NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / May 14, 2018 / Shares of The Trade Desk were gaining heavily in Friday's trading session and even hit a new high after the company reported strong first quarter results. The company's CEO credited the success to its online advertising business and said streaming TV is the fastest segment of the company's business. Shares of Symantec Corporation fell to a new low and received several analyst downgrades after lowering forecast and announcing last week that its audit committee was conducting an internal investigation.

RDI Initiates Coverage on:

The Trade Desk, Inc.
https://www.rdinvesting.com/report/?ticker=TTD

Symantec Corporation
https://www.rdinvesting.com/report/?ticker=SYMC

The Trade Desk, Inc. shares closed up 43.39% this past Friday with about 12.7 million shares traded. The stock soared to a new high of $75.80 after reporting earnings that beat expectations. For the first quarter 2018, Trade Desk reported sales of $85.7 million. Analysts had been expecting $73.2 million. Adjusted earnings of 34 cents per share also easily beat the 10 cents per share that Wall Street was anticipating. Company CEO Jeff Green cited in an interview with MarketWatch, that Trade Desk's overall online advertising business, driven by mobile video and streaming TV, was the source of the strong earnings report. He remarked, "Streaming TV is the fastest-growing segment of our business." According to Green, big brands are moving to advertising on streaming TV. Connected TV spending for the company grew nearly 2,000% year-over-year in the first quarter. Green stated, "In the fourth quarter, we saw connected TV ad spend going up by 535%. We think it's an indication that big brands are moving a significant amount of their budgets, and they're going into connected TV and video. Big brands moving in is the only way you put up numbers like 21-times growth." The company raised its revenue guidance to at least $433 million for full year and at $103 million for 2nd quarter. Analyst expectations were at $403 million and $93.1 million for full year and 2nd quarter respectively.

Access RDI's The Trade Desk, Inc. Research Report at:
https://www.rdinvesting.com/report/?ticker=TTD

Symantec Corporation shares sank this past Friday, closing the day down 33.10% on a little over 111 million shares traded. The stock hit a new low of $18.85 after the cybersecurity software company said last Thursday that its audit committee was conducting an internal investigation into claims made by a former employee. For the fourth quarter, the company reported sales to $1.22 billion and adjusted EPS of $0.46, beating street estimates on both top and bottom line. The company also issued a weaker-than-expected forecast for the current fiscal year and quarter. On all the negative news, several analysts downgraded the stock including BTIG analyst Joel Fishbein who downgraded Symantec to "neutral" from "buy." Fishbein said, "The fog created by an internal investigation of the company led by the audit committee of the board, with no semblance of detail provided to investors, overshadows everything else in Thursday's Q4 and FY 2018 earnings." He also wrote, "The Q1 and FY19 guidance, which imply a ~20% decline for Q1 and ~10%-11% decline for FY2019, make us wonder what, beyond accounting changes, is going on in the business." Piper Jaffray analyst Andrew Nowinski also expressed concern and said, "Despite the strong results, we believe this investigation creates too much uncertainty to have confidence in management?s FY19 guidance, as this could affect historical results and future demand trends. He downgraded shares from "overweight" to "neutral" and lowered his price target from $32 to $24.

Access RDI's Symantec Corporation Research Report at:
https://www.rdinvesting.com/report/?ticker=SYMC

Our Actionable Research on The Trade Desk, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTD) and Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ: SYMC) can be downloaded free of charge at Research Driven Investing.

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