Rocket Fuel -intelligent Advertisiing

Shares of Rocket Fuel, (NASDAQ: FUEL  )  jumped more than 13% Thursday after analysts at Needham upgraded the artificial intelligence advertising solutions stock from buy to strong buy, simultaneously assigning a $75 per share price target.

So what: Investors are right to be excited considering that the number represents a more than 30% premium to today's close, which settled just under $57 per share.

To explain the move, Needham's Kerry Rice noted the firm's channel checks remained positive across the entire advertising technology sector, and that they believe recent concerns revolving around the "future of cookies and an industry shift toward a self-service license model [are] overblown."
Rice also noted that part of Rocket Fuel's recent fall can be blamed on the poor performance of other ad tech plays, perhaps most notably, video advertising specialist Tremor Video, which fell 49% in a single day last month following its own disappointing third-quarter results.

Now what: Remember, however, that Rocket Fuel isn't expected to turn profitable until 2015. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/12/19/...oared-higher.aspx

etwas älter aber wichtig:
Rocket Fuel's Q3 Earnings Show Sky-High Growth

... investors couldn't have asked for much better results than what they got - especially in terms of revenue and client growth. Here are some highlights (you can find more details here):

   Third quarter revenue increased 132 % from Q3 2012 to $62.5 million
   Active customers climbed to 938 from 406 at this time last year and up from 784 as of  June 30th of this year
   Non-display channels more than tripled as a percentage of revenues
  Q4 revenue is projected between $74 and $77 million

http://seekingalpha.com/article/...Heres-Why-The-Growth-Will-Continue

scheint mir die bessere Wahl im Adtech Sektor als Criteo,die sich wenig bewegen  

Rocket Fuel successfully completed its IPO in September of 2013, and was awarded #1 on Deloitte's Fast 500 in North America in November of 2013. The Technology Fast 500™ is an annual ranking of the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America. Deloitte selects award winners based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2008 to 2012. Rocket Fuel's growth was 208,897 percent during that time.
Rocket Fuel provides marketers with big-data software that applies artificial intelligence to help spend their digital marketing dollars more effectively....
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...alert-rocket-fuel-ceo-140000010.html  

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/12/19/...oared-higher.aspx  

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...t-fuel-ups-4q-outlook-234555143.html

Digital advertising technology company Rocket Fuel Inc. on Wednesday raised its estimate for its fourth-quarter revenue and predicted a loss that was better than what Wall Street had expected. It also announced plans to issue more shares. The stock price rose in extended trading.

The company said it expects revenue in the quarter through December to more than double, to between $84 million and $85 million. That's above the $76.6 million expected by analysts polled by FactSet and higher than its previous guidance of $74 million to $77 million.

It also said it expects a quarterly net loss of $3.3 million to $5 million. Analysts forecast a $4.8 million loss. ......The company also said it will offer up to 2 million new shares, while existing shareholders are proposing to sell 3 million shares. The company currently has some 32.8 million shares outstanding.  

Goldman Sachs says to buy Rocket Fuel (FUEL_) and initiated its price target at $69. Cramer seemed to like the company, saying it has figured out how to programmatically place ads all over the Internet. Rocket Fuel soared 8.10% to $55.10.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/12305458/1/...c=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO  

http://seekingalpha.com/article/...sold-shares-this-year?source=yahoo  

F....inancial and Business Highlights for the Fourth Quarter of 2013

Revenue of $85.6 million increased 113% compared to $40.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2012.

Revenue less media costs1 of $49.6 million increased 148%, compared to $20.0 million for the fourth quarter of 2012, growing to 58% of revenue for the current quarter.

Gross Profit of $41.6 million increased 144% compared to $17.1 million over the prior year period representing a Gross Margin improvement to 49% from 43%, a 601 basis point expansion.

Net Loss was $(2.2) million, or $(0.07) per diluted share, as compared to a net loss of $(5.9) million, or $(0.72) per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2012. Adjusted net income1 for the quarter was $2.4 million, or $0.06 per diluted common share, as compared to adjusted net loss of $(1.9) million, or $(0.23) per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Adjusted EBITDA1 income was $5.3 million compared to a loss of $(1.3) million in the fourth quarter of 2012......

http://investor.rocketfuel.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=805601  

..... the general indication is that digital ads will increasingly move to programmatic platforms due to growing complexity.

Rocket Fuel aims to provide the right ad to the right person at the right time using big data and machine learning. These ads are delivered to customers in an automated, real-time process that learns from the results of the last ad and optimizes the performance. The fourth-quarter results again back up the benefits of this system with revenue surging more than 100% over last year. The results finish off a stellar four-year period where Rocket Fuel grew from virtually nothing to reach revenue of $240 million. For 2013, revenue growth surged 126%.

Huge market opportunity
Even with the stellar growth, Rocket Fuel is only a tiny fish in the massive ocean of advertising. According to the slide below from the recent Rocket Fuel presentation, the advertising market now reaches $490 billion in annual spending, with digital advertising still less than 10% of the total ad market. Even more important, Rocket Fuel is only a tiny fraction of the digital ad market, leaving tons of room for growth.
......
The recent growth of Rocket Fuel and the resurgence of Millennial Media places an emphasis on the shift in multi-channel advertising toward real-time bidding, or RTB, and programmatic exchanges. Rocket Fuel saw an exceptional 721% growth of mobile, social, and video ads, highlighting the shift in the market that gets more complex on a daily basis.

The issue with these new forms of advertising is that the area of focus constantly shifts within social sites and between mobile devices; a human optimizing a campaign can't possibly keep up.

Millennial Media estimates that it serves ads to 9,000 mobile device types over a profile base of 625 million users that need to be taken into account in marketing decisions. Rocket Fuel estimates that it can analyze, in real-time, more than 1,000 simultaneous ad campaigns with millions of attributes to make automated decisions on more than 450,000 bid requests per second.

The competitive advantage is clear in the numbers, with Rocket Fuel having a revenue retention rate of 168% in 2013. This means that customers in 2012 spent 68% more on its services during 2013. On top of that, gross margins surged roughly 600 basis points for the year, showing that Rocket Fuel was adding business at more profitable margins.

Bottom line
The key takeaway is that Rocket Fuel is only taking off and it will be years before the explosive growth of programmatic buying of digital ads slows down. Yet, despite the explosive growth and big-data tag, the stock only trades at around five times estimated revenue.....

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/02/24/...y-taking-off.aspx
 

Income Statement

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=fuel  

Summary

   Stock has fallen 36% in two months.
   Has a huge total addressable market in programmatic advertising.
   Move into mobile should boost revenues.
   At 5X 2014 revenues, seems fairly valued on a relative basis.

"I expect programmatic to slow down in the same way people stopped trading on exchanges and went back to handing pieces of paper back and forth for selling stocks. The Pandora's box is open..." - Rocket Fuel CFO Peter Barwick in an interview on AdExchager
Wall Street can be a fickle place. Two short months ago programmatic advertising company Rocket Fuel (FUEL) hit an all time intraday high of $72. ......

http://seekingalpha.com/article/...s-fall-from-grace-may-be-temporary