Teads Delays Its IPO Plans

Teads, an Altice-owned company, was set to make an initial public offering this week with ambitions of raising $751 million, but a lack of investor buy-in has meant its earlier plans have been scrapped, according to sources. A Teads spokesperson was unable to respond to a request for comment by the time of publication, but a source told Adweek that the company is preparing a statement to the market. According to that source, the ad-tech outfit had difficulties in securing orders at its desired valuation, somewhere in the region of $4.5 billion to $5 billion. News of the postponement was communicated to Teads employees in a companywide email penned by its founder, Pierre Chappaz, on Wednesday informing them that its earlier plans had changed. "We did not price our IPO due to technical factors outside of our control," reads Chappaz's email, which was shared with Adweek. "We look to potentially launch our IPO at the end of 2021." Altice paid a reported $322 million for Teads in 2017 and sought to sell the company two years later with the Europe-based telco outfit eventually opting to join the raft of companies in the sector that were valued at $1 billion-plus on the public markets. Such companies include IronSource ($11 billion), Taboola ($2.5 billion) and Outbrain ($1.25 billion) with others, such as Innnovid, tipped to follow. So while there has been a flurry of ad-tech companies listing on the public markets, either by way of traditional IPOs or via special purpose acquisition companies, with many achieving $1 billion-plus valuations, investor appetite is finite. Although Teads operates in a sector of the advertising market that is experiencing rapid growth—the company helps publishers monetize inventory with outstream display ad units and other programmatic means and generated $540 million in revenue last year—competition is rife. In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Teads cited "intense competition from companies that offer services similar or competitive to ours" alongside the rising tide of data privacy laws, plus a host of other market realities, among its "risk factors." Additionally, the company also cited the increased adoption of header bidding—a tech standard that enables publishers to offer the same ad impression through multiple partners simultaneously—as a potential threat to their exclusive inventory partnerships. Despite Teads generating profits of more than $111 million-plus per year by working with some of the most prestigious publishers in the industry, its parent company Altice will have to wait a bit longer for its exit. IPO Rumors: Is Wall Street Ready To Embrace Ad Tech (Again)?