The Trade Desk (TTD) Stock in December 2025: 70% Slide, Q3 Beat and What Wall Street Expects Next

As of December 6, 2025, shares of The Trade Desk, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTD) trade around $40 per share, giving the independent ad‑tech platform a market value of roughly $19 billion. ^[1]
That price sits near multi‑year lows and roughly 60–70% below the stock’s peak around late 2024, sending TTD back to levels last seen in 2020. ^[2]

Yet the business behind the stock continues to put up double‑digit growth, robust margins, and heavy free‑cash‑flow generation, even as investors fret about tariffs, Amazon, and the future of the open internet.

This article rounds up all the key recent news, forecasts and analyses on The Trade Desk up to December 6, 2025, and then walks through the bullish and bearish cases shaping the outlook into 2026.

1. Where The Trade Desk Stock Stands Today

Price, performance and valuation snapshot

Share price: about $40.05 in recent trading. ^[3]
52‑week range: roughly $38–139, putting the stock near the bottom of its one‑year band. ^[4]
Market cap: around $19–19.5 billion, depending on the data provider. ^[5]
Trailing P/E: ~44–46x earnings. ^[6]
Forward P/E: about 30x next year’s earnings estimates. ^[7]
Price‑to‑sales (P/S): roughly 6.9–7.0x trailing‑12‑month revenue, almost 50% below its 12‑month average P/S above 13. ^[8]

Fundamentally, TTD remains a high‑growth, high‑margin software‑like business:

TTM revenue: about $2.8 billion, up ~21% year over year. ^[9]
TTM net income: roughly $439 million, with net margin ~16%. ^[10]
Balance sheet: about $1.4 billion in cash and short‑term investments and no debt, plus a sizable share‑repurchase program. ^[11]

In other words, the market is now pricing The Trade Desk at multiples that are far lower than its own history, while still at a premium to most traditional media and advertising peers. Its current P/E is less than one‑third of the roughly 150x it commanded at the end of 2024. ^[12]

2. 2025 in Review: From “Calamitous Miss” to Q3 Beat

The hangover from a rare earnings miss

The current slump has its roots in Q4 2024. After more than 30 straight quarters of meeting or beating expectations, The Trade Desk missed Street revenue estimates by about 2% in that quarter, triggering a 32% one‑day share price collapse in February 2025 and ending its “can’t‑miss” aura. ^[13]

That shock reset expectations for a company long treated as a “perfect” growth story, and it set up a very unforgiving tone for the rest of 2025.

Q2 2025: Strong numbers, brutal reaction

On August 7, 2025, TTD reported Q2 2025 results:

Revenue:$694 million, up 19% year over year, modestly above consensus. ^[14]
EPS:$0.41, a small beat versus the roughly $0.40 forecast. ^[15]
Adjusted EBITDA: about $271 million, or ~39% of revenue. ^[16]

Operationally, the quarter looked strong: the company continued to outgrow the digital ad market, maintained customer retention above 95%, and highlighted progress with its AI‑driven Kokai platform. ^[17]

The stock, however, plunged nearly 40% in the aftermath. Several factors fed that reaction:

Management warned that new U.S. tariffs were pressuring major brand advertisers, leading some to pull back or delay campaigns. ^[18]
Investors worried about rising competition from Amazon’s ad business, including DSP integrations tied to big streaming partners and sports content. ^[19]
The company announced a CFO transition, with board member Alex Kayyal replacing Laura Schenkein, adding to concerns about leadership turnover. ^[20]

Coverage from outlets like Investopedia and Investor’s Business Daily framed the selloff as a case where solid fundamentals collided with macro fears and competitive anxiety, producing a far sharper share price reaction than the earnings numbers alone might justify. ^[21]

Q3 2025: A cleaner beat and confident guidance

On November 6, 2025, The Trade Desk delivered a strong Q3 2025:

Revenue:$739 million, up 18% year over year, and well above prior guidance of “at least $717 million.” ^[22]
GAAP net income:$116 million with a 16% net margin, slightly higher than a year ago. ^[23]
Non‑GAAP EPS:$0.45, up from $0.41 in Q3 2024. ^[24]
Adjusted EBITDA:$317 million, a hefty 43% margin. ^[25]
Operating cash flow (Q3):$225 million, with free cash flow of $155 million. ^[26]

Management also emphasized that customer retention stayed above 95%, a streak that now spans 11+ years. ^[27]

On the strategy front, TTD announced or highlighted: ^[28]

Audience Unlimited, a major upgrade to its third‑party data marketplace.
OpenAds, an open‑source auction format aimed at increasing transparency.
A new pharma ad marketplace, integrating partners like IQVIA and Swoop.
Koddi integration to pipe sponsored product and onsite retail media inventory from partners like Gopuff.
New CTV partnerships, including collaboration with DIRECTV on a custom TV OS experience, and deals with OSN (Middle East/North Africa) and DAZN (European sports inventory).

The company also:

Repurchased $310 million of Class A shares in Q3, then completed the prior buyback authorization and added a new $500 million repurchase program. ^[29]
Ended the quarter with about $1.4 billion in cash and no debt. ^[30]

For Q4 2025, The Trade Desk guided to: ^[31]

Revenue of at least $840 million, which management notes would equate to ~18–19% growth if you strip out the one‑off boost from 2024 U.S. political ad spend.
Adjusted EBITDA of about $375 million, keeping margins firmly in the high‑30s to low‑40s.

Q3 thus marked a second straight quarter of beating guidance, but did not fully repair investor confidence after the February and August shocks.

3. What The Trade Desk Actually Does (and Why It Matters)

The Trade Desk runs a self‑service, cloud‑based demand‑side platform (DSP). Agencies and advertisers use it to plan, buy, and optimize digital ad campaigns across: ^[32]

Connected TV (CTV) and other video
Display
Mobile in‑app
Audio and podcasts
Digital‑out‑of‑home and some social inventory

The platform takes a percentage of ad spend as revenue and leans heavily on data‑driven bidding and AI‑powered optimization.

According to company disclosures and Q3 call summaries: ^[33]

CTV remains the largest and fastest‑growing channel, growing faster than the overall business.
Video as a whole, including CTV, is about half of total spend on the platform.
Mobile accounts for low‑30s percent, display low double digits, and audio around 5%.
North America is approximately 87% of the business, with international markets growing faster off a smaller base.

Strategically, The Trade Desk positions itself as the neutral, “open internet” alternative to the giant “walled gardens” (Meta, Google, Amazon, etc.), and it has invested heavily in: ^[34]

Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) – a privacy‑focused identity framework meant to replace third‑party cookies across open web inventory.
OpenPath – direct connections to premium publishers and broadcasters to reduce intermediary fees and improve transparency.
AI‑driven Kokai platform – a set of tools that uses first‑party data and machine learning to optimize ad performance.

Industry research suggests the CTV tide still favors platforms like TTD. eMarketer, for example, expects connected TV to overtake linear TV on key viewing metrics by the end of 2025, underscoring the long‑term shift in where ads eventually go. ^[35]

That’s the core bullish premise: as budgets follow eyeballs from linear TV to streaming and from untargeted to programmatic, independent DSPs like The Trade Desk should capture a growing slice of the pie.

4. Why the Market Turned Against TTD in 2025

Despite solid execution, several factors combined to make 2025 a nightmare year for TTD shareholders.

4.1 Tariffs, macro headwinds and brand‑heavy exposure

Management has repeatedly warned that new U.S. tariffs and macro uncertainty are causing large global brands—core TTD customers—to delay or trim campaigns. Because The Trade Desk’s focus tilts toward big brand advertisers rather than millions of small businesses, it is more exposed to macro‑driven cuts than platforms like Meta that lean heavily on SMB budgets. ^[36]

Reuters and other outlets reported that these warnings coincided with one‑day drops of roughly one‑third to nearly 40% in August, erasing more than $10–12 billion in market value and driving the stock’s year‑to‑date loss above 50% at that point. ^[37]

4.2 Competitive pressure, especially from Amazon

Multiple analyses flag Amazon’s growing advertising business as a structural threat:

Amazon’s ad unit has secured high‑profile deals with partners like Disney and Roku, and is deepening its presence in CTV and retail media. ^[38]
Morgan Stanley’s October/November downgrade cut Trade Desk from Overweight to Equal‑weight and slashed its price target from $80 to $50, citing slowing CTV momentum, decelerating billings growth, and rising pushback on TTD’s take rate. ^[39]
A recent bearish write‑up on Seeking Alpha argues that market share losses to Amazon have eroded TTD’s former “wide moat” status and that “nothing else matters” if that trend continues. ^[40]

In short, some investors now fear that walled gardens and Amazon’s DSP will siphon away growth faster than the open‑internet opportunity expands.

4.3 Sentiment whiplash and technical damage

By mid‑November:

StockTwits data highlighted that TTD was down about 64% year‑to‑date, with most of the damage coming after its two 2025 earnings reports. ^[41]
The same piece noted that, according to Koyfin, the average analyst price target of ~$62.81 implied roughly 50% upside, but traders remained wary as the 200‑day moving average stayed in a bearish configuration despite oversold momentum indicators. ^[42]

AdExchanger captured the narrative shift succinctly: The Trade Desk is no longer the plucky underdog of programmatic. It is now a large incumbent facing a skeptical investor base and more fraught relationships with some supply‑side partners, even as it remains central infrastructure for many CTV and open‑web publishers. ^[43]

The result is multiple compression on steroids: the business still grows in the high teens, but the stock trades as if the golden era of effortless share gains is over.

5. What Wall Street Is Saying: Ratings, Targets and Growth Forecasts

Despite the carnage in the share price, sell‑side analysts remain broadly constructive, though far from unanimously bullish.

5.1 Ratings snapshot

Different aggregators show slightly different mixes, but the pattern is consistent:

QuiverQuant reports that in recent months, 15 firms have issued Buy‑type ratings and zero Sell ratings, with a median price target of $64.50 across 24 analysts. ^[44]
A StockTwits article citing Koyfin notes that out of 37 analysts, 20 rate TTD Buy or Strong Buy, 14 rate it Hold, and 3 rate it Sell or Strong Sell. ^[45]
StockAnalysis lists about 33 covering analysts, with a consensus rating of “Buy.” ^[46]
MarketBeat earlier flagged a consensus “Hold” across brokerages in November, yet a fresh feature article this week describes the rating mix as a “Moderate Buy” with a blended price target around $77. ^[47]

In other words, few professionals are outright bearish, but there is also a meaningful contingent sitting on the fence.

5.2 Price targets and upside implied

Across data providers:

StockAnalysis: average 12‑month target around $82.39, with a range from $47 on the low end to $145 on the high end – more than 100% upside from roughly $40 today. ^[48]
Benzinga: consensus target near $84.53 based on 35 analysts, with a bull case at $155 and a bear case at $47 (Wells Fargo’s cut after Q3). ^[49]
Quiver/Koyfin: average target around $62–63, implying ~50% upside from mid‑November levels, with a cluster of recent cuts (for example, DA Davidson trimming from $80 to $54 while keeping a Strong Buy). ^[50]

The spread is wide, but most targets sit well above the current price, suggesting that:

Analysts accept lower multiples than in the past,
Yet still expect mid‑teens revenue growth and stable high margins, which would justify a rebound if execution holds.

5.3 Revenue and EPS forecasts

Consensus forecasts compiled by StockAnalysis and Seeking Alpha indicate: ^[51]

2025 revenue: about $2.9 billion, up roughly 19% from 2024’s $2.44 billion.
2026 revenue: about $3.39 billion, another 16% growth.
2025 EPS: around $1.78, more than doubling from about $0.78 in 2024.
2026 EPS: about $2.09, implying continued mid‑teens earnings growth.

Put differently, the Street still sees The Trade Desk as a high‑growth, high‑margin platform, just not at the hyper‑growth rates that once supported triple‑digit P/E ratios.

6. Valuation Deep Dive: Cheap, Expensive, or Both?

Whether TTD looks cheap or expensive depends on which lens you use.

6.1 Multiples vs history and peers

Recent data from FullRatio, CompaniesMarketCap and other valuation trackers show: ^[52]

P/E (TTM): about 44x,
- down roughly 50% from its recent four‑quarter average near 88x,
- and ~80% below its five‑year average above 220x.
P/S (TTM): about 7x, versus a long‑term average above 13x.
EV/Sales: around 6.5–6.8x.
EV/EBITDA: roughly 27–29x.
P/B: around 7.5x, versus a five‑year average near 19x.

So relative to its own history, TTD’s multiples have compressed dramatically, even as revenue and earnings have continued to grow.

However, compared with the broader media and advertising industry, the stock remains expensive. Simply Wall St estimates TTD’s current P/E around 43–44x, versus a peer and sector average closer to 15–30x, and calculates a “fair” P/E of ~26x based on growth and risk characteristics—suggesting overvaluation on earnings alone. ^[53]

6.2 Cash flows and intrinsic value models

On a cash‑flow basis, the story looks more favorable:

Simply Wall St pegs TTD’s latest free cash flow at about $722.5 million, and projects that figure could climb above $2.0 billion by 2035 in their base case. ^[54]
Using a two‑stage discounted cash‑flow (DCF) model, they arrive at an intrinsic value of $81.63 per share, implying the stock is trading at roughly a 52% discount to their fair value estimate. ^[55]

Their conclusion: undervalued on DCF, overvalued on P/E. Both statements can be true if you assume:

Growth and margins stay strong over a decade (helping DCF),
But the market no longer pays 200x earnings for that growth (compressing P/E).

7. The Bull Case: Why Some See a 2026 Rebound

Recent bullish analyses—from platforms like MarketBeat, Simply Wall St and Seeking Alpha—highlight several key pillars of the optimistic thesis. ^[56]

7.1 Fundamentals look much better than the stock chart

Revenue is growing in the high teens, with Q2 and Q3 2025 both beating expectations. ^[57]
Adjusted EBITDA margins are near 40–43%, remarkably strong for a growth company. ^[58]
The company generates substantial free cash flow and is using it to repurchase shares rather than dilute shareholders. ^[59]
The balance sheet is net‑cash with no debt, giving it resilience in a shaky macro environment. ^[60]

MarketBeat’s December feature explicitly characterizes the valuation as “multi‑year lows” and notes that the stock is trading near long‑term technical support around the high‑30s to low‑40s—a zone that has held several times since 2020—despite the company’s revenue more than tripling since then. ^[61]

7.2 Structural tailwinds: CTV and retail media

TTD’s CTV channel is growing faster than the rest of the business and is now the largest component of spend. ^[62]
Independent research expects connected TV to continue taking share from linear TV in viewing time and ad budgets into 2026. ^[63]
Retail media—using retailer data to target and measure ads—is scaling quickly across TTD’s platform, providing another secular growth leg. ^[64]

For bulls, the long‑term ad‑tech landscape still tilts toward programmatic, data‑driven video and commerce media, where TTD is one of the best‑positioned independent players.

7.3 Product innovation and identity moat

Q3 disclosures and earnings call notes underline an ongoing wave of innovation: ^[65]

Kokai, the AI‑enhanced platform layer, aims to embed “AI as a co‑pilot” into every campaign.
Audience Unlimited upgrades third‑party data access and modeling.
OpenAds pushes auction transparency and could deepen trust with both buyers and publishers.
Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) continues to gain integrations with data platforms and CDPs like Acxiom and Treasure Data, potentially giving TTD a durable identity advantage as cookies vanish.
The company is integrating generative‑AI creative partners (such as Nova) to streamline creative production for campaigns. ^[66]

Bulls argue that this pace of innovation strengthens TTD’s position as “infrastructure for the open internet”, making it harder for advertisers and agencies to switch away despite competitive noise. ^[67]

7.4 Smart money and institutional flows

QuiverQuant data shows major institutions increasing their positions in Q3 2025—for example, BlackRock, Invesco, and Geode Capital all added millions of shares, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental exposure at these lower prices. ^[68]

For long‑term investors, heavy institutional buying into a collapse is often read as a vote of confidence in the underlying business, even if near‑term sentiment remains fragile.

8. The Bear Case: Why Others Say “Nothing Else Matters” if Share Losses Continue

Skeptical analyses focus on structural risks and competitive dynamics that could keep pressure on the stock even if near‑term numbers stay strong.

8.1 Market share concerns and Amazon’s rise

A high‑profile bearish article on Seeking Alpha argues that The Trade Desk has “lost its wide‑moat status” and is suffering ongoing market share losses to Amazon, particularly in CTV and retail media. ^[69]

Morgan Stanley’s downgrade echoes similar themes: ^[70]

CTV growth has slowed from once‑explosive levels.
Billings growth has slipped from above 30% to low‑teens, suggesting maturation or share loss.
TTD’s take rate may be structurally “too high,” inviting advertiser pushback and competitive encroachment.
Rapid advances in generative AI could accelerate the shift of traffic toward walled gardens that control vast first‑party data, potentially driving double‑digit annual declines in some open‑web advertising categories.

The core fear: if TTD’s share of the open‑internet pie shrinks faster than the pie grows, the long‑term growth algorithm breaks.

8.2 Macro sensitivity and tariff risk

Critics also highlight TTD’s exposure to large, multinational brands in categories like CPG and retail. Those advertisers are among the first to react when tariffs, inflation, or geopolitical shocks hit margins, and management has explicitly cited tariffs as a headwind in 2025. ^[71]

If tariffs or broader macro uncertainty worsen, brand‑heavy platforms could see further budget pauses even if consumer demand holds up.

8.3 Multiple risk: still premium, even after the crash

Even after a 70% drawdown from the highs, TTD still trades at: ^[72]

~44x trailing earnings,
~30x forward earnings,
~7x sales,

all of which are well above broad market averages and higher than many large‑cap software names with similar or faster growth.

If revenue growth downshifts from high‑teens to high‑single‑digits, the market could decide that even these compressed multiples are too generous, leading to further valuation pressure regardless of near‑term beats.

9. Scenario‑Based Outlook for 2026 and Beyond

No one actually knows how 2026 will unfold, but current data and forecasts naturally cluster into a few scenarios.

9.1 Base case: Mid‑teens growth, stabilizing multiples

In a middle‑of‑the‑road scenario broadly consistent with consensus forecasts: ^[73]

CTV and retail media continue to grow briskly.
The Trade Desk maintains high‑teens revenue growth and 40%‑ish adjusted EBITDA margins through 2026.
Competitive pressure from Amazon and walled gardens intensifies, but TTD holds its niche as the leading independent DSP, particularly for brand campaigns spanning multiple publishers.
The market gradually becomes comfortable assigning TTD P/E multiples in the 30–40x range, not 80–150x.

Under that framework, analyst price targets in the $60–85 range are plausible. They imply a 50–100% total return from current levels over a couple of years, primarily via multiple stabilization plus earnings growth.

9.2 Bear case: Structural share loss and further derating

In a more pessimistic scenario aligned with the harshest bear arguments: ^[74]

Amazon and other giants win a larger share of CTV and retail media budgets, relegating TTD to slower‑growing niches.
Open‑internet inventory declines as more user time (and data) shifts into closed ecosystems and AI‑driven search experiences.
Tariff and macro cross‑winds persist, keeping brand budgets under pressure.
Revenue growth slows into the high‑single‑digit / low‑double‑digit range, and investors are no longer willing to pay a big premium for that profile.

Here, TTD’s multiple could compress further toward market‑like levels (say 20–25x earnings), limiting upside or even producing further downside even if the company remains profitable and cash‑generative.

9.3 Upside case: Growth re‑accelerates and the open‑internet story wins

There is also a more optimistic path, hinted at by bullish research that calls TTD a “bargain on EBITDA multiples” as margins recover: ^[75]

CTV adoption accelerates, especially internationally, and more premium broadcasters embrace biddable inventory via independent DSPs.
Retail media becomes a multi‑channel default, and TTD’s integrations across commerce media partners pay off.
UID2 and related identity initiatives gain critical mass, reinforcing TTD’s role as the key connective tissue for open‑internet advertising.
Revenue growth re‑accelerates into the 20%+ range, with margins sustained or improving, nudging P/E back toward 50–60x.

In that world, high‑end price targets north of $100–140 start to look achievable over a multi‑year horizon. ^[76]

10. Key Things to Watch into 2026

For anyone tracking The Trade Desk—whether as an investor, competitor or advertiser—the following data points will be crucial:

Revenue growth ex‑political
- Management cites ~18.5% underlying Q4 growth adjusted for the 2024 political cycle. Future quarters will show whether that rate is sustainable. ^[77]
CTV share and growth vs total revenue
- If CTV continues to grow faster than the overall business, it supports the long‑term bull case; if it slows sharply, the bear case about saturation or share loss gains strength. ^[78]
Retail media traction
- Partnerships with platforms like Koddi and retailers like Gopuff are early markers of how deep TTD can embed itself in commerce media. ^[79]
Market share vs Amazon and other DSPs
- Watch future commentary from management and third‑party research on billings growth, share of open‑internet spend, and any signals that TTD is gaining or losing ground. ^[80]
Margins and cash returns
- With EBITDA margins near 40% and sizeable buybacks already announced, any further margin expansion or increase in capital returns could support the bull thesis that the current valuation is too pessimistic. ^[81]
Identity and AI adoption (UID2, Kokai, OpenAds)
- Uptake of UID2 and usage of AI‑driven optimization tools are leading indicators of how embedded TTD becomes in advertisers’ workflows. ^[82]

Final Note

The Trade Desk in December 2025 is a paradox:

The stock reflects deep skepticism, pricing in slower growth, heavier competition and macro risk.
The business still exhibits the traits of a high‑quality platform: sticky customers, strong growth, fat margins, ample cash, and active product innovation.

Whether the roughly two‑thirds share price drawdown proves to be a long‑term buying opportunity or the new normal will depend on how the next few earnings reports resolve that tension between narrative and numbers.

References