ttd-10q_20190930.htm

Large accelerated filer

Accelerated filer

Non-accelerated filer

Smaller reporting company

Emerging growth company

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No ☒

As of October 31, 2019, the registrant had 39,834,865 shares of Class A common stock and 5,299,496 shares of Class B common stock outstanding.

	As of		As of
	September 30, 2019		December 31, 2018
ASSETS
Current assets:
Cash and cash equivalents	$	173,446	$	207,232
Short-term investments		123,082		—
Accounts receivable, net		835,958		834,764
Prepaid expenses and other current assets		26,641		14,527
TOTAL CURRENT ASSETS		1,159,127		1,056,523
Property and equipment, net		47,734		33,046
Operating lease assets		177,276		—
Deferred income taxes		8,460		8,460
Other assets, non-current		22,442		19,843
TOTAL ASSETS	$	1,415,039	$	1,117,872
LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY
LIABILITIES
Current liabilities:
Accounts payable	$	647,547	$	669,147
Accrued expenses and other current liabilities		40,553		44,844
Operating lease liabilities		15,938		—
TOTAL CURRENT LIABILITIES		704,038		713,991
Operating lease liabilities, non-current		167,668		—
Other liabilities, non-current		7,941		9,314
TOTAL LIABILITIES		879,647		723,305
Commitments and contingencies (Note 9)
STOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY
Preferred stock, par value $0.000001; 100,000 shares authorized, zero shares issued and outstanding as of September 30, 2019 and December 31, 2018		—		—
Common stock, par value $0.000001 Class A, 1,000,000 shares authorized; 39,810 and 36,822 shares issued and outstanding as of September 30, 2019 and December 31, 2018, respectively Class B, 95,000 shares authorized; 5,311 and 7,042 shares issued and outstanding as of September 30, 2019 and December 31, 2018, respectively		—		—
Additional paid-in capital		353,899		270,447
Retained earnings		181,493		124,120
TOTAL STOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY		535,392		394,567
TOTAL LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY	$	1,415,039	$	1,117,872

The accompanying Notes to Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements are an integral part of these statements.

	Three Months Ended						Nine Months Ended
	September 30,						September 30,
	2019			2018			2019			2018
Revenue	$	164,203		$	118,825		$	445,114		$	316,826
Operating expenses:
Platform operations		39,932			29,344			108,913			78,842
Sales and marketing		36,142			23,287			89,951			60,007
Technology and development		29,185			22,621			83,949			59,806
General and administrative		37,017			21,310			102,755			59,816
Total operating expenses		142,276			96,562			385,568			258,471
Income from operations		21,927			22,263			59,546			58,355
Other expense (income):
Interest expense (income), net		(1,480	)		(237	)		(3,763	)		(113	)
Foreign currency exchange (gain) loss, net		(412	)		395			784			2,035
Total other expense (income), net		(1,892	)		158			(2,979	)		1,922
Income before income taxes		23,819			22,105			62,525			56,433
Provision for income taxes		4,397			1,813			5,152			7,728
Net income	$	19,422		$	20,292		$	57,373		$	48,705
Earnings per share:
Basic	$	0.43		$	0.47		$	1.29		$	1.15
Diluted	$	0.40		$	0.44		$	1.20		$	1.07
Weighted average shares outstanding:
Basic		44,771			42,721			44,363			42,178
Diluted		48,037			46,576			47,728			45,460

The accompanying Notes to Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements are an integral part of these statements.

	Class A and B				Additional					Total
	Common Stock				Paid-In			Retained		Stockholders’
	Shares		Amount		Capital			Earnings		Equity
Balance as of December 31, 2017		41,641	$	—	$	209,603		$	35,980	$	245,583
Exercise of common stock options		415		—		1,212			—		1,212
Stock-based compensation		—		—		7,427			—		7,427
Restricted stock award grants, net of forfeitures and shares withheld for taxes		13		—		(361	)		—		(361	)
Net income		—		—		—			9,070		9,070
Balance as of March 31, 2018		42,069	$	—	$	217,881		$	45,050	$	262,931
Exercise of common stock options		365		—		1,997			—		1,997
Stock-based compensation		—		—		9,872			—		9,872
Issuance of common stock under employee stock purchase plan		392		—		7,014			—		7,014
Restricted stock award grants, net of forfeitures and shares withheld for taxes		28		—		(183	)		—		(183	)
Net income		—		—		—			19,343		19,343
Balance as of June 30, 2018		42,854	$	—	$	236,581		$	64,393	$	300,974
Exercise of common stock options		330		—		3,956			—		3,956
Stock-based compensation		—		—		11,851			—		11,851
Restricted stock award grants, net of forfeitures and shares withheld for taxes		1		—		(59	)		—		(59	)
Net income		—		—		—			20,292		20,292
Balance as of September 30, 2018		43,185	$	—	$	252,329		$	84,685	$	337,014
Balance as of December 31, 2018		43,864	$	—	$	270,447		$	124,120	$	394,567
Exercise of common stock options		592		—		9,502			—		9,502
Stock-based compensation		—		—		16,324			—		16,324
Restricted stock award grants, net of forfeitures and shares withheld for taxes		23		—		(1,146	)		—		(1,146	)
Net income		—		—		—			10,151		10,151
Balance as of March 31, 2019		44,479	$	—	$	295,127		$	134,271	$	429,398
Exercise of common stock options		284		—		7,473			—		7,473
Stock-based compensation		—		—		21,390			—		21,390
Issuance of common stock under employee stock purchase plan		153		—		8,648			—		8,648
Restricted stock award grants, net of forfeitures and shares withheld for taxes		7		—		(2,488	)		—		(2,488	)
Net income		—		—		—			27,800		27,800
Balance as of June 30, 2019		44,923	$	—	$	330,150		$	162,071	$	492,221
Exercise of common stock options		196		—		4,936			—		4,936
Stock-based compensation		—		—		19,923			—		19,923
Restricted stock award grants, net of forfeitures and shares withheld for taxes		2		—		(1,110	)		—		(1,110	)
Net income		—		—		—			19,422		19,422
Balance as of September 30, 2019		45,121	$	—	$	353,899		$	181,493	$	535,392

The accompanying Notes to Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements are an integral part of these statements.

	Nine Months Ended September 30,
	2019			2018
OPERATING ACTIVITIES:
Net income	$	57,373		$	48,705
Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities:
Depreciation and amortization		15,246			8,107
Stock-based compensation		56,368			27,958
Bad debt expense		1,647			1,727
Noncash lease expense		15,394			—
Other		(2,945	)		2,396
Changes in operating assets and liabilities:
Accounts receivable		(2,739	)		(44,736	)
Prepaid expenses and other assets		(19,024	)		(10,597	)
Accounts payable		(21,401	)		(2,804	)
Accrued expenses and other liabilities		(3,178	)		7,789
Operating lease liabilities		(8,468	)		—
Net cash provided by operating activities		88,273			38,545
INVESTING ACTIVITIES:
Purchases of property and equipment		(21,659	)		(10,383	)
Capitalized software development costs		(3,849	)		(4,340	)
Purchases of investments		(178,179	)		—
Maturities of investments		55,819			—
Net cash used in investing activities		(147,868	)		(14,723	)
FINANCING ACTIVITIES:
Repayment on line of credit		—			(27,000	)
Payment of debt financing costs		(6	)		—
Proceeds from exercise of stock options		21,911			7,165
Proceeds from employee stock purchase plan		8,648			7,014
Taxes paid related to net settlement of restricted stock awards		(4,744	)		(602	)
Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities		25,809			(13,423	)
(Decrease) increase in cash and cash equivalents		(33,786	)		10,399
Cash and cash equivalents—Beginning of period		207,232			155,950
Cash and cash equivalents—End of period	$	173,446		$	166,349
SUPPLEMENTAL CASH FLOW INFORMATION:
Capitalized assets financed by accounts payable	$	1,968		$	6,624
Tenant improvements paid by lessor	$	—		$	1,017
Asset retirement obligation	$	3,543		$	386
Stock-based compensation included in capitalized software development costs	$	1,269		$	1,192
Cash paid for amounts included in the measurement of lease liabilities included in operating cash flows	$	12,268		$	—
Right-of-use assets obtained in exchange for operating lease liabilities	$	147,682		$	—

The accompanying Notes to Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements are an integral part of these statements.

Item 2. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

This Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or our future financial or operating performance and may include statements concerning, among other things, our business strategy (including anticipated trends and developments in, and management plans for, our business and the markets in which we operate), financial results, results of operations, revenues, operating expenses, and capital expenditures, sales and marketing initiatives and competition. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “may,” “might,” “will,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “could,” “intends,” “target,” “projects,” “contemplates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “suggests,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions that concern our expectations, strategy, plans or intentions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance; they reflect our current views with respect to future events and are based on assumptions and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from expectations or results projected or implied by forward-looking statements.

We discuss many of these risks in Part II of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q in greater detail under the heading “Risk Factors” and in other filings we make from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. Also, these forward-looking statements represent our estimates and assumptions only as of the date of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, which are inherently subject to change and involve risks and uncertainties. Unless required by federal securities laws, we assume no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated, to reflect circumstances or events that occur after the statements are made. Given these uncertainties, investors should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

Investors should read this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and the documents that we reference in this report and have filed with the SEC, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018, completely and with the understanding that our actual future results may be materially different from what we expect. We qualify all of our forward-looking statements by these cautionary statements.

References to “Notes” are notes included in our unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q.

We are a technology company that empowers buyers of advertising. Through our self-service, cloud-based platform, ad buyers can create, manage, and optimize more expressive data-driven digital advertising campaigns across ad formats, including display, video, audio, native and social, on a multitude of devices, such as computers, mobile devices, and connected TV (“CTV”). Our platform’s integrations with major data, inventory, and publisher partners provides ad buyers reach and decisioning capabilities, and our enterprise APIs enable our customers to develop on top of the platform.

We commercially launched our platform in 2011 targeting display advertising. We have since extended our platform to address additional advertising formats, and in 2018, approximately 72% of gross spend on our platform was for mobile, video, audio, native and social.

Our clients are primarily the advertising agencies and other service providers for advertisers, with whom we enter into ongoing master services agreements, or MSAs. We generate revenue by charging our clients a platform fee based on a percentage of a client’s total spend on advertising. We also generate revenue from providing data and other value added services and platform features.

The growing digitization of media and fragmentation of audiences has increased the complexity of advertising, and thereby increased the need for automation in ad buying, which we provide on our platform. In order to grow, we will need to continue to develop our platform’s programmatic capabilities and advertising inventory. We believe that key opportunities include our ongoing global expansion, continuing development of our CTV, video, audio, and native ad inventory, and continuing development of data usage and advertising targeting capabilities.

We believe that growth of the programmatic advertising market is important for our ability to grow our business. Adoption of programmatic advertising by advertisers allows us to acquire new clients and grow revenue from existing clients. Although our clients include some of the largest advertising agencies in the world, we believe there is significant room for us to expand further within these clients and gain a larger amount of their advertising spend through our platform. We also believe that the industry trends noted above will lead to advertisers adopting programmatic advertising through platforms such as ours.

Similarly, the adoption of programmatic advertising by inventory owners and content providers allows us to expand the volume and type of advertising inventory that we present to our clients. For example, we have expanded our CTV, mobile and audio advertising offerings through our recent integrations with supply-side partners.

We invest for long-term growth. We anticipate that our operating expenses will continue to increase significantly in the foreseeable future as we invest in platform operations and technology and development to enhance our product features, including programmatic buying of CTV ad inventory, and in sales and marketing to acquire new clients and reinforce our relationships with existing clients. In addition, we expect to continue making investments in our infrastructure, including our information technology, financial and administrative systems and controls, to support our growing operations.

In addition, we believe the markets outside of the United States (“U.S.”) offer an opportunity for growth, and we intend to make additional investments in sales and marketing and product development to expand in these markets, including China, where we are making significant investments in our platform and growing our team.

We believe that these investments will contribute to our long-term growth, although they may negatively impact profitability in the near term.

Our business model has allowed us to grow significantly, and we believe that our operating leverage enables us to support future growth profitably.

The following tables set forth our condensed consolidated statements of comprehensive income data for each of the periods presented and as a percentage of our revenue for those periods:

	Three Months Ended					Nine Months Ended
	September 30,					September 30,
	2019			2018		2019			2018
	(in thousands)
Revenue	$	164,203		$	118,825	$	445,114		$	316,826
Operating expenses:
Platform operations		39,932			29,344		108,913			78,842
Sales and marketing		36,142			23,287		89,951			60,007
Technology and development		29,185			22,621		83,949			59,806
General and administrative		37,017			21,310		102,755			59,816
Total operating expenses		142,276			96,562		385,568			258,471
Income from operations		21,927			22,263		59,546			58,355
Total other expense (income), net		(1,892	)		158		(2,979	)		1,922
Income before income taxes		23,819			22,105		62,525			56,433
Provision for income taxes		4,397			1,813		5,152			7,728
Net income	$	19,422		$	20,292	$	57,373		$	48,705

		Three Months Ended						Nine Months Ended
		September 30,						September 30,
		2019			2018			2019			2018
	(as a percentage of revenue*)
Revenue			100	%		100	%		100	%		100	%
Operating expenses:
Platform operations			24			25			24			25
Sales and marketing			22			20			20			19
Technology and development			18			19			19			19
General and administrative			23			18			23			19
Total operating expenses			87			81			87			82
Income from operations			13			19			13			18
Total other expense (income), net			(1	)		—			(1	)		1
Income before income taxes			14			19			14			17
Provision for income taxes			3			2			1			2
Net income			11	%		17	%		13	%		15	%

The increase in revenue for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2019, compared to the same prior year period, was primarily due to increases in gross spend on our platform by existing clients, which was driven by increases in the number of advertising campaigns executed per client.

The increase in platform operations expense for the three months ended September 30, 2019, compared to the same prior year period, was primarily due to increases of $3.2 million in hosting costs, $5.3 million in personnel costs, including $0.3 million of stock-based compensation, and $1.5 million in allocated facilities. The increase in hosting costs was due to the increased use of our platform by our clients. The increase in personnel costs was primarily due to an increase in headcount for our client support team. The increase in allocated facilities costs was primarily driven by new office leases to support our growth.

The increase in platform operations expense for the nine months ended September 30, 2019, compared to the same prior year period, was primarily due to increases of $14.0 million in hosting costs, $8.8 million in personnel costs, including $0.8 million of stock-based compensation, and $4.4 million in allocated facilities. These increases were primarily attributable to the factors described above.

We expect platform operations expenses to increase in absolute dollars in future periods as we continue to experience increased volumes of transactions through our platform and hire additional personnel to support our clients.

The increase in sales and marketing expense for the three months ended September 30, 2019, compared to the same prior year period, was primarily due to increases of $8.7 million in personnel costs, including $2.0 million of stock-based compensation and $2.5 million in allocated facilities costs. The increase in personnel costs was primarily due to an increase in headcount to support our sales efforts and continue to develop and maintain relationships with our clients. The increase in allocated facilities costs was primarily driven by new office leases to support our growth.

The increase in sales and marketing expense for the nine months ended September 30, 2019, compared to the same prior year period, was primarily due to increases of $20.8 million in personnel costs, including $5.3 million of stock-based compensation and $5.6 million in allocated facilities costs. These increases were primarily attributable to the factors described above.

We expect sales and marketing expenses to increase in absolute dollars in future periods, as we focus on increasing the adoption of our platform with existing and new clients and expanding our international business.

The increase in technology and development expense for the three months ended September 30, 2019, compared to the same prior year period, was primarily due to increases of $4.5 million in personnel costs, including $3.1 million of stock-based compensation, and $2.4 million in allocated facilities costs. The increase in personnel costs was primarily due to an increase in headcount to maintain and support our technology and development efforts. The increase in allocated facilities costs was primarily driven by new office leases to support our growth.

The increase in technology and development expense for the nine months ended September 30, 2019, compared to the same prior year period, was primarily due to increases of $20.3 million in personnel costs, including $9.7 million of stock-based compensation, and $5.3 million in allocated facilities costs. These increases were primarily attributable to the factors described above.

We expect technology and development expense to increase in absolute dollars as we continue to invest in the development of our platform to support additional features and functions, increase the number of advertising and data inventory suppliers and ramp up the volume of advertising spending on our platform. We also intend to invest in technology to further automate our business processes.

The increase in general and administrative expense for the three months ended September 30, 2019, compared to the same prior year period, was primarily due to increases of $10.7 million in personnel costs, including $2.6 million of stock-based compensation, and $2.4 million in allocated facilities costs. The increase in personnel costs was primarily due to increased headcount to support our growth. The increase in allocated facilities costs was primarily driven by new office leases to support our growth.

The increase in general and administrative expense for the nine months ended September 30, 2019, compared to the same prior year period, was primarily due to increases of $34.7 million in personnel costs, including $12.6 million of stock-based compensation, and $4.9 million in allocated facilities costs. These increases were primarily attributable to the factors described above.

We expect to continue to invest in corporate infrastructure to support growth. We expect general and administrative expenses to increase in absolute dollars in future periods.

The increase in total other expense (income), net for the three months ended September 30, 2019 compared to the same prior year period, was primarily due to increases in interest income of $1.1 million, and decreases in foreign currency exchange loss, net of $0.8 million.

The increase in total other expense (income), net for the nine months ended September 30, 2019 compared to the same prior year period, was primarily due to increases in interest income of $3.3 million and decreases in foreign currency exchange loss, net of $1.3 million.

The U.S. federal statutory tax rate was 21% for the 2019 and 2018 periods, respectively.

The increase in the provision for income taxes for the three months ended September 30, 2019 compared to the prior year period was primarily due to a higher pre-tax income. For each of the three months ended September 30, 2019 and 2018, there were benefits associated with stock-based awards of $7.7 million.

The decrease in the provision for income taxes for the nine months ended September 30, 2019 compared to the prior year period was primarily due to a higher overall benefit associated with stock-based awards, partially offset by higher pre-tax income. For the nine months ended September 30, 2019 and 2018, there were benefits associated with stock-based awards of approximately $28.0 million and $14.2 million, respectively.

As of September 30, 2019, we had cash and cash equivalents of $173.4 million, including cash of $26.9 million held by our international subsidiaries, short-term investments in marketable securities of $123.1 million and working capital of $455.1 million.

We believe our existing cash and cash equivalents, cash flows from operations, and our undrawn balance under our second amended and restated credit facility (refer to the discussion under “Credit Facility” below) will be sufficient to meet our working capital requirements for at least the next 12 months. Our credit facility matures in May 2022. Further, in November 2017, we filed a shelf registration statement on Form S-3 with the SEC, or the Shelf Registration, which permits us to issue equity securities and equity-linked securities from time to time, subject to certain limitations. The Shelf Registration is intended to provide us with additional flexibility to access capital markets for general corporate purposes, subject to market conditions and our capital needs. Our future capital requirements and the adequacy of available funds will depend on many factors, including those set forth under “Risk Factors” within this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q.

In the future, we may attempt to raise additional capital through the sale of equity securities or through equity-linked or debt financing arrangements. If we raise additional funds by issuing equity or equity-linked securities, the ownership of our existing stockholders will be diluted. If we raise additional financing by the incurrence of additional indebtedness, we may be subject to increased fixed payment obligations and could also be subject to additional restrictive covenants, such as limitations on our ability to incur additional debt, and other operating restrictions that could adversely impact our ability to conduct our business. Any future indebtedness we incur may result in terms that could be unfavorable to equity investors.

There can be no assurances that we will be able to raise additional capital. The inability to raise capital would adversely affect our ability to achieve our business objectives. In addition, if our operating performance during the next 12 months is below our expectations, our liquidity and ability to operate our business could be adversely affected.

On October 26, 2018, we and a syndicate of banks, led by Citibank, N.A., as agent, entered into the Second Amended and Restated Loan and Security Agreement (the “Second A&R Credit Agreement”, which we also refer to as “our credit facility”). Available funding commitments to us under our credit facility, subject to certain conditions, total up to $150.0 million, with a $20.0 million sublimit for swingline borrowings and a $15.0 million sublimit for the issuance of letters of credit. Under certain circumstances, we have the right to increase our credit facility by an amount not to exceed $100.0 million. As of September 30, 2019, we did not have an outstanding debt balance under our credit facility, and availability was $143.3 million. We were in compliance with all covenants as of September 30, 2019.

Our cash flows from operating activities are primarily influenced by growth in our operations, increases or decreases in collections from our clients and related payments to our suppliers for advertising inventory and data. We typically pay suppliers in advance of collections from our clients. Our collection and payment cycles can vary from period to period. In addition, we expect seasonality to impact cash flows from operating activities on a sequential quarterly basis during the year.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2019, cash provided by operating activities of $88.3 million resulted primarily from net income adjusted for non-cash items of $143.1 million, partially offset by a net decrease in our working capital of $54.8 million. The net decrease in working capital was primarily due to a decrease of $21.4 million in accounts payable and a $19.0 million increase in prepaid expenses and other assets. The decrease in accounts payable was due to the timing of payments to suppliers for the cost of advertising inventory, data and add-on features. The increase in prepaid expenses and other assets was attributable to our growth.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2018, cash provided by operating activities of $38.5 million resulted primarily from net income adjusted for non-cash items of $88.9 million, partially offset by a net decrease in our working capital of $50.3 million. The net decrease in working capital was primarily due to increases of $44.7 million in accounts receivable. The increase in accounts receivable resulted from the increase in spend through our platform and the timing of cash receipts from clients.

Our primary investing activities consist of investing in short-term investments in marketable securities, purchases of property and equipment in support of our expanding headcount as a result of our growth, and capital expenditures to develop our software in support of enhancing our technology platform. As our business grows, we expect our capital expenditures and our investment activity to continue to increase.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2019, we used $147.9 million of cash in investing activities, consisting of $178.2 million to purchase short-term investments, $21.7 million to purchase property and equipment, and $3.8 million of investments in capitalized software, partially offset by maturities of short term investments of $55.8 million. Purchases of property and equipment and investments in capitalized software support our growth and further development of our platform.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2018, we used $14.7 million of cash in investing activities, consisting of $10.4 million to purchase property and equipment and $4.3 million of investments in capitalized software to support our growth and further develop our platform.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2019, cash provided by financing activities of $25.8 million was primarily due to the $21.9 million proceeds from stock option exercises and $8.6 million proceeds from the employee stock purchase plan, partially offset by $4.7 million of taxes paid for restricted stock award settlements.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2018, cash used in financing activities of $13.4 million was primarily due to the $27.0 million repayment of our credit facility outstanding balance, partially offset by proceeds from stock option exercises of $7.2 million and from the employee stock purchase plan of $7.0 million.

We do not have any relationships with other entities or financial partnerships, such as entities often referred to as structured finance or special purpose entities that have been established for the purpose of facilitating off-balance sheet arrangements or other contractually narrow or limited purposes. We did not have any other off-balance sheet arrangements at September 30, 2019 other than the indemnification agreements described below.

Our principal commitments consist of our non-cancelable operating leases for our various office facilities and other contractual commitments consisting of obligations to our hosting services providers, marketing contracts and providers of software as a service. In certain cases, the terms of the lease agreements provide for rental payments on a graduated basis.

The following table summarizes our non-cancelable contractual obligations at September 30, 2019:

In the ordinary course of business, we enter into agreements in which we may agree to indemnify clients, suppliers, vendors, lessors, business partners, lenders, stockholders and other parties with respect to certain matters, including losses resulting from claims of intellectual property infringement, damages to property or persons, business losses, or other liabilities. Generally, these indemnity and defense obligations relate to our own business operations, obligations, and acts or omissions. However, under some circumstances, we agree to indemnify and defend contract counterparties against losses resulting from their own business operations, obligations, and acts or omissions, or the business operations, obligations, and acts or omissions of third parties. These indemnity provisions generally survive termination or expiration of the agreements in which they appear. In addition, we have entered into indemnification agreements with our directors, executive officers and other officers that will require us to indemnify them against liabilities that may arise by reason of their status or service as directors, officers or employees. In the ordinary course of business, demands have been made upon us to provide indemnification under such agreements, but we are not aware of any claims that could have a material effect on our balance sheet, statement of operations or statement of cash flows. Accordingly, no amounts for any obligation have been recorded at September 30, 2019.

Our condensed consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“GAAP”). The preparation of these condensed consolidated financial statements requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue, expenses and related disclosures. We evaluate our estimates and assumptions on an ongoing basis. Our estimates are based on historical experience and various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances. Our actual results could differ from these estimates.

We believe that the assumptions and estimates associated with the evaluation of revenue recognition criteria, including the determination of revenue recognition as net versus gross in our revenue arrangements, operating lease assets and liabilities, including our incremental borrowing rate and terms and provisions of each lease, stock-based compensation expense and income taxes have the greatest potential impact on our consolidated financial statements. Therefore, we consider these to be our critical accounting policies and estimates. By their nature, estimates are subject to an inherent degree of uncertainty. Actual results could differ materially from these estimates. Except for the changes described in Note 2 to the interim condensed consolidated financial statements, there were no other changes to our critical accounting policies and estimates from those disclosed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018.

We have operating leases for our offices. We recognize most of our operating lease rights and commitments as operating lease assets, or right-of-use assets (“ROU Assets”), and operating lease liabilities (“Lease Liabilities”), respectively, on our consolidated balance sheets.

We determine if an arrangement is a lease at inception. Operating leases include ROU Assets, which we include as operating lease assets on our consolidated balance sheets. The Lease Liabilities associated with operating leases are included in operating lease liabilities and operating lease liabilities, non-current on our consolidated balance sheets. ROU Assets and Lease Liabilities are initially recorded based on the present value of lease payments over the lease term, which includes the minimum unconditional term of the lease, and may include options to extend or terminate the lease when it is reasonably certain at the commencement date that such options will be exercised. The decision to include these options involves consideration of our overall growth plans, as well as other strategic requirements. Since determination of the lease term requires an application of judgment, lease terms that differ from our determination could potentially have a material impact on our consolidated balance sheet. As the rate implicit for each of our leases is not readily determinable, we use our incremental borrowing rate, based on the information available at the lease commencement date in determining the present value of our expected lease payments. The rate is determined by analyzing and combining an applicable risk-free rate, a financial spread adjustment and any lease specific adjustment. Since determination of our incremental borrowing rate requires an application of judgment, rates that differ from our determination could potentially have a material impact on our consolidated balance sheet.

We have operations both within the United States and internationally, and we are exposed to market risks in the ordinary course of our business. These risks include primarily interest rate and foreign currency exchange risks.

We are exposed to market risk from changes in interest rates on our credit facility, which accrues interest at a variable rate. We have not used any derivative financial instruments to manage our interest rate risk exposure. No amount was owed on our credit facility as of September 30, 2019.

We have foreign currency risks related to our revenue and expenses denominated in currencies other than the U.S. Dollar, principally the Euro, British Pound, Australian Dollar, Canadian Dollar, Indonesian Rupiah, Japanese Yen and Thai Baht. The volatility of exchange rates depends on many factors that we cannot forecast with reliable accuracy. We have experienced and will continue to experience fluctuations in our net income as a result of transaction gains and losses related to remeasuring cash balances, trade accounts receivable and payable balances that are denominated in currencies other than the U.S. Dollar. The effect of an immediate 10% adverse change in foreign exchange rates on foreign-denominated accounts at September 30, 2019, would result in a foreign currency loss of approximately $14.2 million. In the event our non-U.S. Dollar denominated sales and expenses increase, our results of operations may be more greatly affected by fluctuations in the exchange rates of the currencies in which we do business.

We enter into forward contracts or other derivative transactions in an attempt to hedge our foreign currency risk. There can be no assurance that such transactions will be effective in hedging some or all of our foreign currency exposures and under some circumstances could generate losses for us.

Our management, with the participation of our Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”) and Chief Financial Officer (“CFO”), evaluated the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures as defined in Rule 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), as of September 30, 2019. Our disclosure controls and procedures are designed to provide reasonable assurance that information we are required to disclose in the reports we file or submit under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to our management, including our CEO and CFO, as appropriate to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosures, and is recorded, processed, summarized, and reported within the time periods specified in the SEC’s rules and forms. Based on this evaluation, our CEO and CFO have concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were effective at the reasonable assurance level as of September 30, 2019.

We transitioned to a new accounting and financial reporting system, which replaced our existing accounting and financial reporting system. The go-live for this new system occurred during July 2019, and our system implementation was completed during the quarter ended September 30, 2019. Management evaluated the process changes as a result of the system implementation, and where needed, modified the design of and the testing for operating effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting. The modification to the design of and testing for operating effectiveness was specific to the new accounting and financial reporting system’s functionalities and features. We did not identify any previously unidentified risks or design gaps as a result of the system implementation. Testing for effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting is ongoing and will be completed by the fiscal year ended December 31, 2019, at which time, management will conclude on the operating effectiveness of the internal control over financial reporting under the new accounting and financial reporting system.

There have been no significant changes in our internal control over financial reporting during the quarter ended September 30, 2019 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.

Management recognizes that a control system, no matter how well conceived and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the objectives of the control system are met. Further, the design of a control system must reflect the fact that there are resource constraints, and the benefits of controls must be considered relative to their costs. Because of the inherent limitations in all control systems, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that all control issues and instances of fraud or error, if any, have been detected. These inherent limitations include the realities that judgments in decision making can be faulty, and that breakdowns can occur because of a simple error or mistake. Additionally, controls can be circumvented by the individual acts of some persons, by collusion of two or more people, or by management override of the controls. The design of any system of controls also is based in part upon certain assumptions about the likelihood of future events, and there can be no assurance that any design will succeed in achieving its stated goals under all potential future conditions; over time, controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or the degree of compliance with policies or procedures may deteriorate. Because of the inherent limitations in a cost-effective control system, misstatements due to error or fraud may occur and not be detected.

We are not currently a party to any legal proceedings, litigation or claims, which, if determined adversely to us, would have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows. We may from time to time, be party to litigation and subject to claims incident to the ordinary course of business. Regardless of the outcome, litigation can have an adverse impact on us because of defense and settlement costs, diversion of management resources and other factors.

Investing in our Class A common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should consider carefully the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information contained in this quarterly report, including the condensed consolidated financial statements and the related notes and Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, before making investment decisions related to our Class A common stock. If any of the following risks are realized, our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects could be materially and adversely affected. In that event, the market price of our Class A common stock could decline and you could lose part or all of your investment.

We have a limited operating history as a publicly traded company, which makes it difficult to evaluate our business and prospects and may increase the risks associated with your investment.

We became a public company in September 2016 and have a limited operating history as a publicly traded company upon which our business and prospects may be evaluated. Although we have experienced substantial revenue growth in our limited operating history, we may not be able to sustain this rate of growth or maintain our current revenue levels. We have encountered and will continue to encounter risks and challenges frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly developing industries, including risks related to our ability to:

We cannot assure you that we will be successful in addressing these and other challenges we may face in the future. If we are unable to do so, our business may suffer, our revenue and results of operations may decline and we may not be able to achieve further growth or sustain profitability.

Our failure to maintain and grow our client base and spend through our platform may negatively impact our revenue and business.

To sustain or increase our revenue, we must regularly add new clients and encourage existing clients to maintain or increase the amount of advertising inventory purchased through our platform and adopt new features and functionalities that we add to our platform. If competitors introduce lower cost or differentiated offerings that compete with or are perceived to compete with ours, our ability to sell access to our platform to new or existing clients could be impaired. We have spent significant effort in cultivating our relationships with advertising agencies, which has resulted in an increase in the budgets allocated to, and the amount of advertising purchased on, our platform. However, it is possible that we may reach a point of saturation at which we cannot continue to grow our revenue from such agencies because of internal limits that advertisers may place on the allocation of their advertising budgets to digital media to a particular provider or otherwise. While we generally have MSAs in place for our clients, such agreements allow our clients to change the amount of spend through our platform or terminate our services with limited notice. Our clients typically have relationships with different providers and there is limited cost to moving budgets to our competitors. As a result, we may have limited visibility as to our future advertising revenue streams. We cannot assure you that our clients will continue to use our platform or that we will be able to replace, in a timely or effective manner, departing clients with new clients that generate comparable revenue. If a major client representing a significant portion of our business decides to materially reduce its use of our platform or to cease using our platform altogether, it is possible that our revenue or revenue growth rate could be significantly reduced and our business negatively impacted.

The loss of clients could significantly harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our client base consists primarily of advertising agencies. We do not have exclusive relationships with advertising agencies and we depend on agencies to work with us to build and maintain advertiser relationships and execute advertising campaigns.

The loss of agencies or advertisers as clients could significantly harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. If we fail to maintain satisfactory relationships with an advertising agency or advertiser, we risk losing business.

Advertisers may change advertising agencies. If an advertiser switches from an agency that utilizes our platform to one that does not, we will lose revenue from that advertiser. In addition, some advertising agencies have their own relationships with suppliers of advertising inventory and can directly connect advertisers with such suppliers. Our business may suffer to the extent that advertising agencies and inventory suppliers purchase and sell advertising inventory directly from one another or through intermediaries other than us.

We had approximately 742 clients, consisting primarily of advertising agencies, as of December 31, 2018. Many of these agencies are owned by holding companies, where decision making is decentralized such that purchasing decisions are made, and relationships with advertisers, are located, at the agency, local branch or division level. If all of our individual client contractual relationships were aggregated at the holding company level, Publicis Groupe and Omnicom Group Inc. would each represent more than 10% of our gross billings for 2018.

In most cases, we enter into separate contracts and billing relationships with the individual agencies and account for them as separate clients. However, some holding companies for these agencies may choose to exert control over the individual agencies in the future. If so, any loss of relationships with such holding companies and, consequently, of their agencies, local branches or divisions, as clients could significantly harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

If we fail to innovate or make the right investment decisions in our offerings and platform, we may not attract and retain advertisers and advertising agencies and our revenue and results of operations may decline.

Our industry is subject to rapid and frequent changes in technology, evolving client needs and the frequent introduction by our competitors of new and enhanced offerings. We must constantly make investment decisions regarding offerings and technology to meet client demand and evolving industry standards. We may make bad decisions regarding these investments. If new or existing competitors have more attractive offerings, we may lose clients or clients may decrease their use of our platform. New client demands, superior competitive offerings or new industry standards could require us to make unanticipated and costly changes to our platform or business model. In addition, as we develop and introduce new products and services, including those incorporating or utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning, they may raise new, or heighten existing, technological, legal and other challenges, and may cause unintended consequences or be misused by our customers. If we fail to adapt to our rapidly changing industry or to evolving client needs, or we provide new products and services that exacerbate technological, legal or other challenges, demand for our platform could decrease and our business, financial condition and results of operations may be adversely affected.

Failure to manage our growth effectively could cause our business to suffer and have an adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.

We have experienced and continue to experience significant growth in a short period of time. To manage our growth effectively, we must continually evaluate and evolve our organization. We must also manage our employees, operations, finances, technology and development and capital investments efficiently. Our efficiency, productivity and the quality of our platform and client service may be adversely impacted if we do not train our new personnel, particularly our sales and support personnel, quickly and effectively, or if we fail to appropriately coordinate across our organization. Additionally, our rapid growth may place a strain on our resources, infrastructure and ability to maintain the quality of our platform. You should not consider our revenue growth and levels of profitability in recent periods as indicative of future performance. In future periods, our revenue or profitability could decline or grow more slowly than we expect. Failure to manage our growth effectively could cause our business to suffer and have an adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.

The market for programmatic buying for advertising campaigns is relatively new and evolving. If this market develops slower or differently than we expect, our business, growth prospects and financial condition would be adversely affected.

The substantial majority of our revenue has been derived from clients that programmatically purchase advertising inventory through our platform. We expect that spending on programmatic ad buying will continue to be our primary source of revenue for the foreseeable future, and that our revenue growth will largely depend on increasing spend through our platform. The market for programmatic ad buying is an emerging market, and our current and potential clients may not shift as quickly as we expect to programmatic ad buying from other buying methods, reducing our growth potential. If the market for programmatic ad buying deteriorates or develops more slowly than we expect, it could reduce demand for our platform, and our business, growth prospects and financial condition would be adversely affected.

In addition, our revenue may not necessarily grow at the same rate as spend on our platform. Growth in spend may outpace growth in our revenue as the market for programmatic buying for advertising matures due to a number of factors including quantity discounts and product, media, client and channel mix shifts. A significant change in revenue as a percentage of spend could reflect an adverse change in our business and growth prospects. In addition, any such fluctuations, even if they reflect our strategic decisions, could cause our performance to fall below the expectations of securities analysts and investors, and adversely affect the price of our common stock.

The market in which we participate is intensely competitive, and we may not be able to compete successfully with our current or future competitors.

We operate in a highly competitive and rapidly changing industry. With the introduction of new technologies and the influx of new entrants to the market, we expect competition to persist and intensify in the future, which could harm our ability to increase revenue and maintain profitability. New technologies and methods of buying advertising present a dynamic competitive challenge, as market participants offer new products and services, such as analytics, automated media buying and exchanges, aimed at capturing advertising spend or disrupting the digital marketing landscape. In addition to existing competitors and intermediaries, we may also face competition from new companies entering the market, which may include large established companies, all of which currently offer, or may in the future offer, products and services that result in additional competition for advertising spend or advertising inventory, or other changes to the marketplace that may be detrimental to our business.

We may also face competition from companies that we do not yet know about or do not yet exist. If existing or new companies develop, market or resell competitive high-value marketing products or services, acquire one of our existing competitors or form a strategic alliance with one of our competitors, our ability to compete effectively could be significantly compromised and our results of operations could be harmed

Our current and potential competitors may have significantly more financial, technical, marketing and other resources than we have, allowing them to devote greater resources to the development, promotion, sale and support of their products and services. They may also have more extensive advertiser bases and broader publisher relationships than we have, and may be better positioned to execute on advertising conducted over certain channels, such as social media, mobile and video. Some of our competitors may have a longer operating history and greater name recognition. As a result, these competitors may be better able to respond quickly to new technologies, develop deeper advertiser relationships or offer services at lower prices. Any of these developments would make it more difficult for us to sell our platform and could result in increased pricing pressure, increased sales and marketing expense or the loss of market share.

Economic downturns and market conditions beyond our control could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our business depends on the overall demand for advertising and on the economic health of advertisers that benefit from our platform. Economic downturns or unstable market conditions may cause advertisers to decrease their advertising budgets, which could reduce spend though our platform and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. As we explore new countries to expand our business, economic downturns or unstable market conditions in any of those countries could result in our investments not yielding the returns we anticipate.

We may experience fluctuations in our results of operations, which could make our future results of operations difficult to predict or cause our results of operations to fall below analysts’ and investors’ expectations.

Our quarterly and annual results of operations have fluctuated in the past and we expect our future results of operations to fluctuate due to a variety of factors, many of which are beyond our control. Fluctuations in our results of operations could cause our performance to fall below the expectations of analysts and investors, and adversely affect the price of our common stock. Because our business is changing and evolving rapidly, our historical results of operations may not be necessarily indicative of our future results of operations. Factors that may cause our results of operations to fluctuate include the following:

Based upon the factors above and others beyond our control, we have a limited ability to forecast our future revenue, costs and expenses, and as a result, our results of operations may, from time to time, fall below our estimates or the expectations of analysts and investors.

We often have long sales cycles, which can result in significant time between initial contact with a prospect and execution of a client agreement, making it difficult to project when, if at all, we will obtain new clients and when we will generate revenue from those clients.

Our sales cycle, from initial contact to contract execution and implementation can take significant time. Our sales efforts involve educating our clients about the use, technical capabilities and benefits of our platform. Some of our clients undertake an evaluation process that frequently involves not only our platform but also the offerings of our competitors. As a result, it is difficult to predict when we will obtain new clients and begin generating revenue from these new clients. Even if our sales efforts result in obtaining a new client, under our usage-based pricing model, the client controls when and to what extent it uses our platform. As a result, we may not be able to add clients, or generate revenue, as quickly as we may expect, which could harm our revenue growth rates.

We are subject to payment-related risks, including from advertising agencies that do not pay us until they receive payment from the advertiser, and, if our clients do not pay or dispute their invoices, our ability to collect for non-payment may be limited and our business, financial condition and results of operations may be adversely affected.

Many of our contracts with advertising agencies provide that if the advertiser does not pay the agency, the agency is not liable to us, and we must seek payment solely from the advertiser, a type of arrangement called sequential liability. Contracting with these agencies, which in some cases have or may develop higher-risk credit profiles, may subject us to greater credit risk than if we were to contract directly with advertisers. This credit risk may vary depending on the nature of an advertising agency’s aggregated advertiser base. We may also be involved in disputes with agencies and their advertisers over the operation of our platform, the terms of our agreements or our billings for purchases made by them through our platform. If we are unable to resolve disputes with our clients, we may lose clients or clients may decrease their use of our platform and our financial performance and growth may be adversely affected. If we are unable to collect or make adjustments to bills to clients, we could incur write-offs for bad debt, which could harm our results of operations. In the future, bad debt may exceed reserves for such contingencies and our bad debt exposure may increase over time. Any increase in write-offs for bad debt could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. Even if we are not paid by our clients on time or at all, we are still obligated to pay for the advertising inventory, third-party data, and other add-on features that clients purchase on our platform, and as a consequence, our business, financial condition and results of operations would be adversely impacted.

A substantial portion of our business is from advertising agencies that do not pay us until they receive payment from the advertiser, resulting in an increased length of time between our payment for media inventory and our receipt of payment for use of our platform, which may adversely affect our working capital.

Substantially all of the spend on our platform is from advertising agencies. Generally, we are contractually required to pay advertising inventory and data suppliers within a negotiated period of time, regardless of whether our clients pay us on time, or at all. Additionally, while we attempt to negotiate long payment periods with our suppliers and shorter periods from our clients, we are not always successful. As a result, we often face a timing issue with our accounts payable on shorter cycles than our accounts receivables, requiring us to remit payments from our own funds, and accept the risk of bad debt.

This collections and payments cycle will increasingly consume working capital if we continue to be successful in growing our business. In addition, we typically experience slow payment cycles by advertising agencies as is common in our industry. If we are unable to borrow on commercially acceptable terms, our working capital availability could be reduced, and as a consequence, our financial condition and results of operations would be adversely impacted.

Due to this timing imbalance in collections and payments, we may rely on our credit facility to partially or completely fund our working capital requirements. We cannot assure you that as we continue to grow, our business will generate sufficient cash flow from operations or that future borrowings will be available to us under the credit facility in an amount sufficient to fund our working capital needs. If our cash flows and credit facility borrowings are insufficient to fund our working capital requirements, we may not be able to grow at the rate we currently expect or at all. In addition, in the absence of sufficient cash flows from operations, we might be unable to meet our obligations under our credit facility, and we may therefore be at risk of default thereunder. We cannot assure you that we would be able to locate additional financing or increase amounts borrowed under our existing credit facility on commercially reasonable terms or at all.

Our business is primarily dependent on advertisers buying mobile, display and video advertising. A decrease in the use of these advertising channels would harm our business, growth prospects, financial condition and results of operations.

Historically, our clients have predominantly used our platform to purchase mobile, display and video advertising inventory. We expect that these will continue to be significant channels used by our clients for digital advertising. Should our clients lose confidence in the value or effectiveness of mobile, display and video advertising, the demand for our platform could decline.

We have been, and are continuing to, enhance our social, native, audio and CTV offerings. We refer to the ability to provide offerings across multiple advertising channels as omnichannel. We may not be able to maintain or grow advertising inventory for some of our omnichannels and some of our omnichannel offerings may not gain market acceptance. A decrease in the use of mobile, display and video advertising, or our inability to further penetrate these and other advertising channels, would harm our growth prospects, financial condition and results of operations.

If our access to quality advertising inventory is diminished, our revenue could decline and our growth could be impeded.

We must maintain a consistent supply of attractive ad inventory. Our success depends on our ability to secure quality inventory on reasonable terms across a broad range of advertising networks and exchanges, video, CTV, audio and mobile inventory, and social media platforms. The amount, quality and cost of inventory available to us can change at any time. A few inventory suppliers hold a significant portion of the programmatic inventory either generally or concentrated in a particular channel, such as audio and social media. In addition, we compete with companies with which we have business relationships. For example, Google is one of our largest advertising inventory suppliers in addition to being one of our competitors. If Google or any other company with attractive advertising inventory limits our access to its advertising inventory, our business could be adversely affected. If our relationships with certain of our suppliers were to cease, or if the material terms of these relationships were to change unfavorably, our business would be negatively impacted. Our suppliers are generally not bound by long-term contracts. As a result, there is no guarantee that we will have access to a consistent supply of quality inventory on favorable terms. If we are unable to compete favorably for advertising inventory available on real-time advertising exchanges, or if real-time advertising exchanges decide not to make their advertising inventory available to us, we may not be able to place advertisements or find alternative sources of inventory with comparable traffic patterns and consumer demographics in a timely manner. Furthermore, the inventory that we access through real-time advertising exchanges may be of low quality or misrepresented to us, despite attempts by us and our suppliers to prevent fraud and conduct quality assurance checks.

Inventory suppliers control the bidding process for the inventory they supply, and their processes may not always work in our favor. For example, suppliers may place restrictions on the use of their inventory, including prohibiting the placement of advertisements on behalf of specific advertisers. Through the bidding process, we may not win the right to deliver advertising to the inventory that is selected through our platform and may not be able to replace inventory that is no longer made available to us.

As new types of inventory, such as CTV, become available, we will need to expend significant resources to ensure we have access to such new inventory. Although television advertising is a large market, only a very small percentage of it is currently purchased through digital advertising exchanges. We are investing heavily in our programmatic television offering, including by increasing our workforce and by adding new features, functions and integrations to our platform. If the CTV market does not grow as we anticipate or we fail to successfully serve such market, our growth prospects could be harmed.

Our success depends on consistently adding valued inventory in a cost-effective manner. If we are unable to maintain a consistent supply of quality inventory for any reason, client retention and loyalty, and our financial condition and results of operations could be harmed.

Seasonal fluctuations in advertising activity could have a negative impact on our revenue, cash flow and results of operations.

Our revenue, cash flow, results of operations and other key operating and performance metrics may vary from quarter to quarter due to the seasonal nature of our clients’ spending on advertising campaigns. For example, clients tend to devote more of their advertising budgets to the fourth calendar quarter to coincide with consumer holiday spending. Moreover, advertising inventory in the fourth quarter may be more expensive due to increased demand for it. Political advertising could also cause our revenue to increase during election cycles and decrease during other periods. Our historical revenue growth has masked the impact of seasonality, but if our growth rate declines or seasonal spending becomes more pronounced, seasonality could have a more significant impact on our revenue, cash flow and results of operations from period to period.

As our costs increase, we may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to sustain profitability.

We have expended significant resources to grow our business in recent years by increasing the offerings of our platform, growing our number of employees and expanding internationally. We anticipate continued growth that could require substantial financial and other resources to, among other things:

Investing in the foregoing, however, may not yield anticipated returns. Consequently, as our costs increase, we may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to sustain profitability.

If we fail to maintain an effective system of internal control over financial reporting in the future, we may not be able to accurately or timely report our financial condition or results of operations. If our internal control over financial reporting is not effective, it may adversely affect investor confidence in us and the price of our common stock.

As a public company, we are required to maintain internal control over financial reporting and to report any material weaknesses in such internal control. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, requires that we evaluate and determine the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting and provide a management report on internal control over financial reporting.

Our platform system applications are complex, multi-faceted and include applications that are highly customized in order to serve and support our clients, advertising inventory and data suppliers, as well as, support our financial reporting obligations. We regularly make improvements to our platform to maintain and enhance our competitive position. In the future, we may implement new offerings and engage in business transactions, such as acquisitions, reorganizations or implementation of new information systems. These factors require us to develop and maintain our internal controls, processes and reporting systems, and we expect to incur ongoing costs in this effort. However, we may not be successful in developing and maintaining adequate internal controls, which may undermine our ability to provide accurate, timely and reliable reports on our financial condition and results of operations, leading to material weaknesses in internal controls and causing our financial statements to be misstated.

If one or more of the following were to occur, we may be late with the filing of our periodic reports, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and the market price of our common stock could be negatively affected:

Such failures could also subject us to investigations by NASDAQ, the stock exchange on which our securities are listed, the Securities and Exchange Commission or other regulatory authorities, and to litigation from stockholders, which could harm our reputation, financial condition or divert financial and management resources from our core business.

We allow our clients to utilize application programming interfaces, or APIs, with our platform, which could result in outages or security breaches and negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.

The use of APIs by our clients has significantly increased in recent years. Our APIs allow clients to build their own media buying and data management interface by using our APIs to develop custom integration of their business with our platform. The increased use of APIs increases security and operational risks to our systems, including the risk for intrusion attacks, data theft, or denial of service attacks. Furthermore, while APIs allow clients greater ease and power in accessing our platform, they also increase the risk of overusing our systems, potentially causing outages. We have experienced system slowdowns due to client overuse of our systems through our APIs. While we have taken measures intended to decrease security and outage risks associated with the use of APIs, we cannot guarantee that such measures will be successful. Our failure to prevent outages or security breaches resulting from API use could result in government enforcement actions against us, claims for damages by consumers and other affected individuals, costs associated with investigation and remediation damage to our reputation and loss of goodwill, any of which could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We may experience outages and disruptions on our platform if we fail to maintain adequate security and supporting infrastructure as we scale our platform, which may harm our reputation and negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.

As we grow our business, we expect to continue to invest in technology services and equipment, including data centers, network services and database technologies, as well as potentially increase our reliance on open source software. Without these improvements, our operations might suffer from unanticipated system disruptions, slow transaction processing, unreliable service levels, impaired quality or delays in reporting accurate information regarding transactions in our platform, any of which could negatively affect our reputation and ability to attract and retain clients. In addition, the expansion and improvement of our systems and infrastructure may require us to commit substantial financial, operational and technical resources, with no assurance our business will increase. If we fail to respond to technological change or to adequately maintain, expand, upgrade and develop our systems and infrastructure in a timely fashion, our growth prospects and results of operations could be adversely affected. The steps we take to increase the reliability, integrity and security of our platform as it scales are expensive and complex, and our execution could result in operational failures and increased vulnerability to cyberattacks. Such cyberattacks could include denial-of-service attacks impacting service availability (including the ability to deliver ads) and reliability, tricking company employees into releasing control of their systems to a hacker, or the introduction of computer viruses or malware into our systems with a view to steal confidential or proprietary data. Cyberattacks of increasing sophistication may be difficult to detect and could result in the theft of our intellectual property and data from our platform. We are also vulnerable to unintentional errors or malicious actions by persons with authorized access to our systems that exceed the scope of their access rights, distribute data erroneously, or, unintentionally or intentionally, interfere with the intended operations of our platform. Moreover, we could be adversely impacted by outages and disruptions in the online platforms of our inventory and data suppliers, such as real-time advertising exchanges. Outages and disruptions of our platform, including due to cyberattacks, may harm our reputation and negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Operational performance and internal control issues with our platform, whether real or perceived, including a failure to respond to technological changes or to upgrade our technology systems, may adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We depend upon the sustained and uninterrupted performance of our platform to manage our inventory supply; bid on inventory for each campaign; collect, process and interpret data; and optimize campaign performance in real time and provide billing information to our financial systems. If our platform cannot scale to meet demand, if there are errors in our execution of any of these functions on our platform, or if we experience outages, then our business may be harmed. We may also face material delays in introducing new services, products and enhancements. If competitors introduce new products and services using new technologies or if new industry standards and practices emerge, our existing proprietary technology and systems may become obsolete.

Our platform is complex and multifaceted, and operational and performance issues could arise both from the platform itself and from outside factors. Errors, failures, vulnerabilities or bugs have been found in the past, and may in the future, be found. Our platform also relies on third-party technology and systems to perform properly, and our platform is often used in connection with computing environments utilizing different operating systems, system management software, equipment and networking configurations, which may cause errors in, or failures of, our platform or such other computing environments. Operational and performance issues with our platform could include the failure of our user interface, outages, errors during upgrades or patches, discrepancies in costs billed versus costs paid, unanticipated volume overwhelming our databases, server failure, or catastrophic events affecting one or more server farms. While we have built redundancies in our systems, full redundancies do not exist. Some failures will shut our platform down completely, others only partially. Partial failures, which we have experienced in the past, could result in unauthorized bidding, cessation of our ability to bid or deliver impressions or deletion of our reporting, in each case resulting in unanticipated financial obligations or impact.

Operational, performance and internal control issues with our platform could also result in negative publicity, damage to our brand and reputation, loss of or delay in market acceptance of our platform, increased costs or loss of revenue, loss of the ability to access our platform, loss of competitive position or claims by clients for losses sustained by them and stockholders may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports. Alleviating problems resulting from such issues could require significant expenditures of capital and other resources and could cause interruptions, delays or the cessation of our business, any of which may adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Data privacy and security concerns relating to our technology and our practices could damage our reputation and deter current and potential customers from using our products and services. If our security measures are breached or unauthorized access is obtained to user, customer or inventory and third-party provider data, our services may be perceived as insecure, we may lose existing customers and providers or fail to attract new customers and providers, and we may incur significant reputational harm and legal and financial liabilities.

In the wake of recent high-profile data breaches and allegations of misuse of consumer data, consumers, privacy advocates and legislators have expressed concerns regarding digital advertising and whether advertising technology products, services, or processes compromise the privacy of Internet users. Concerns about industry practices or our practices with regard to the collection, use, disclosure, or security of personal information or other data privacy related matters, even if unfounded, could damage our reputation and adversely affect our results of operations or lead to enhanced regulatory oversight that may burden our management and operations. Our privacy policies and business operations may have to change to adapt to any such changes in our business environment.

Our products and services involve the storage and transmission of data from users, customers, and inventory and data providers. We have dedicated and expect to continue to dedicate significant resources to create security protections that shield data against unauthorized access. However, such measures cannot provide absolute security. Bugs, defects, security breaches, theft, misuse or vulnerabilities in our products, services and processes may expose us to a risk of loss or corruption of such data, improper use and disclosure of such information, litigation, and other potential liability. Systems failures, compromises of our security, failure to abide by our privacy policies or contractual obligations, or inadvertent disclosure that results in the release of data from users, customers, or inventory or data providers could result in government investigations, enforcement actions and other legal and financial liability, which may seriously harm our reputation and brand, and impair our ability to attract and retain customers.

From time to time, we experience cyberattacks of varying degrees and other attempts to gain unauthorized access to our systems. Although we have dedicated significant resources to our security measures, they may be breached due to negligence or malfeasance by internal or external actors, or errors or vulnerabilities in our systems, products or processes or in those of our customers, providers and vendors, or otherwise. Such breach or other unauthorized access, or attempts by outside parties to fraudulently induce employees, customers or vendors to disclose sensitive information in order to gain access to our data, user data, or our customers’ or inventory and third-party providers’ data could result in significant legal and financial exposure, damage to our reputation, and a loss of confidence in the security of our products and services that could potentially have an adverse effect on our business. We have detected unauthorized access to individual employee mailboxes in the past and implemented additional security measures. However, such measures may not be sufficient to prevent future attempts, which may occur with more frequency or sophistication. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access, disable or degrade service, or sabotage systems change frequently, become more sophisticated, and often are not recognized until launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate or detect these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. Cyberattacks could also compromise trade secrets and other sensitive information and result in such information being disclosed to others and becoming less valuable, which could negatively affect our business. If an actual or perceived breach of our security occurs, the market perception of the effectiveness of our security measures could be harmed and we could lose users and customers.

While we have dedicated significant resources to privacy and security incident response, including dedicated worldwide incident response teams, our response process may not be adequate, may fail to accurately assess the severity of an incident, may not respond quickly enough, or may fail to sufficiently remediate an incident, among other issues. As a result, we may suffer significant legal, reputational, or financial exposure, which could adversely affect our business and results of operations.

Legislation and regulation of online businesses, including privacy and data protection regimes, may cause us to incur additional or unexpected costs, subject us to enforcement actions for compliance failures, or cause us to change our platform or business model, which may have a material adverse effect on our business.

U.S. and foreign governments have enacted or are considering enacting legislation related to privacy, data protection, data security and digital advertising and we expect to see an increase in, or changes to, legislation and regulation that affects our industry, including the use of geo-location data to inform advertising, the collection and use of non-identifiable or identifiable Internet user data and unique device identifiers, such as IP address or mobile unique device identifiers, and other data protection and privacy-related regulation.

Additionally, industry groups in the U.S., such as the Digital Advertising Alliance, or DAA, and the Network Advertising Initiative, or NAI, and their international counterparts have self-regulatory guidelines that are subject to periodic updates to which we have agreed to adhere.

Such legislation and regulation could cause us to incur additional or unexpected compliance costs, negatively impact inventory and third-party data made available through our platform, adversely affect demand for our platform, or otherwise harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

For instance, a wide variety of local, state, national and international laws and regulations apply to the collection, use, retention, protection, disclosure, transfer (including transfer across national boundaries) and other processing of data collected from or about consumers and devices. While we have not collected data that is traditionally considered personally identifiable data, such as an individual’s name, email address, address, phone numbers, social security numbers, or credit card numbers, we typically do collect and store IP addresses and other device identifiers (such as unique cookie identifiers and mobile app identifiers), which are or may be considered personal data in some jurisdictions or otherwise may be the subject of legislation or regulation.

Similarly, political advertising is governed by various federal and state laws in the U.S., and national and provincial laws worldwide. Online political advertising laws are rapidly evolving, and in certain jurisdictions have varying transparency and disclosure requirements. The lack of uniformity and the increasing requirements on transparency and disclosure could adversely impact the inventory made available for political advertising and the demand for such inventory on our platform, and otherwise increase our operating and compliance costs.

Additionally, evolving definitions of what is considered personal data within the European Union (including the European Economic Area, or EEA, countries of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), or EU, and elsewhere may also impact us. The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which applies to any company inside or outside the EU that collects and uses personal data in connection with the offering of goods or services to individuals in the EU or the monitoring of the behavior of individuals in the EU, came into effect on May 25, 2018. The GDPR clarifies that the definition of “personal data” includes online identifiers provided by individuals’ devices, apps, and protocols (such as IP addresses, mobile device IDs, cookie strings) and individuals’ location data, if there is potential that individuals can be identified by such data. The GDPR also enhances data protection obligations for controllers of personal data and for service providers processing personal data and guarantees certain rights, such as access and deletion, to the subjects of personal data. These enhancements have, and may continue to, bring about significant changes in the way the advertising technology industry operates in the EU, and some companies may have difficulty adapting their businesses and technology. Adaptation of the digital advertising marketplace in the EU requires significant collaboration between participants in the market. The ongoing effectiveness with which industry participants can adapt to changes required for operating under the GDPR, and the user response to such changes, could negatively impact inventory, data, and demand in Europe. We cannot control or predict the pace or effectiveness of such adaptation, and we cannot currently predict the impact such changes may have on our business. The industry has collaborated to create a user-facing framework for establishing and managing legal bases under ePrivacy and GDPR. Although the framework is actively in use, we cannot predict its effectiveness over the long term. Although European regulators have questioned the viability of the framework, and activists have filed complaints with regulators of alleged non-compliance by specific companies and of standard technical components of the digital advertising ecosystem, the framework has not been invalidated. Non-compliance with the GDPR can trigger steep fines of up to the greater of €20 million or 4% of total worldwide annual revenue. Continuing to maintain compliance with the GDPR’s requirements requires significant time, resources and expense, as will the effort to monitor whether additional changes to our business practices and our backend configuration are needed, all of which may increase operating costs, or limit our ability to operate or expand our business.

For the transfer of personal data from the EU to the U.S., we rely upon, and are currently certified under the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks. The Privacy Shield Framework, however, continues to face criticism from privacy advocates in the EU, and is also subject to pending legal challenges in the General Court of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Other EU mechanisms for adequate data transfer such as the standard contractual clauses are also being challenged in the EU courts. These challenges to the legal means used to transfer personal data may lead to governmental enforcement actions, litigation, fines and penalties or adverse publicity, which could have an adverse effect on our reputation and business. We may find it necessary to establish systems to maintain personal data originating from the EU in the EU, which may involve substantial expense and may cause us to divert resources from other aspects of our business, all of which may adversely affect our business.

In addition, it remains unclear how the potential withdrawal of the United Kingdom, or U.K., from the European Union, referred to as Brexit, will affect transborder data flows, regulators’ jurisdiction over our business, and other matters related to how we do business and how we comply with applicable data protection laws. Accordingly, we cannot predict the additional expense, impact on revenue, or other business impact that may stem from Brexit.

Increasing attention to privacy has led other jurisdictions to amend, or propose legislation to amend, their existing data protection laws to enact measures similar to those in the GDPR. Accordingly, similar challenges to those we face in the EU may arise in jurisdictions outside of the EU, as those new laws come into effect. For example, in 2018, the State of California adopted the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, or CCPA. The CCPA has been characterized as the first “GDPR-like” privacy statute to be enacted in the U.S. because its scope, and a number of the key provisions, resemble the GDPR.

The CCPA establishes a new privacy framework for covered businesses by, among other requirements, creating an expanded definition of personal information, establishing new data privacy rights for consumers in the State of California, imposing special rules on the collection of consumer data from minors, creating new notice obligations and new limits on the sale of personal information, and creating a new and potentially severe statutory damages framework for violations of the CCPA and for businesses that fail to implement reasonable security procedures and practices to prevent data breaches. As currently enacted, we and partners in our industry will be required to comply with these requirements when the CCPA becomes effective in 2020. As with GDPR, the digital advertising marketplace may have to adapt to operating under the CCPA where it applies. We cannot predict the timing or outcome of this adaptation or the effect on our business. Adapting our business to the CCPA could involve substantial resources and expense, and may cause us to divert resources from other aspects of our business, all of which may adversely affect our business.

We take commercially reasonable measures to protect the security of information that we collect, use and disclose in the operation of our business, and to offer privacy protections with respect to such information, including conducting third-party audits of our privacy practices and review of our privacy policy. Such measures, however, may not always be effective and may not identify data security or privacy related risks or inadequate or inappropriate practices we have used or adopted.

Additionally, as the advertising industry evolves, and new ways of collecting, combining and using data are created, governments may enact legislation that could result in our having to re-design features or functions of our platform, therefore incurring unexpected compliance costs. For example, the Federal Trade Commission, or the FTC, has examined, and likely will continue to examine, the privacy issues that arise as marketers track consumers across several devices, otherwise known as cross-device tracking. The FTC may promulgate guidance regarding cross-device tracking, may encourage legislation governing these practices, and may use its enforcement powers under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (which prohibits “unfair” and “deceptive” trade practices) to investigate companies engaging in cross-device tracking. Similarly, evolving privacy regulation and self-regulation could affect our growth in omnichannel products.

While we contractually prohibit our clients and inventory and data suppliers from supplying directly identifiable information or other information that we deem sensitive to our system, we may inadvertently receive such information, which may result in us breaching privacy-related legislation or regulations or may increase the risk resulting from a breach. Additionally, we have contractual obligations to indemnify and hold harmless some of our clients and suppliers for the costs or consequences of our failure to comply with privacy-related legislation and regulations, which may be triggered by such inadvertent ingestion of directly identifiable or sensitive information to our platform.

In addition to government regulation, the DAA, NAI, and other privacy advocates and industry groups, may propose new and different self-regulatory standards that either legally or contractually apply to us. We also expect that there will continue to be new proposed laws and regulations concerning privacy, data protection and information security, and we cannot yet determine the impact such future laws, regulations and standards may have on our business. High profile incidents involving breach of consumer privacy may increase the likelihood of new U.S. federal, state, or international laws or regulations that affect our business. Future laws, regulations, standards and other obligations, which may be inconsistent across jurisdictions, and changes in the interpretation and enforcement of existing laws, regulations, standards and other obligations, as well as increased enforcement by industry groups or data protection authorities, could require changes to our practices or impair our or our clients’ ability to collect, use or disclose information relating to consumers, which could decrease demand for our platform, increase our costs and impair our ability to maintain and grow our client base and increase our revenue. New laws, amendments to or re-interpretations of existing laws and regulations, industry standards, contractual obligations and other obligations may require us to incur additional costs and restrict our business operations. Because the interpretation and application of laws, contractual obligations and other obligations relating to privacy and data protection are still uncertain, it is possible that these laws and other obligations may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent with our existing data management practices or the features of our platform. If so, in addition to the possibility of fines, lawsuits and other claims, we could be required to fundamentally change our business activities and practices or modify our products, which could have an adverse effect on our business. We may be unable to make such changes and modifications in a commercially reasonable manner or at all, and our ability to develop new products and features could be limited.

As we expand our business in markets around the globe we will have to adapt our business and technology in those markets to local data protection regulation, and may be subject to legal and business consequences if we fail to do so adequately.

Data protection and privacy concerns are an important part of the programmatic advertising buying industry. Even the perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid and whether driven by applicable laws and regulations, industry standards, client or inventory provider expectations, or the broader public, may harm our reputation, result in loss of goodwill, and inhibit use of our platform by current and future clients. For example, claims or adverse publicity could result from the perception of pharmaceuticals or medical advertisements targeting conditions. Additionally, our failure or perceived failure to comply with applicable laws and regulations could result in enforcement actions against us, including fines, imprisonment of our officers and public censure, and claims for damages by consumers and other affected individuals, any of which could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

If the use of “third-party cookies” or other technology to uniquely identify devices is rejected by Internet users, restricted or otherwise subject to unfavorable regulation, blocked or limited by technical changes on end users’ devices, or our and our clients’ ability to use data on our platform is otherwise restricted, our performance may decline and we may lose advertisers and revenue.

Digital advertising mostly relies on the ability to uniquely identify devices across websites and apps, and to collect data about user interactions with those devices for purposes such as serving relevant ads and measuring the effectiveness of ads. Devices are identified through the use of unique identifiers stored in cookies, provided by device operating systems for advertising purposes, or generated based on statistical algorithms applied to information about a device, such as the IP address and device type. We use device identifiers to record such information as when an Internet user views an ad, clicks on an ad or visits one of our advertiser’s websites or apps. We use device identifiers to help us achieve our advertisers’ campaign goals on the web, to limit the instances that an Internet user sees the same advertisement, to report information to our advertisers regarding the performance of their advertising campaigns and to detect and prevent malicious behavior and invalid traffic throughout our network of inventory. We also use data associated with device identifiers to help our clients decide whether to bid on, and how to price, an opportunity to place an advertisement in a specific location, at a given time, in front of a particular Internet user. Additionally, our clients rely on device identifiers to add information they have collected or acquired about users into our platform. Without such data, our clients may not have sufficient insight into an Internet user’s activity, which may compromise their and our ability to determine which inventory to purchase for a specific campaign, and undermine the effectiveness of our platform.

Today, digital advertising, including our platform, makes significant use of cookies to store device identifiers for advertising in web browser environments. When we use cookies, they are generally considered third-party cookies, which are cookies owned and used by parties other than the owners of the website visited by the Internet user. The most commonly used Internet browsers—Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari—allow Internet users to modify their browser settings to prevent some or all cookies from being accepted by their browsers. Internet users can delete cookies from their computers at any time. Additionally, some browsers currently, or may in the future, block or limit some third-party cookies by default or algorithmically, or implement user control settings that algorithmically block or limit some cookies. For example, Google previously announced that it will introduce, and Apple has released, privacy features to their respective web browsers, which aim to provide users with increased transparency and control with respect to the collection and use of user data by third parties or limit the use of third-party cookies. Adapting to these and similar changes has in the past and may in the future require significant time, resources and expense, which may increase our cost of operation or limit our ability to operate or expand our business. Increases in cookie blocking or deletion may decrease our and our clients’ ability to collect and use data for advertising, which may lessen the effectiveness or desirability of our products and services or of the digital advertising market generally.

Mobile devices allow users to opt out of the use of mobile device IDs for targeted advertising. For in-app advertising, data regarding interactions between users and devices are tracked mostly through stable, pseudonymous mobile device identifiers that are built into the device operating system with privacy controls that allow users to express a preference with respect to data collection for advertising, including to disable the identifier. These identifiers and privacy controls are defined by the developers of the mobile platforms and could be changed by the mobile platforms in a way that may negatively impact our business. In addition, failure by inventory providers to comply with, or accurately pass through, user choices and settings could lead to our inadvertent failure to honor user preferences, which may result in legal and reputational harm to our business. User privacy features of other channels of programmatic advertising, such as CTVs or over-the-top video, are still developing. Technical or policy changes, including regulation or industry self-regulation, could harm our growth in those channels. Some Internet users also download free or paid ad blocking software that not only prevents third-party cookies from being stored on a user’s computer, but also blocks all interaction with a third-party ad server. In addition, Google has introduced ad blocking software in its Chrome web browser that will block certain ads based on quality standards established under a multi-stakeholder coalition. If other browsers add such capabilities, or such a feature inadvertently or mistakenly blocks ads that are not within the established blocking standards, our business could be harmed.

Additionally, the DAA, NAI, their international counterparts, and our company have certain opt-out mechanisms for users to opt-out of the collection and use of information about them. Changes in the opt-out standards or increased adoption of opt-out mechanisms by users could reduce our ability to collect and use data.

Increased transparency into the collection and use of data for digital advertising introduced both through features in browsers and devices and through regulatory requirements, such as GDPR and CCPA, may create operational burdens to implement and may lead to more users choosing to block the collection and use of data about them. If changes to Internet browser capabilities or other technology for the collection or use of user data, changes in Internet users’ preferences with respect to the collection and use of user data for digital advertising, restrictions imposed by advertisers or publishers, or changes in laws, regulations or industry standards lead to a significant decrease in our ability to identify devices and collect and use data for advertising, our business, financial condition and results of operations may be harmed.

As the collection and use of data for digital advertising has received ongoing media attention over the past several years, some government regulators, such as the FTC, and privacy advocates have suggested creating a “Do Not Track” standard that would allow Internet users to express a preference, independent of cookie settings in their browser, not to have their online browsing activities tracked. Similar standards have been set at device-level so that activities on mobile devices, including browsing and app uses, are not tracked. Some Internet browsers have implemented some version of a “Do Not Track” setting, though, because there is no standard, it is not widely honored. The potential regulatory and self-regulatory landscape remains uncertain, as there is no definition of tracking, no consensus regarding what message is conveyed by a “Do Not Track” setting and no industry standards regarding how to respond to a “Do Not Track” preference. In the EU, the Article 29 Working Party recommended in an Opinion issued on April 4, 2017 that the proposed ePrivacy Regulation require terminal equipment and software to offer privacy protective settings by default with the ability for users to adjust these settings during setup, browser settings that enable users to signal specific consent, and mandatory adherence to “Do Not Track” to give users additional control over the collection of their Internet activity data. If a “Do Not Track” browser setting, or some similar control, is adopted by many Internet users or if a “Do Not Track” standard imposed by state or federal or foreign legislation (such as the proposed ePrivacy Regulation), or agreed upon by standard setting groups, which prohibits us from using data as we currently do, we may have to change our business practices, our clients may reduce their use of our platform, and our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected.

In addition, in the EU, Directive 2002/58/EC (as amended by Directive 2009/136/EC), commonly referred to as the ePrivacy or Cookie Directive, directs EU member states to ensure that accessing information on an Internet user’s computer, such as through a cookie and other similar technologies, is allowed only if the Internet user has been informed about such access and given his or her consent. A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union clarified that such consent must be reflected by an affirmative act of the user. The ruling may do away with implied consent pop ups and banners that have been used to meet requirements of the Cookie Directive in some markets. A replacement for the Cookie Directive is currently under discussion by EU member states to complement and bring electronic communication services in line with the GDPR and force a harmonized approach across EU member states. Like the GDPR, the proposed ePrivacy Regulation has extra-territorial application as it applies to businesses established outside the EU who provide publicly-available electronic communications services to, or gather data from the devices of, users in the EU. Though still subject to debate, the proposed ePrivacy Regulation may further raise the bar for the use of cookies. The fines and penalties for breach of the proposed ePrivacy Regulation may be significant. Limitations on the use or effectiveness of cookies, or other limitations on our, or our clients’, ability to collect and use data for advertising, whether imposed by EU member state implementations of the Cookie Directive, by the new ePrivacy Regulation, or otherwise, may impact the performance of our platform. We may be required to, or otherwise may determine that it is advisable to, make significant changes in our business operations and product and services to obtain user opt-in for cookies and use of cookie data, or develop or obtain additional tools and technologies to compensate for a lack of cookie data. We may not be able to make the necessary changes in our business operations and products and services to obtain user opt-in for cookies and use of cookie data, or develop, implement or acquire additional tools that compensate for a lack of cookie data. Moreover, even if we are able to do so, such additional products and tools may be subject to further regulation, time consuming to develop or costly to obtain, and less effective than our current use of cookies.

Failure to comply with industry self-regulation could harm our brand, reputation and business.

We have committed to comply, and generally require our customers and partners to comply with, applicable self-regulatory principles, such as the NAI’s Code of Conduct and the DAA’s Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising in the U.S., and similar self-regulatory principles in Europe and Canada adopted by the local Digital Advertising Alliance. Our efforts to comply with these self-regulatory principles include offering Internet users notice and choice when advertising is served to them based, in part, on their interests. We offer Internet users the ability to opt out of receiving interest-based advertisements. If we or our customers or partners make mistakes in the implementation of these principles, or if self-regulatory bodies expand these guidelines or government authorities issue different guidelines regarding Internet-based advertising, or opt out mechanisms fail to work as designed, or if Internet users misunderstand our technology or our commitments with respect to these principles, we may, as a result, be subject to negative publicity, government investigation, government or private litigation, or investigation by self-regulatory bodies or other accountability groups. Any such action against us, or investigations, even if meritless, could be costly and time consuming, require us to change our business practices, cause us to divert management’s attention and our resources and be damaging to our brand, reputation and business.

Our failure to meet standards and provide services that our advertisers and inventory suppliers trust, could harm our brand and reputation and those of our partners and negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We do not provide or control the content of the advertisements that we serve or the content of the websites providing the inventory. Advertisers provide the advertising content and inventory suppliers provide the inventory. Both advertisers and inventory suppliers are concerned about being associated with content they consider inappropriate, competitive or inconsistent with their brands, or illegal and they are hesitant to spend money or make inventory available, respectively, without guaranteed brand security. Additionally, advertisers may seek to display advertising campaigns in jurisdictions that do not permit such advertising (for example, pharmaceutical advertising is not permitted in many countries) or in which the regulatory environment is uncertain, or otherwise attempt to use illegal or unethical targeting practices. Consequently, our reputation depends in part on providing services that our advertisers and inventory suppliers trust, and we have contractual obligations to meet content and inventory standards. We also contractually prohibit the misuse of our platform by agencies (and their advertiser clients) and inventory suppliers. Despite such efforts, our clients may inadvertently purchase inventory that proves to be unacceptable for their campaigns, in which case we may not be able to recoup the amounts paid to inventory suppliers. In addition, our clients could intentionally run campaigns that do not meet the standards of our inventory suppliers, in which case our supply of ad inventory from such suppliers could be jeopardized. Additionally, we use our proprietary technology and third-party services to, and we participate in industry co-ops that work to, detect malware and other content issues as well as click fraud (whether by humans or software known as “bots”) and to block fraudulent inventory, including “tool bar” inventory, which is inventory that appears within an application and displaces any advertising that would otherwise be displayed on the website. Preventing and combating fraud is an industry-wide issue that requires constant vigilance, and we cannot guarantee that we will be fully successful in doing so. There are other means we could use, such as human review of content we serve, that some of our competitors undertake, but because our platform is self-service, and because such means are cost-intensive, we do not utilize all means available to decrease these risks. We may provide access to inventory that is objectionable to our advertisers, serve advertising that contains malware, objectionable content, or is based on questionable targeting criteria to our inventory suppliers, or be unable to detect and prevent non-human traffic, any one of which could harm our or our clients’ brand and reputation, decrease their trust in our platform, and negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.

If we fail to offer sufficient client training and support, our business and reputation would suffer.

Because we offer a self-serve platform, client training and support is important for the successful marketing and continued use of our platform and for maintaining and increasing spend through our platform from existing and new clients. Providing this training and support requires that our platform operations personnel have specific domain knowledge and expertise, making it more difficult for us to hire qualified personnel and to scale up our support operations due to the extensive training required. The importance of high-quality client service will increase as we expand our business and pursue new clients. If we are not responsive and proactive regarding our clients’ advertising needs, or do not provide effective support for our clients’ advertising campaigns, our ability to retain our existing clients would suffer and our reputation with existing or potential clients would be harmed, which would negatively impact our business.

If the non-proprietary technology, software, products and services that we use are unavailable, have future terms we cannot agree to, or do not perform as we expect, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be harmed.

We depend on various technology, software, products and services from third parties or available as open source, including for critical features and functionality of our platform, data centers and API technology, payment processing, payroll and other professional services. For example, in order for clients to target ads in ways they desire and otherwise optimize and verify campaigns, our platform must have access to data regarding Internet user behavior and reports with demographic information regarding Internet users. Identifying, negotiating, complying with and integrating with third-party terms and technology are complex, costly and time-consuming matters. Failure by third-party providers to maintain, support or secure their technology either generally or for our accounts specifically, or downtime, errors or defects in their products or services, could adversely impact our platform, our administrative obligations or other areas of our business. Having to replace any third-party providers or their technology, products or services could result in outages or difficulties in our ability to provide our services. For example, we rely upon third-party co-location providers for our data centers, and we are dependent on these third parties to provide continuous power, cooling, Internet connectivity and physical and technological security for our servers. In the event that these third-party providers experience any interruption in operations or cease business for any reason, or if we are unable to agree on satisfactory terms for continued hosting relationships, we would be forced to enter into a relationship with other service providers or assume some hosting responsibilities ourselves. In addition, even a disruption as brief as a few minutes could have a negative impact on marketplace activities and could result in a loss of revenue. If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining our relationships with our third-party providers or otherwise need to replace them, internal resources may need to be diverted and our business, financial condition and results of operations could be harmed.

We face potential liability and harm to our business based on the human factor of inputting information into our platform.

Campaigns are set up using several variables available to our clients on our platform. While our platform includes several checks and balances, it is possible for human error to result in significant overspending. The system requires a daily cap at the ad group level. We also provide for the client to input daily and overall caps at the advertising inventory campaign level at their discretion. Additionally, we set a credit limit for each user so that they cannot spend beyond the level of credit risk we are willing to accept. Despite these protections, the ability for overspend exists. For example, campaigns which last for a period of time can be set to pace evenly or as quickly as possible. If a client with a high credit limit enters the wrong daily cap with a campaign set to a rapid pace, it is possible for a campaign to accidently go significantly over budget. While our client contracts state that clients are responsible for media purchased through our platform, we are ultimately responsible for paying the inventory providers, and we may be unable to collect for such issues.

We have international operations and plan to continue expanding abroad where we have more limited operating experience, which may subject us to additional cost and economic risks that can adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our international operations and expansion plans create challenges associated with supporting a rapidly growing business across a multitude of cultures, customs, monetary, legal and regulatory systems and commercial infrastructures. We have a limited operating history outside of the U.S., and our ability to manage and expand our business and conduct our operations internationally requires considerable attention and resources.

We have personnel in countries within Europe, Asia, and Australia, and we are continuing to expand our international operations. Some of the countries into which we are, or potentially may, expand score unfavorably on the Corruption Perceptions Index, or CPI, of the Transparency International. Our teams in locations outside the U.S. are substantially smaller than some of our teams in the U.S. To the extent we are unable to effectively engage with non-U.S. advertising agencies or international divisions of U.S. agencies due to our limited sales force capacity, or we are unable to secure quality non-U.S. ad inventory and data on reasonable terms due to our limited inventory and data team capacity, we may be unable to effectively grow in international markets.

In addition to risks described elsewhere in this section, our international operations and expansion subject us to a variety of additional risks, including:

We have a U.K. entity through which we have entered into international customer and partner agreements, including with those in the EU, which are governed by English Law, and some of our customers and partners pay us in British Pounds and Euros. It is unclear what effects Brexit will have on the operational execution and enforcement of those agreements, transborder transactions generally, matters of taxation, transborder data flows, regulators’ jurisdiction over our business, and other matters related to how we do business in the U.K. and EU. Brexit may adversely affect economic conditions in the U.K., EU and elsewhere across the globe, and could contribute to volatility in foreign exchange markets with respect to the British Pound and Euro, which we may not be able to effectively manage, and our financial results could be adversely affected. Further, Brexit may add additional complexity to our European operations, which are headquartered in the U.K. Accordingly, we cannot predict the additional expense, impact on revenue, or other business impact that may stem from Brexit.

We may incur significant operating expenses as a result of our international operations and expansion, and we may not be successful. Our international business also subjects us to the impact of differing regulatory requirements, costs and difficulties in managing a distributed workforce, and potentially adverse tax consequences in the U.S. and abroad. In addition, advertising markets outside of the U.S. are not as developed as those within the U.S., and we may be unable to grow our business sufficiently. Our failure to successfully manage the risks and challenges described in this section could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Exposure to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations could negatively impact our results of operations.

While the majority of the transactions through our platform are denominated in U.S. dollars, we have transacted in foreign currencies for both inventory and for payments by clients from use of our platform. Given our anticipated international growth, we expect the number of transactions in a variety of foreign currencies to continue to grow in the future. While we generally require a fee from our clients that pay in non-U.S. currency, this fee may not always cover foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations. We currently have a program to hedge exposure to foreign currency fluctuations. However, the use of hedging instruments may not be available for all currencies, or may not always offset losses resulting from foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations. Moreover, the use of hedging instruments can itself result in losses if we are unable to structure effective hedges with such instruments.

Credit ratings and pricing of our investments can be negatively affected by liquidity, credit deterioration or losses, financial results, foreign exchange rates, changes in interest rates, or other factors. As a result, the value and liquidity of our cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities may fluctuate substantially. Although we have not realized any significant losses on our cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, future fluctuations in their value could result in a significant realized loss, which could adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.

Future acquisitions, strategic investments or alliances could disrupt our business and harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We may in the future explore potential acquisitions of companies or technologies, strategic investments, or alliances to strengthen our business. However, we have limited experience in acquiring and integrating businesses, products and technologies. Even if we identify an appropriate acquisition candidate, we may not be successful in negotiating the terms or financing of the acquisition, and our due diligence may fail to identify all of the problems, liabilities or other shortcomings or challenges of an acquired business, product or technology, including issues related to intellectual property, product quality or architecture, regulatory compliance practices, revenue recognition or other accounting practices or employee or client issues. Acquisitions involve numerous risks, any of which could harm our business, including:

Failure to appropriately mitigate these risks or other issues related to such acquisitions and strategic investments could result in reducing or completely eliminating any anticipated benefits of transactions, and harm our business generally. Future acquisitions could also result in dilutive issuances of our equity securities, the incurrence of debt, contingent liabilities, amortization expenses or the impairment of goodwill, any of which could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We may not be able to secure additional financing on favorable terms, or at all, to meet our future capital needs, which may in turn impair our growth.

We intend to continue to grow our business, which will require additional capital to develop new features or enhance our platform, improve our operating infrastructure, finance working capital requirements or acquire complementary businesses and technologies. Accordingly, we may need to engage in additional equity or debt financings to secure additional capital. If we raise additional funds through future issuances of equity or convertible debt securities, our existing stockholders could suffer significant dilution, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences and privileges superior to those of holders of our common stock. Any debt financing that we secure in the future could involve restrictive covenants relating to our capital raising activities and other financial and operational matters, which may make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and to pursue business opportunities. If we are unable to secure additional funding on favorable terms, or at all, when we require it, our ability to continue to grow our business to react to market conditions could be impaired and our business may be harmed.

We have entered into, and may in the future enter into, credit facilities which may contain operating and financial covenants that restrict our business and financing activities.

We have entered into, and may in the future enter into, credit facilities which contain restrictions that limit our flexibility in operating our business. Our credit facility contains, and any future credit facility may contain, various covenants that limit our ability to engage in specified types of transactions. Subject to limited exceptions, these covenants limit our ability to, among other things:

Our obligations under our credit facility are collateralized by a pledge of substantially all of our assets, including accounts receivable, deposit accounts, intellectual property, and investment property and equipment. The covenants in our credit facility may limit our ability to take actions and, in the event that we breach one or more covenants, our lenders may choose to declare an event of default and require that we immediately repay all amounts outstanding, terminate the commitment to extend further credit and foreclose on the collateral granted to them to collateralize such indebtedness, which includes our intellectual property. In addition, if we fail to meet the required covenants, we will not have access to further draw-downs under our credit facility.

Our future success depends on the continuing efforts of our key employees, including Jeff T. Green and David R. Pickles, and our ability to attract, hire, retain and motivate highly skilled employees in the future.

Our future success depends on the continuing efforts of our executive officers and other key employees, including our two founders, Jeff T. Green, our Chief Executive Officer, and David R. Pickles, our Chief Technology Officer. We rely on the leadership, knowledge and experience that our executive officers provide. They foster our corporate culture, which has been instrumental to our ability to attract and retain new talent. We also rely on employees in our product development, support and sales teams to attract and keep key clients.

The market for talent in our key areas of operations, including California and New York, is intensely competitive, which could increase our costs to attract and retain talented employees. As a result, we may incur significant costs to attract and retain employees, including significant expenditures related to salaries and benefits and compensation expenses related to equity awards, and we may lose new employees to our competitors or other companies before we realize the benefit of our investment in recruiting and training them. New employees often require significant training and, in many cases, take significant time before they achieve full productivity. Our account managers, for instance, need to be trained quickly on the features of our platform since failure to offer high-quality support may adversely affect our relationships with our clients. Technology companies like ours compete to attract the best talent. Additionally, we have little experience with recruiting in geographies outside of the U.S. and may face additional challenges in attracting and retaining international employees.

Employee turnover, including changes in our management team, could disrupt our business. None of our founders or other key employees have an employment agreement for a specific term, and any of our employees may terminate his or her employment with us at any time. The loss of one or more of our executive officers, especially our two founders, or our inability to attract and retain highly skilled employees could have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We became a public company in September 2016. Most members of our management team have limited experience managing a publicly traded company, interacting with public company investors, and complying with the increasingly complex laws, rules and regulations that govern public companies. As a public company, we are subject to significant obligations relating to reporting, procedures and internal controls, and our management team may not successfully or efficiently manage such obligations. These obligations and scrutiny will require significant attention from our management and could divert their attention away from the day-to-day management of our business, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

If we do not effectively grow and train our sales and support teams, we may be unable to add new clients or increase sales to our existing clients and our business will be adversely affected.

We are substantially dependent on our sales and support teams to obtain new clients and to increase spend by our existing clients. We believe that there is significant competition for sales personnel with the skills and technical knowledge that we require. Our ability to achieve revenue growth will depend, in large part, on our success in recruiting, training, integrating and retaining sufficient numbers of sales personnel to support our growth. Due to the complexity of our platform, new hires require significant training and it may take significant time before they achieve full productivity. Our recent and planned hires may not become productive as quickly as we expect, and we may be unable to hire or retain sufficient numbers of qualified individuals in the markets where we do business or plan to do business. If we are unable to hire and train sufficient numbers of effective sales personnel, or the sales personnel are not successful in obtaining new clients or increasing our existing clients’ spend with us, our business will be adversely affected.

Our corporate culture has contributed to our success and, if we are unable to maintain it as we grow, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be harmed.

We have experienced and may continue to experience rapid expansion of our employee ranks. We believe our corporate culture has been a key element of our success. However, as our organization grows, it may be difficult to maintain our culture, which could reduce our ability to innovate and operate effectively. The failure to maintain the key aspects of our culture as our organization grows could result in decreased employee satisfaction, increased difficulty in attracting top talent, increased turnover and could compromise the quality of our client service, all of which are important to our success and to the effective execution of our business strategy. In the event we are unable to maintain our corporate culture as we grow to scale, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be harmed.

Our proprietary rights may be difficult to enforce, which could enable others to copy or use aspects of our technology without compensating us, thereby eroding our competitive advantages and harming our business.

We rely upon a combination of trade secrets, third-party confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, additional contractual restrictions on disclosure and use, and trademark, copyright and other intellectual property laws to establish and protect our proprietary rights. These laws, procedures and restrictions provide only limited protection. We currently have “theTradeDesk” and variants registered as a trademark or pending registration in the U.S. and certain foreign countries. We also rely on copyright laws to protect computer programs related to our platform and our proprietary technologies, although to date we have not registered for statutory copyright protection. We have registered numerous Internet domain names in the U.S. and certain foreign countries related to our business in order to protect our proprietary interests. We endeavor to enter into agreements with our employees and contractors in order to limit access to and disclosure of our proprietary information, as well as to clarify rights to intellectual property associated with our business. Protecting our intellectual property is a challenge, especially after our employees or our contractors end their relationship with us, and, in some cases, decide to work for our competitors. Our contracts with our employees and contractors that relate to intellectual property issues generally restrict the use of our confidential information solely in connection with our services, and strictly prohibit reverse-engineering. However, reverse engineering our software or the theft or misuse of our proprietary information could occur by employees or other third parties who have access to our technology. Enforceability of the non-compete agreements that we have in place is not guaranteed, and contractual restrictions could be breached without discovery or adequate remedies. Further, because we believe our proprietary technology is better protected by keeping our technology architecture, trade secrets, and engineering roadmap private, we have not patented our proprietary technology and cannot look to patent enforcement rights to protect our proprietary technology.

Policing unauthorized use of our technology is difficult. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries may not be as protective of intellectual property rights as those of the U.S., and mechanisms for enforcement of our proprietary rights in such countries may be inadequate. If we are unable to protect our proprietary rights (including in particular, the proprietary aspects of our platform) we may find ourselves at a competitive disadvantage to others who have not incurred the same level of expense, time and effort to create and protect their intellectual property.

We may be sued by third parties for alleged infringement of their proprietary rights, which would result in additional expense and potential damages.

There is significant patent and other intellectual property development activity in the digital advertising industry. Third-party intellectual property rights may cover significant aspects of our technologies or business methods or block us from expanding our offerings. Our success depends on the continual development of our platform. From time to time, we may receive claims from third parties that our platform and underlying technology infringe or violate such third parties’ intellectual property rights. To the extent we gain greater public recognition, we may face a higher risk of being the subject of intellectual property claims. The cost of defending against such claims, whether or not the claims have merit, is significant, regardless of whether we are successful in our defense, and could divert the attention of management, technical personnel and other employees from our business operations. Litigation regarding intellectual property rights is inherently uncertain due to the complex issues involved, and we may not be successful in defending ourselves in such matters. Additionally, we have obligations to indemnify our clients or inventory and data suppliers in connection with certain intellectual property claims. If we are found to infringe these rights, we could potentially be required to cease utilizing portions of our platform. We may also be required to develop alternative non-infringing technology, which could require significant time and expense. Alternatively, we could be required to pay royalty payments, either as a one-time fee or ongoing, as well as damages for past use that was deemed to be infringing. If we cannot license or develop technology for any allegedly infringing aspect of our business, we would be forced to limit our service and may be unable to compete effectively. Any of these results could harm our business.

We face potential liability and harm to our business based on the nature of our business and the content on our platform.

Advertising often results in litigation relating to misleading or deceptive claims, copyright or trademark infringement, public performance royalties or other claims based on the nature and content of advertising that is distributed through our platform. Though we contractually require customers to generally represent to us that their advertisements comply with our ad standards and that they have the rights necessary to serve advertisements through our platform, we do not independently verify whether we are permitted to deliver, or review the content of, such advertisements. If any of these representations are untrue, we may be exposed to potential liability and our reputation may be damaged. While our clients are typically obligated to indemnify us, such indemnification may not fully cover us, or we may not be able to collect. In addition to settlement costs, we may be responsible for our own litigation costs, which can be extensive.

We are subject to anti-bribery, anti-corruption and similar laws and non-compliance with such laws can subject us to criminal penalties or significant fines and harm our business and reputation.

We are subject to anti-bribery and similar laws, such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended, or the FCPA, the U.S. domestic bribery statute contained in 18 U.S.C. § 201, the USA PATRIOT Act, U.S. Travel Act, the U.K. Bribery Act 2010 and Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and possibly other anti-corruption, anti-bribery and anti-money laundering laws in countries in which we conduct business. Anti-corruption laws have been enforced with great rigor in recent years and are interpreted broadly and prohibit companies and their employees and their agents from making or offering improper payments or other benefits to government officials and others in the private sector. As we increase our international sales and business, particularly in countries with a low score on the CPI by Transparency International, and increase our use of third parties such as sales agents, distributors, resellers or consultants, our risks under these laws will increase. We adopt appropriate policies and procedures and conduct training, but cannot guarantee that improprieties will not occur. Noncompliance with these laws could subject us to investigations, sanctions, settlements, prosecution, other enforcement actions, disgorgement of profits, significant fines, damages, other civil and criminal penalties or injunctions, suspension and/or debarment from contracting with specified persons, the loss of export privileges, reputational harm, adverse media coverage, and other collateral consequences. Any investigations, actions and/or sanctions could have a material negative impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We are subject to governmental economic sanctions requirements and export and import controls that could impair our ability to compete in international markets or subject us to liability if we are not in compliance with applicable laws.

As a U.S. company, we are subject to U.S. export control and economic sanctions laws and regulations, and we are required to export our technology and services in compliance with those laws and regulations, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations and economic embargo and trade sanctions programs administered by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. U.S. economic sanctions and export control laws and regulations prohibit the shipment of specified products and services to countries, governments and persons targeted by U.S. sanctions. While we are currently taking precautions to prevent doing any business, directly or indirectly, with countries, governments and persons targeted by U.S. sanctions and to ensure that our technology and services are not exported or used by countries, governments and persons targeted by U.S. sanctions, such measures may be circumvented. There can be no assurance that we will be in compliance with U.S. export control or economic sanctions laws and regulations in the future. Any such violation could result in significant criminal or civil fines, penalties or other sanctions and repercussions, including reputational harm that could materially adversely impact our business.

Furthermore, if we export our technology, the exports may require authorizations, including a license, a license exception or other appropriate government authorization. Complying with export control and sanctions regulations may be time-consuming and may result in the delay or loss of opportunities.

In addition, various countries regulate the import of encryption technology, including the imposition of import permitting and licensing requirements, and have enacted laws that could limit our ability to offer our platform or could limit our clients’ ability to use our platform in those countries. Changes in our platform or future changes in export and import regulations may create delays in the introduction of our platform in international markets or prevent our clients with international operations from deploying our platform globally. Any change in export or import regulations, economic sanctions or related legislation, or change in the countries, governments, persons, or technologies targeted by such regulations, could result in decreased use of our platform by, or in our decreased ability to export our technology and services to, existing or potential clients with international operations. Any decreased use of our platform or limitation on our ability to export our platform would likely adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

The U.S. and non-U.S. tax laws applicable to our business activities are subject to interpretation and are changing. We are subject to audit by the Internal Revenue Service and by taxing authorities of the state, local and foreign jurisdictions in which we operate. Our tax obligations are based in part on our corporate operating structure, including the manner in which we develop, value, use and hold our intellectual property, the jurisdictions in which we operate, how tax authorities assess revenue-based taxes such as sales and use taxes, the scope of our international operations and the value we ascribe to our intercompany transactions. Taxing authorities may challenge, and have challenged, our tax positions and methodologies for valuing developed technology or intercompany arrangements, as well as our positions regarding the collection of sales and use taxes and the jurisdictions in which we are subject to taxes, which could expose us to additional taxes. Any adverse outcomes of such challenges to our tax positions could result in additional taxes for prior periods, interest and penalties, as well as higher future taxes. In addition, our future tax expense could increase as a result of changes in tax laws, regulations or accounting principles, or as a result of earning income in jurisdictions that have higher tax rates. An increase in our tax expense could have a negative effect on our financial condition and results of operations. Moreover, the determination of our provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires significant estimates and judgment by management, and the tax treatment of certain transactions is uncertain. Although we believe we will make reasonable estimates and judgments, the ultimate outcome of any particular issue may differ from the amounts previously recorded in our financial statements and any such occurrence could materially affect our financial condition and results of operations.

The market price of our Class A common stock may be volatile or may decline regardless of our operating performance, and you may not be able to resell your shares at or above your purchase price.

The market price of our stock and of equity securities of technology companies has historically experienced high levels of volatility. If you purchase shares of our Class A common stock, you may not be able to resell those shares at or above your purchase price. The market price of our Class A common stock has fluctuated and may fluctuate significantly in response to numerous factors, some of which are beyond our control and may not be related to our operating performance, including:

In addition, if the stock market for technology companies, or the stock market generally, experiences a loss of investor confidence, the trading price of our Class A common stock could decline for reasons unrelated to our business, financial condition or results of operations. Stock prices of many technology companies have fluctuated in a manner unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. The trading price of our Class A common stock might also decline in reaction to events that affect other companies in our industry even if these events do not directly affect us. In the past, stockholders have filed securities class action litigation following periods of market volatility. If we were to become involved in securities litigation, it could subject us to substantial costs, divert resources and the attention of management from our core business, and adversely affect our business.

Substantial future sales of shares of our common stock could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.

The market price of our Class A common stock could decline as a result of substantial sales of our common stock, particularly sales by our directors, executive officers, and significant stockholders or the perception in the market that holders of a large number of shares intend to sell their shares.

Additionally, the shares of common stock subject to outstanding options, restricted stock awards and restricted stock units under our equity incentive plans and the shares reserved for future issuance under our equity incentive plans will become eligible for sale in the public market in the future, subject to certain legal and contractual limitations.

Certain holders of our common stock have rights, subject to some conditions, to require us to file registration statements covering their shares or to include their shares in registration statements that we may file for ourselves or our stockholders.

Insiders have substantial control over our company, including as a result of the dual class structure of our common stock, which could limit your ability to influence the outcome of key decisions, including a change of control.

Our Class B common stock has ten votes per share, and our Class A common stock, which is the stock we offered in our initial public offering, has one vote per share. Because of the ten-to-one voting ratio between our Class B and Class A common stock, the holders of our Class B common stock collectively continue to control a majority of the combined voting power of our common stock and therefore are able to control all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval so long as the shares of Class B common stock represent at least 9.1% of all outstanding shares of our Class A and Class B common stock. Stockholders who hold shares of Class B common stock, including our executive officers, employees, and directors and their affiliates, together hold approximately 57% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock as of September 30, 2019. This concentrated control limits or precludes your ability to influence corporate matters for the foreseeable future. These stockholders are able to influence or control matters requiring approval by our stockholders, including the election of directors and the approval of mergers, acquisitions or other extraordinary transactions. Their interests may differ from yours and they may vote in a manner that is adverse to your interests. This ownership concentration may deter, delay or prevent a change of control of our company, deprive our stockholders of an opportunity to receive a premium for their common stock as part of a sale of our company and may ultimately affect the market price of our common stock.

Future transfers by holders of Class B common stock will generally result in those shares converting to Class A common stock, subject to limited exceptions, such as transfers effected for estate planning or charitable purposes. The conversion of Class B common stock to Class A common stock will have the effect, over time, of increasing the relative voting power of those holders of Class B common stock who retain their shares in the long term.

The requirements of being a public company may strain our resources, divert our management’s attention and affect our ability to attract and retain qualified board members.

As a public company, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, and are required to comply with the applicable requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the listing requirements of NASDAQ, and other applicable securities rules and regulations. Compliance with these rules and regulations increases our legal and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time-consuming or costly and increase demand on our systems and resources. Among other things, the Exchange Act requires that we file annual, quarterly and current reports with respect to our business and results of operations and maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal controls over financial reporting. Significant resources and management oversight are required to maintain and, if required, improve our disclosure controls and procedures and internal controls over financial reporting to meet this standard. As a result, management’s attention may be diverted from other business concerns, which could harm our business and results of operations.

Our charter documents and Delaware law could discourage takeover attempts and other corporate governance changes.

Our certificate of incorporation and bylaws contain provisions that could delay or prevent a change in control of our company. These provisions could also make it difficult for stockholders to elect directors that are not nominated by the current members of our board of directors or take other corporate actions, including effecting changes in our management. These provisions include the following provisions:

In addition, as a Delaware corporation, we are subject to Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law. These provisions may prohibit large stockholders, in particular those owning 15% or more of our outstanding voting stock, from merging or combining with us for a period of time.

Our certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the exclusive forum for substantially all disputes between us and our stockholders, which limits our stockholders’ ability to choose other forums for disputes with us or our directors, officers or employees.

Our certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the sole and exclusive forum for: (1) any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf; (2) any action asserting a claim of breach of a fiduciary duty by any of our directors, officers, employees or our stockholders owed to us or our stockholders; (3) any action asserting a claim arising pursuant to any provision of the Delaware General Corporation Law, our certificate of incorporation or our bylaws, or as to which the Delaware General Corporation Law confers jurisdiction on the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware; or (4) any action asserting a claim governed by the internal affairs doctrine. This choice of forum provision may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in other judicial forums for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees, which may discourage lawsuits against us and our directors, officers and other employees in jurisdictions other than Delaware. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our certificate of incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could have a material adverse effect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Exhibit

Number

Exhibit Description

Incorporated by Reference

Filed

Herewith

Form

Filing Date

Number

3.1

Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation.

S-1/A

9/6/2016

3.2

Amended and Restated Bylaws.

S-1

8/22/2016

3.4

4.1

Reference is made to Exhibits 3.1 and 3.2.

4.2

Form of Class A Common Stock Certificate.

S-1/A

9/6/2016

4.2

4.3

Form of Class B Common Stock Certificate.

S-8

9/22/2016

4.4

Second Amended and Restated Investor Rights Agreement dated as of February 9, 2016, by and among The Trade Desk, Inc. and the investors listed therein.

S-1/A

9/6/2016

10.1

31.1

Certification of Principal Executive Officer Pursuant to Exchange Act Rules 13a-14(a) and 15d-14(a), as adopted pursuant to Section 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

31.2

Certification of Principal Financial Officer Pursuant to Exchange Act Rules 13a-14(a) and 15d-14(a), as adopted pursuant to Section 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

32.1 (1)

Certifications of Principal Executive Officer and Principal Financial Officer Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 1350, as adopted pursuant to Section 906 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

101.ins

XBRL Instance Document – the instance document does not appear in the Interactive Data File because its XBRL tags are embedded within the Inline XBRL document.

101.sch

XBRL Taxonomy Schema Document

101.cal

XBRL Taxonomy Calculation Linkbase Document

101.def

XBRL Taxonomy Definition Linkbase Document

101.lab

XBRL Taxonomy Label Linkbase Document

101.pre

XBRL Taxonomy Presentation Linkbase Document

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned thereunto duly authorized.

Title of each class		Trading Symbol		Name of each exchange on which registered
Class A Common Stock, par value $0.000001 per share		TTD		The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC

		Page
Part I.	FINANCIAL INFORMATION		3
Item 1.	Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements (Unaudited)		3
	Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets as of September 30, 2019 and December 31, 2018		3
	Condensed Consolidated Statements of Income for the Three and Nine Months Ended September 30, 2019 and 2018		4
	Condensed Consolidated Statements of Stockholders’ Equity for the Three and Nine Months Ended September 30, 2019 and 2018		5
	Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows for the Nine Months Ended September 30, 2019 and 2018		6
	Notes to Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements		7
Item 2.	Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations		14
Item 3.	Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk		21
Item 4.	Controls and Procedures		22
Part II.	OTHER INFORMATION		23
Item 1.	Legal Proceedings		23
Item 1A.	Risk Factors		23
Item 6.	Exhibits		44
Signatures			45

	As of September 30, 2019
	Cash and
	Cash		Short-Term
	Equivalents		Investments		Total
Cash	$	39,704		—	$	39,704
Level 1:
Money market funds		118,510		—		118,510
Level 2:
Commercial paper		14,232		25,844		40,076
Corporate debt securities		1,000		69,152		70,152
U.S. government and agency securities		—		28,086		28,086
Total	$	173,446	$	123,082	$	296,528

	As of December 31, 2018
	Cash and
	Cash
	Equivalents
Cash	$	35,087
Level 1:
Money market funds		14,145
Time deposits		158,000
Total	$	207,232

	September 30, 2019
Due in one year	$	107,221
Due in one to two years		15,861
Total	$	123,082

Weighted average remaining lease term		8.8 years
Weighted average discount rate		4.5%

Year	Amount
Remainder of 2019	$	4,556
2020		10,601
2021		38,462
2022		34,916
2023		32,241
Thereafter		181,843
Total undiscounted lease commitments		302,619
Less: commitments for leases not yet commenced		(71,977	)
Less: interest		(47,036	)
Present value of lease liabilities		183,606
Less: operating lease liabilities, current		(15,938	)
Operating lease liabilities, non-current	$	167,668

Year	Amount (1)
2019	$	13,419
2020		18,746
2021		29,054
2022		23,786
2023		20,902
Thereafter		119,109
Total	$	225,016

	Shares Under Option (in thousands)			Weighted- Average Exercise Price
Outstanding as of December 31, 2018		4,630		$	37.03
Granted		681			164.08
Exercised		(1,072	)		20.38
Cancelled		(131	)		66.79
Outstanding as of September 30, 2019		4,108		$	61.47
Exercisable as of September 30, 2019		1,797		$	31.01

	Shares (in thousands)			Weighted- Average Grant Date Fair Value
Unvested as of December 31, 2018		518		$	65.14
Granted		107			161.61
Vested		(81	)		65.12
Forfeited		(40	)		54.94
Unvested as of September 30, 2019		504		$	86.44

	September 30, 2019		December 31, 2018 (1)
US	$	141,721	$	25,887
International		83,289		7,159
Total	$	225,010	$	33,046

					Change
	2019		2018		$		%
	($ in thousands)
Three months ended September 30,	$	164,203	$	118,825	$	45,378		38	%
Nine months ended September 30,	$	445,114	$	316,826	$	128,288		40	%

	2019			2018		$ Change
	(in thousands)
Three months ended September 30,	$	(1,892	)	$	158	$	(2,050	)
Nine months ended September 30,	$	(2,979	)	$	1,922	$	(4,901	)

	Payments Due by Period
	Total		Less than 1 Year (Remaining 2019)		1-3 Years (2020 and 2021)		3-5 Years (2022 and 2023)		More than 5 Years (Thereafter)
	(in thousands)
Lease commitments	$	302,619	$	4,556	$	49,063	$	67,157	$	181,843
Other contractual commitments		203,150		30,162		62,740		60,248		50,000
Total	$	505,769	$	34,718	$	111,803	$	127,405	$	231,843


				THE TRADE DESK, INC. (Registrant)

Dated: November 7, 2019				/s/ Paul E. Ross
				Paul E. Ross
				Chief Financial Officer (Principal Financial and Accounting Officer)