After a 91% drop from its record, how much could this ad tech stock realistically recover by 2029?
After a 91% drop from its record, how much could this ad tech stock realistically recover by 2029?
Shares of ad tech company The Trade Desk (TTD -6.86%) trade near $12 as I write, down about 91% from their December 2024 record closing price of $139.51. And shares have kept sliding this year, down about 68% since the end of 2025.
The company's now worth about $5.8 billion, and the stock costs about 14 times its earnings for the last 12 months. For a business whose revenue rose 18% year over year in 2025, that looks cheap. But management now expects revenue to shrink.
Where could the stock realistically be in a bit over three years?
My estimate is around $16 a share by the end of 2029, about 31% above today's price, or a gain of about 9% a year. I think it's a fair middle case. But it hinges on something the company hasn't forecast yet: a return to growth.
Shrinking sales, fewer shares
The Trade Desk is a tech company that runs a demand-side platform (software advertisers use to buy digital ads automatically), and as recently as last year the business looked healthy. Full-year 2025 revenue hit around $2.9 billion, and net income climbed about 13% to $443 million -- a net margin of about 15%.
Growth has since slowed sharply. Second-quarter 2026 revenue rose just 3% year over year to $715 million. Net income dropped around 29% to $64 million, cutting the net margin to 9% from 13% in the year-ago quarter. And management's guidance calls for third-quarter revenue of at least $650 million, which would be a decline of about 12% from the same period in 2025.
Still, one number keeps moving in shareholders' favor. Mainly because of buybacks, the company's diluted share count dropped from around 507 million in late 2024 to 483 million a year later, then to 470 million by this year's second quarter. The Trade Desk repurchased about 10 million shares for about $233 million in the first half of 2026 alone, and it still had about $1.5 billion in cash and short-term investments and no debt at the end of June.
So per-share earnings can arguably rise faster than profits, even if the business recovers slowly.
Averytin News Financial update.