TTD
Trade Desk (The)
Platform / Network
★ Quality 69/100Price today
$18.02
what the market pays
Worth
$47.89
calculated cycle value
Price is 62% below its value
charlieapp.co
Unusually large discount. A gap this wide usually means the market is pricing in a risk (AI disruption, for example) that the model does not penalise. A contrarian opportunity: high upside, but high risk — not an obvious one.
Price vs Intrinsic Value
The line is the price month by month; the green band marks when it's undervalued (−20% off value). When the price drops in there, the discount is real, not opinion.
Where does the value come from?
Digital platform
$45.25
per share
How it's calculated
Trade Desk (The) — high assistant path (2026-06-06). Review note.
Net cash in the bank
cash minus financial debt, per share
Total calculated value
business + cash
How many times the cash flow
Platform / Network · vs 27 peers
You pay 8.7x times this business's cash flow; its sector median is 28.5x.
193% below what Charlie thinks it's worth (25.5x) — that gap is your safety margin.
Why Undervalued?
Its free cash flow is $1.78/share × 25.5x multiplier plus $2.64 in net cash = $47.89 in intrinsic value. Today's price of $18.02 is 166% below that value — there's a real safety margin to enter.
The price is 62% below the calculated value. There's a real safety margin.
The model asks for a discount to absorb estimate errors. That cushion is here.
If the business disappoints a little, the price should hold near $38.31.
At what price would buying make sense?
Entry zones
🟢 Undervalued
≤$38.31
-20% off Value
🟡 Discounted
≤$45.50
-5% off Value
🟢 Today
$18.02
+166% Valor
Undervalued
Today's price offers a real discount to the calculated value. For the long run, this is the kind of entry that builds wealth.
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
— Warren Buffett
Model updated · July 2026
The business
The neutral control desk where brands buy ads without any rival owning the inventory.
Trade Desk runs the largest independent programmatic ad-buying platform (DSP, demand-side platform). Agencies and brands use its software to buy digital ads in real time, and Trade Desk charges a percentage of the ad spend that flows through the platform. In 2025 it moved enough volume to generate $2.9B in revenue with a 79% gross margin.
Its independence is the edge: it owns no inventory of its own, so it doesn't compete with its clients the way Google or Amazon do. The UID2 standard it's pushing to replace cookies gives it a neutral-referee position in ad identity. The moat exists, but it's not an impregnable one — it depends on staying the preferred neutral player.
Revenue history
From $1.2B to $2.9B in 4 years — nearly 2.4x its size. Selling more and more is the base of everything else.
Where each $100 of sales goes
Revenue $2.9B · FY2025
Of every $100 in sales, $85 goes to costs and operations; $15 is left as net profit (15% margin).
Catalysts and risks
Adoption of UID2 as the post-third-party-cookie standard, whose removal Google keeps postponing.
Connected TV growth: streaming keeps pulling budget away from linear TV, a segment where TTD already dominates programmatic buying.
Kokai platform with AI, in full rollout during 2025-2026, optimizing performance per dollar spent.
Valuation: trades well above its estimated intrinsic value of $47.89. Overpaying for a good business is still overpaying.
Google and Amazon can squeeze the programmatic market through their control of inventory and data.
It's cyclical: ad spend is the first thing companies cut in a recession.
Charlie's note
“Excellent business, independent, debt-free and generating real cash. The problem is the price: the market has already priced in a decade of perfect growth. Paying 25 times for something worth half that is the elegant way to lose money on a good company.”
Analysis · June 2026
So when would be a good price for Trade Desk (The)?
Today it trades below what we calculate. If you want us to tell you when that changes —or when the value itself moves because the company reported— we will email you.
🔔 Email meFree · no card
Charlie informs, it doesn't advise. No information should be taken as a recommendation to buy or sell.