Direct Digital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:DRCT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

We’ll be managing two topline revenue numbers on the go forward. What we have seen is because we are adding some of the larger publishers, the EBITDA margin on the €“ I’m sorry, the gross profit margin on the sell-side business, historically has been around the 18%. We are anticipating that to be around the 14%, 15% range because of some of the hardware investments that we’re making as well as some of the, I would say, preventative measures as it relates around IVT that we’re making and also adding the larger publishers. You see some level of margins, but we are also planning on putting in new projects to help us grow that margin in the 2024 year.

Daniel Kurnos: Got it. That’s actually really helpful. And just maybe one kind of fun one, that you guys talked about sort of strategic opportunities. I mean, on one hand, we’ve got DOJ pressure on Google. On the other hand, we’ve heard Magnetite say that they’re starting to see some undifferentiated SSPs start to fall by the wayside. So like how are you thinking about targets for consolidation? If that’s what you’re thinking, how do we view those targets? Is there any way to frame sort of the size or the structure, what that might look like?

Mark Walker: Yes. In regards to our corporate development, our strategic investment approach, what we really look for is technology that we think that can add to our current technology stack. We also look at something that can be accretive as well as that can leverage the operations that we’ve already built in today. If we see process that we think that we could streamline in order to capture more EBITDA, those are other opportunities that we’ll be looking at. But again, it will be very opportunistic and if we go down the path of future acquisition and if we see something that’s opportunistic that we think we can bolt-on inside of our platform, it’s something that we’ll take a hard look at and decide if it makes sense for our business in a go-forward.

Daniel Kurnos: Got it. All right. Awesome. Thanks for all the color, Mark. Really appreciate it.

Mark Walker: Absolutely.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Darren Aftahi with ROTH MKM. Please proceed.

Dylan Dupuis: Hi. This is Dylan for Darren. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to sort of follow-up on gross margins and the compression that you saw there. Appreciate the color on the 14%, 15% outlook. But how much of that is driven by sort of less favorable economics as you move upstream to work with larger publishers that gave you that scale versus some of the investments you might be making in some of the data side and hardware?

Mark Walker: Yes. Combo of both. It’s a combo of both that we have been experiencing. So I would say it’s dead even on both. But what we will say is we have tactics in an approach that we’re putting in place. So by 2024, we think that we’re going to see a reversal of those margins based on new products we’ll be bringing to the marketplace in that timeframe.

Dylan Dupuis: All right. Thanks. And on the DMO side, have you seen any expansion in your pipeline? I guess, what I’m trying to say is net new clients or is some of the growth that’s happening there that you’re taking greater ad spend from your existing DMO clients?

Mark Walker: Yes. Good question. Yes, we’ve actually experienced both. We have won some new DMO contracts. City of Spokane is one of them €“ I’m sorry, Spokane Airport is one of the new ones that we just recently won. And there’s €“ we have a full fledged strategy to go after more market share in the DMO space. In addition, some of our larger clients who have been historically favorable spends with us have actually increased their spend. So we are growing customer count as well as market share inside of those accounts have also been expanding for us as well. And we think that that’s a positive movement from the leadership team that has been pushing our buy-side business and we’re excited about how we’ve been able to grow on that front.