
$TTD why every dollar of profit belongs to someone else Revenue: $2.9B, up 18%. 79% gross margins. Zero debt. $1.3B cash. The only independent DSP at scale in a $600B+ ad market shifting to CTV. The bull case writes itself. The cap table makes it un-ownable. Stock-based compensation in 2025: $491M. Net income: $443M. The company paid employees more in stock than it earned. Every dollar of profit was diluted away before shareholders saw a cent. TTD spent $1.38B on buybacks in 2025. 147% of net income. Shares outstanding fell from 502M to 483M. A 3.8% reduction. $1.38 billion to move the needle less than 4%. From 2020 to 2024, shares outstanding actually went up every year despite continuous buybacks. Running in place. Headline free cash flow: $796M. Looks like 12x P/FCF. But $491M of that was immediately given away as stock comp. Real shareholder FCF: $305M. Real P/FCF: 31x. Not 12x. Retained earnings flipped negative. From +$354M to -$591M. Cumulative lifetime profits, consumed entirely by buybacks that barely offset dilution. Top institutional holder outside index funds? Baillie Gifford. Cut its position from 47M shares to 22M over two years. Systematic exit. The new buyers filling the gap: Two Sigma, Goldman Sachs. Quant desks and trading books. Zero fundamental long-only conviction holders in the top 20. CEO Jeff Green walked into the open market March 2-4 and bought 6,000,000 shares at $23-25. $148M of personal capital. Not a 10b5-1 plan. Open market. Three days. Largest CEO purchase I have found on any stock I have analyzed. One of them is wrong.

















