This is a special report written for us by Tony Silber.
TechTarget (TTGT) on Wednesday reported quarterly earnings of 60 cents per share, beating an anticipated performance of 57 cents per share. The earnings performance came as part of the company’s third-quarter results, which were announced after the markets closed Wednesday.
The company, which offers marketing services and B2B media and serves the IT space, posted revenue of $69.7 million for the quarter ended September 30, surpassing the estimate by 4.39%, Nasdaq reported. The revenue performance compares to year-ago revenue of $36.2 million. TechTarget has topped consensus revenue estimates four times over the last four quarters.
The quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of 5.26%, the Nasdaq report continued.
TechTarget deploys sophisticated lead-generation and intent-data analysis technology to help clients identify and nurture likely prospects and detect when they’re likely to buy. For the third quarter, it was up 92% from the same period a year ago.
Founded in 1999 and based in Newton, Massachusetts, it had EBITDA of $28 million for the quarter, for a margin of 39%. The company’s stock was trading at $99.82 Thursday morning, close to its 12-month high of $101.12.
The period ending September 30 was the third consecutive quarter of 2021 where the company grew. It reported revenue of $52.9 million in Q1, $63.7 million in Q2. It’s projecting between $73 million and $75 million for Q4, for full-year revenue of somewhere around $261 million.
These healthy growth rates are being supported by multiple tailwinds,” the company said in a letter to shareholders. “A healthy IT spending environment, the modernization of the sales-and-marketing organization through automation and data, a focus on privacy and compliance, which drives demand for our first-party purchase intent data and the re-allocation of marketing budgets from face-to-face events to our data products and online marketing solutions.”
“We believe we are well positioned to take advantage of these large trends,” the letter continued. “All of the above trends support the continued growth of Priority Engine revenue, which was up 20% in the quarter.” Priority Engine is the company’s proprietary lead-gen technology.
“It’s worth noting that Priority Engine was originally designed and optimized for marketing use cases, and we’ve spent much of the last two years making steady progress on making the data more easily accessible to individual sellers,” the shareholder letter states. “With this release, we’ll roll out a revamped user interface that allows sellers to personalize their experience and view individual important buying-process milestones. Marketers will also benefit from the availability of individual prospects identified through our BrightTALK platform for the first time.”
Also contributing to the company’s performance, the letter stated, is progress on integrating recent acquisitions, with the associated benefits from cross-selling and upsell opportunities. TechTarget expects this will help drive growth in 2022.
Ziff Davis Posts Major Revenue Growth for Q3
Meanwhile, Ziff Davis, which operates in some of the same IT markets as Tech Target, reported quarterly revenue of $434.7 million, an increase of 24.5% over the same period in 2020. Adjusted
EBITDA for the quarter increased 13.6%, to $175.1 million, compared to $154.1 million for Q3 2020, the company said in a statement.
Ziff, (formerly known as J2 Global, Inc.), trades on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol ZD. Its broad media portfolio includes brands in technology, entertainment, shopping, health, cybersecurity, and martech.
“There’s great enthusiasm and excitement at Ziff Davis as we embark on our new chapter,” Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis, said in a statement. “Our portfolio of digital media and internet brands are very well-positioned to thrive in some of the highest-value verticals in the marketplace.”
For the year, Ziff reported revenue of $1.2 billion, a 24.6% increase from the $1.0 billion it reported for the first three quarters of 2020. Adjusted EBIT was up by a similar mount—24.7% for a 2021 total of $503.4 million.
ZD was trading at $129.24 mid-morning on Thursday, slightly off from its previous close, and $6.00 off from its 12-month high.
Ziff Davis announced early last month that it completed a spinout of its business cloud services division as a separate independent, publicly traded company.
