PubMatic signage on day of IPO at the Nasdaq
Source: Nasdaq
Ad tech company PubMatic, which launched an initial public offering in December, saw shares pop 10% Tuesday after posting fourth quarter revenue that beat estimates.
PubMatic runs a sell-side advertising platform that runs real-time programmatic ad transactions and allows publishers and app developers to sell space to advertisers across media, including display or video ads on desktop, mobile app, mobile web or streaming TV.
The company said revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020 was $56.2 million, up 64% year-over-year. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv expected revenue of $47.4 million in the quarter. The company said revenue in full-year 2020 was $148.7 million, up 31% year-over-year.
The company’s chief financial officer Steve Pantelick said in a statement that the quarterly growth was driven by advertising strength in e-commerce, technology, personal finance and on streaming video.
PubMatic’s clients, as of December, include publishers like Verizon Media Group and News Corp and app makers like Electronic Arts and Zynga. The Verizon relationship is especially important. It made up 28% of its revenue in 2019 and 21% of its revenue in the first nine months of 2020. The company competes with divisions of Google along with other supply-side platforms like Magnite, which was formed as a product of a 2020 merger between public ad tech companies Telaria and Rubicon Project.
PubMatic said in a statement that it expects revenue in the first quarter of 2021 to be in the range of $38 million to $40 million, growing between 34% to 41% over the same period last year.