The Trade Desk upgraded at BTIG on improving fundamental setup

The Trade Desk (NASDAQ:) was raised to Buy from Neutral, maintaining its $103 price target on the stock in a note Friday.

BTIG analysts told investors that their checks on the company’s fundamentals are improving.

“We see an improving fundamental setup that’s likely to translate to stronger results this year, and faster growth alongside margin improvement in future periods,” they said.

“Checks have pointed to the programmatic market growing at a +20-25% pace annually, due to sustained shifts of advertising dollars toward lower funnel digital formats, and a higher proportion of that digital ad spend ex-search/social being automated (~35-36% programmatic today),” they added.

BTIG believes that as Trade Desk already has a strong foothold in the key CTV and Retail Media segments of that programmatic market and “feedback suggests their platform is becoming an increasingly attractive alternative to DV360.” BTIG sees room for Trade Desk to meet or exceed the high end of that market growth range.