Todays FinnCap report...10 Mar 2021 12:01
FinnCap report….
FY20 +3% ahead, strong Q1 momentum Tremor has reported strong FY20 results with EBITDA +3% ahead of our estimate, and has highlighted that its strong momentum is continuing in Q1 21, and stated that it is exploring the potential of a dual-listing in the US. FY20 gross revenue of $405m is in line with our prior estimate, and the operational gearing of Tremor’s platform has driven H2 20 EBITDA to $58.7m of $60.5m of FY20 EBITDA, after a heavily COVID-impacted H1 20. With Tremor’s US peers guiding for Q1 21 revenue growth of 13-41%, if Tremor’s strong Q1 momentum leads to organic revenue growth that is at least in line with its US peers, our unchanged FY21 EBITDA of $67.8m is likely to be very conservative. However, even on our conservative forecasts, Tremor’s current 12-month forward EV/EBITDA of 13x is a major discount to its US ad tech peers, who are trading on 39-83x EV/EBITDA. As Tremor confirms its Q1 21 performance, laps a very low Q2 comparable, and moves closer to a potential listing in the US, we do not expect that Tremor’s current valuation will be sustainable due to market or external interest. We currently leave our FY21 P&L forecasts unchanged except for reported group revenue, to highlight that Tremor’s change in its revenue accounting, which aligns it with US GAAP, does not impact gross revenue, net revenue, gross profit, EBITDA, EPS, or cash, and we explain this change from p16. We upgrade our FY21 net cash to $136m from $118m, look forward to further trading updates, and upgrade our target price to 1,000p based on 21x FY22 EBITDA. 4Tremor’s group reported revenue from FY20 is aligned with US GAAP – Alongside Tremor highlighting that it is exploring a potential dual-listing in the US, it is switching to report revenue from its Programmatic/Branding operations on the same net revenue basis as its US peers. The only impact of this accounting change on Tremor’s financials is to present Tremor’s reported group revenue excluding the Programmatic division’s media costs of $193m in FY20. Tremor’s gross revenue, net revenue, gross profit, EBITDA, EPS, cash, and all other financials are unchanged, and to demonstrate a clean, transparent change, we conservatively leave all of our FY21 P&L forecasts unchanged, except for reported group revenue. 4Tremor’s valuation relative to US peers – From p5, we highlight that despite Tremor experiencing the same 2020 trends as its US peers, expecting strong Q1 21 growth, and currently having forecasts that are conservative, Tremor is trading at a major discount to its US peers. After Magnite bought SpotX for 33x FY20 EBITDA in February, we do not expect Tremor’s current valuation will be sustainable.