Direct Digital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:DRCT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Daniel Kurnos: The crazy part to me, Mark, is there’s not — I mean we’re not even having a self-serve conversation right now, which is what everybody else is falling over, and you’re putting up way better numbers than most of the peer groups. So kudos to you on that. I just — I’ll ask just in Q4, thank you for Q4 being up sequentially from Q3. There’s — The Trade Desk is out talking about some cautiousness in Q4 that stabilized in a little rough in October, stabilized in November. And I’m just — the momentum you’re seeing seems like it’s continuing, especially if your guidance history is evident here, too, but just kind of curious what you’re seeing in conversations right now relative to the broader macro.

Mark Walker: Yes. For the broader macro, and I think you’ve seen it in our revision upwards of our guidance and the conversations we have. If we weren’t confident, we wouldn’t have revised up the way that we did, but we are pretty confident in the relationships that we’ve been able to build and the platform that we’ve been able to establish and the growth that we actually have on our road map. So we are still bullish on our business, even though some of our peers might be having some other difficulties, but we are really confident in the model that we’ve been able to build here at Direct Digital.

Daniel Kurnos: And just last for me, Mark, and sorry, it’s a few, but just on flow-through, EBITDA was really healthy in the quarter. You guys are obviously making some further investments that you’re trying to balance. But how should we be thinking about growth versus profitability both in Q4 and going forward.

Mark Walker: Yes, I’m going to turn that over to Diana to give you some viewpoint on Q4.

Diana Diaz: So I think we’ve talked about the gross profit margins that where we think those will end up for both the buy side and the sell side and that our operating expenses will be at or maybe slightly higher than what they were in the third quarter. We are continuing to spend on headcount and sales and marketing initiatives and still filling our way through the public company side, but we are about at the right level. We won’t be going down.

Daniel Kurnos: Okay. That’s super helpful. I guess if this trend continues through the stock prices, you guys will be at 3x EBITDA. Okay. Super helpful. Thank you, Mark.

Mark Walker: Yes, absolutely. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Michael Kupinski from Noble. Your line is open.

Michael Kupinski: Thank you. I want to offer my congratulations. All I got to say is, wow, what a great quarter. I was wondering if you can just follow a little bit on what Dan was saying, but in a different way, just to talk a little bit about the state of the marketplace. You mentioned beneficial market dynamics in the quarter. And I was just wondering, what do you see as the key drivers of that? And then I just have a couple of quick follow-ups.

Mark Walker: I think it’s a mix of two things. One, I think it’s the mix of the publishers that we actually are working with. We are still seeing in the marketplace strong demand for the multicultural publishers that we’ve added into our inventory. There is definitely more and more continued demand. I’m trying to reach the African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American LBGTQ communities along with the general market, that’s number one. Number two, really the operational efficiency of our platform has been an added benefit and the people and the process that we’ve actually put in place into the buying community. Really a combination of all three have yield — yielded pretty much successfully for us the fruit that we saw in Q3 and we are expecting to see the same in Q4.

Michael Kupinski: And in terms of the multicultural space, the advertisers looking at the initiatives targeting that particular multiculturals market. What is the percent? Can you — is that — is there a way for you to kind of identify what is the percent of advertisers taking out that versus maybe just a more general advertising space?