• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 29, 2024

Ad-tech stock-market darling The Trade Desk was downgraded by a New Street Research's equity research team this morning from a "neutral" to a "sell" rating, but the target price of its shares remained unchanged at $86.

"There’s no change to our view that The Trade Desk is best-in-class for vision, strategy and execution, and we think the company is likely to deliver upside surprise to third quarter 2024 guidance and strong fourth quarter 2024 guidance supported by political ad spending," New Street's Dan Salmon writes in a note sent to investors this morning.

"Importantly, we remain slightly above consensus for fourth quarter 2024  and could see those estimates heading higher if political spending is higher than we expect," he explains, noting: "The challenge is 2025, where the EV/adjusted EBITDA valuation has moved to ~50x, and we think there is limited upside to consensus, in part owing to the exit of political ad dollars in a non-election year."

TTD shares were trading down slightly from the $120.24 52-week high in early morning trading.

Based on its current stock value, The Trade Desk has a stock-market capitalization of $58.7 billion, nearly as much as the Big 4 agency holding companies combined (Publicis @ $28 billion, Omnicom @ $20 bilion, WPP @ $11.7 billion, and Interpublic @ $11.4 billion).