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
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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), 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
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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.)
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