest payment of $31 million. The low seasonality of Q1, which is typical in our business as well as timing of working capital. Working capital typically fluctuates for us quarter-to-quarter based on timing of collections and payments. Typically, Q1 is a very strong seasonal net working capital quarter for us, but as H2 was very strong last year, there was timing and cut off element impacting Q1. As a result, we ended the quarter with $99 million of cash, cash equivalents and investments in marketable securities on the balance sheet. As we've said in the past, we are always evaluating our cost and capital structure for opportunities to improve our financial profile. In that regard, we are evaluating opportunistic alternatives that may be available to us to strengthen our balance sheet and build a more durable capital structure. Now I'll turn to guidance. For Q2 2026, we expect Ex-TAC gross profit of $121 million to $131 million, and we expect adjusted EBITDA of $14 million to $22 million. For full year 2026, we continue to expect adjusted EBITDA of approximately $100 million. Now I'll turn it back to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Laura Martin with Needham & Company.

So David, could you talk about the work you're doing now with ad agencies and what kind of feedback and learning you're getting from them right now? And then, Jason, when you think about the free cash flow level, given what the current outlook and both Q1 reported and also what you're seeing today, could you talk about progress in free cash flow for this year, please?

Hey, Laura. Good morning. Thanks for joining. So on the agency front, we're very focused around strengthening the depth of strategic integrations around data and ID with the agencies, and a lot of focus around how we start driving agentic campaign setup, management of campaigns to agents on Teads Ad Manager. And we're working on just general interconnectivity and making their workflows more efficient, to, again, using AI, automated workflows and make the campaigns much more effective. I mean I highlighted on the call one thing, the integration of performance capabilities into Teads Ad Manager, which is again the platform that they access is very helpful in terms of enabling agencies to run campaigns that are both branding and conversions in one platform. And that will increase again the share of wallet that we can get from these agencies because they're very focused on efficiency and workflows and ability to run campaigns on one dashboard.

Sure. And here's Jason for the second question, Laura. Thanks for it. Q1, obviously, maybe a little bit of surprise to some people who see the number of the free cash flow being down EUR 41 million, not a surprise to us. We ended Q4 with just a pretty high working capital balance in terms of just cut off timing of cash going in or out before or after New Year's. So that wasn't a surprise. And obviously, the interest payment we know is scheduled twice a year, including in February. So not a surprise for us. We also had severance payments related to our restructuring that we announced in Q4 going out in Q1. So all that said, we're up a little bit higher actually, in the month subsequent in April in cash balance. And we do expect, and we said last quarter that at our guidance of around EUR 100 million of EBITDA, that should be a small use of cash for the year net-net, but it will go up and down just based on the timing of working capital throughout the year.

The next question comes from Brianna Diaz with JMP Securities.

David, with the new leadership, have you made any structural changes to the go-to-market model now that they've been in the position and in the seat for a few months? And just what are the changes you're seeing in regard to the U.S. business and what gives greater confidence that, that can rebound in the coming quarters? And then Jason, just you mentioned the evaluation of opportunistic alternatives to strengthen the balance sheet and build a more durable capital structure. I don't think any debt was repurchased in the quarter. Can you just update us on the status of the reevaluations or what the possibilities are? And just on cash, can you help us understand maybe what a minimum cash level you guys would be able to comfortably operate?

Hi, Brianna Diaz. In terms of the go-to-market, which we have changed a little bit the coverage model around agencies and strategic accounts. So we're putting emphasis on integrating these two by, changing the coverage model and incentives. That's a big one. In the U.S. specifically, we have a new team Molly, who joined us as the Chief Commercial Officer end of November, brought a new GM for North America, Nirali, in February, and we've made some changes around the leadership of the organization. And we see the momentum already into the second quarter of the U.S. also picking up. We highlighted that we had real strength in the first quarter in EMEA and APAC. And I think we see some of the steps we took in EMEA and APAC in the second half of last year will also translate into hopefully the same impact in the U.S. going into the second quarter and the second half of the year.

Yeah. Thanks, Brianna. This is Jason for the second part. Yes, we're actively evaluating our structure, exploring possible transactions that would optimize the capital structure, considering all available options to us and working with our advisers and our board towards that end. We don't intend to discuss anything further regarding this at the moment, but just wanted to share that it's something that we are looking into. And as far as the minimum cash question, it's a good question. It's evolved over time as we've progressed through our integration at the time of the actual merger, a year and a few months ago, we said it was probably around EUR 100 million. It's certainly less than that today. It varies by time of year and even by time of month, just based on, as I said, working capital flows and needs. It's probably in the $70 million to $80 million range. But again, we're working to even bring that further down through further integration. And obviously, in any way we can reduce the requirement definitely is more efficient use of cash.

Our next question comes from Ed Alter with Jefferies.

Can you remind us with kind of the CTV business growing faster than some of the other parts of the business, how that impacts the mix of Ex-TAC gross margins? And similarly, if your CTV spend could move be it to other CTV formats besides home screen?

Maybe I'll start generally with CTV. Sorry, just start generally. I think when we look at CTV, it's -- the CTV itself, the business that is growing more than 50%. It's on the average margin of the company, which is around the 40s. And this is what is important about it is that it also leads to growth in other placements. So we're looking at focusing on leveraging CTV for omnichannel. So the example I gave on the call is one of many examples. You can look at many case studies where our advertisers are using the entry point of CTV into the living room, but then expanding their campaigns into online video, into the in-read placement, and then expanding it further also from branding to performance. So for us, CTV is a great growth business, and it's a great sort of platform for growing the overall business across the board.

And just as a follow-up, is there any kind of ambition to move beyond home screen ads to other formats on CTV given that part of your business is growing so well?

For sure. I mean, the home screen is one part of the business. We don't break it down exactly, but I would say it's around half, and we have obviously in-stream. We are now advancing with formats around in-play and pause ads. So it's the biggest area of investment for us product-wise is the CTV area in terms of format, optimizing the creative with AI in the Teads Brand Studio and really leveraging then the CTV to the rest of our business. But it's -- the home screen is where we have, in many regions, exclusivity. So it gives us a great entry point and a great ability to work with advertisers on the most premium placements that drive the most attention. And by being smarter about packaging, offering broader solutions and campaigns that are broader than just the home screen, I think we're leveraging that to grow the entire business. But the home screen is a great entry point, the exclusivities we have with LG in many geographies, with Samsung, we're now expanding that home screen position. We believe we are the only platform for the large agencies where they can actually launch CTV home screen campaigns on multiple OEMs. These integrations take time in the optimization. So I think we have a very solid position there that is a springboard to grow significantly CTV and omnichannel.

Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back to David Kaufman for closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining. As you can see, I think we have all the critical pieces really to turn the buzzwords of omnichannel and full funnel into a repeatable growth driver in reality. We're executing. We are confident on the ability to hit the goals we gave -- set ourselves and we presented you for 2026. And I think the market is going in our direction, and we're very excited about the trajectory, and we'll see you in the next quarterly call. Thank you.

Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a great day.