CEO of Trade Desk Sheds Shares as Value of Stake Dwindles

By Trey Thoelcke Published Feb 2, 8:09AM EST

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CEO of Trade Desk Sheds Shares as Value of Stake Dwindles — © Deagreez / iStock via Getty Images

You can learn a lot by following the behavior of company insiders when it comes to how they handle positions in their own company. People can sell for many reasons (buying a house, paying for college, or getting ready for retirement). They generally only buy for one reason: to make more money.

The chief executive officer is often one of the largest and best-informed shareholders in any company. Let’s see whether Trade Desk Inc. (NASDAQ: TTD) CEO Jeffrey Green has been increasing or decreasing his shares over the past year and whether he knows something we don’t.

What You Need to Know About Trade Desk

An advertising services provider

Trade Desk is a publicly traded communication services company. It provides a self-service cloud-based platform that allows buyers to plan, manage, optimize, and measure data-driven digital advertising campaigns across various ad formats and channels, including video, display, audio, digital-out-of-home, native, and social on various devices, such as computers, mobile devices, televisions, and streaming devices. It also provides data and other value-added services. The company serves advertising agencies, brands, and other service providers for advertisers.

Trade Desk was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in Ventura, California. That is also the home to semiconductor maker Semtech Corp. (NASDAQ: SMTC) and farm products company Calavo Growers Inc. (NASDAQ: CVGW).

Green is also a founder of Trade Desk, as well as the chairperson of its board of directors.

The company had over $1.8 billion in revenue last year and has a market capitalization of more than $33 billion. Trade Desk competitors include advertising businesses at Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE | ADBE Price Prediction), Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL), and Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META).

Trade Desk shares have been on a tear for the past five years, rising nearly 300% while the S&P 500 is up about 83%.

How Trade Desk’s CEO Is Trading

Buying or selling?

One year ago, Trade Desk’s Green owned more than 45.1 million shares, worth about $2.7 billion. Today, he owns around 45.0 million shares. Although that was a modest trim of about 72,000 shares, his ownership stake has decreased by more than 63% to around $1.0 billion.

Shares a Year Ago	Shares Today	% Change
45,113,062	45,040,949	−0.15%

Why is Jeffrey Green holding on to his shares even as they lose value? There could be a variety of reasons. One would imagine that if Green had concerns about the future of Trade Desk, he might shed some shares to preserve capital, if not prohibited from doing so. On the other hand, if he expected the stock to continue to outperform the S&P 500, he might bolster his stake to maximize his profits. Why he hasn’t, we may never know. Perhaps his next transaction will offer some clue.

Other internal shareholders to watch include co-founder and Chief Technology Officer David Pickles. He owns 0.3% of shares outstanding, worth over $97 million. Chief Financial Officer Laura Schenkein owns 0.1% of shares outstanding, which is worth more than $46 million. Both Pickles and Schenkein have sold shares in the past year. (These 19 executives pay themselves over $150 million a year.)

About the Author Trey Thoelcke →

Trey has been an editor and author at 24/7 Wall St. for more than a decade, where he has published thousands of articles analyzing corporate earnings, dividend stocks, short interest, insider buying, private equity, and market trends. His comprehensive coverage spans the full spectrum of financial markets, from blue-chip stalwarts to emerging growth companies.

Beyond 24/7 Wall St., Trey has created and edited financial content for Benzinga and AOL's BloggingStocks, contributing additional hundreds of articles to the investment community. He previously oversaw the 24/7 Climate Insights site, managing editorial operations and content strategy, and currently oversees and creates content for My Investing News.

Trey's editorial expertise extends across multiple publishing environments. He served as production editor at Dearborn Financial Publishing and development editor at Kaplan, where he helped shape financial education materials. Earlier in his career, he worked as a writer-producer at SVE. His freelance editing portfolio includes work for prestigious clients such as Sage Publications, Rand McNally, the Institute for Supply Management, the American Library Association, Eggplant Literary Productions, and Spiegel.

Outside of financial journalism, Trey writes fiction and has been an active member of the writing community for years, overseeing a long-running critique group and moderating workshop sessions at regional conventions. He lives with his family in an old house in the Midwest.