Teads Holding Co. reported on November 5, 2026 that revenue for the three months to September 30 fell 26% to $235.1 million, the steepest year-on-year decline of the three quarters it has reported this year, while a $272.4 million non-cash goodwill impairment took its net loss to $325.5 million, against $19.7 million a year earlier. The business that sells performance advertising to direct response and small and medium-sized customers produced $20 million of ex-TAC gross profit, half of what it generated in the same quarter of 2025. On the same morning, the New York-based company named Michael Coyle, a former managing director at The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, as chief financial officer from November 11, replacing Jason Kiviat after 13 years.
Both announcements were submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission on a Form 8-K (accession number 0001454938-26-000074), which carries the results release as Exhibit 99.1, the CFO announcement as Exhibit 99.2, and the main terms of Coyle's employment agreement under Item 5.02. Teads, which suspended its 2026 guidance in August, gave no outlook. According to chief executive David Kostman, the company is "seeing some improvement in trends in the early part of the fourth quarter", though no October figures were published.
In Short
Teads sells ads that appear on news websites and on smart TV screens, and this summer it sold far less than a year earlier, partly because fewer people are reaching those websites from search engines. That matters to brands buying ads on independent websites and to the publishers that rely on Teads to fill their pages, because the money flowing through one of the largest open-web ad companies is shrinking even as its TV business keeps growing. The company has written off the extra value it booked when the 2025 merger that created it closed, now owes more than it owns, and has hired a new finance chief to cut costs and repair its balance sheet.
The quarter in numbers
Revenue fell by $83.7 million, from $318.8 million in the third quarter of 2025, and the release puts the net unfavorable effect of currency movements at about $1.5 million, so exchange rates explain very little of the drop. Gross profit fell 42% to $60.9 million and gross margin narrowed to 25.9% from 33.2%. Ex-TAC gross profit, the non-GAAP measure Teads uses as its main yardstick, declined 28% to $93.5 million.
That measure deserves a closer look this quarter. According to Teads, ex-TAC gross profit is calculated by adding other cost of revenue back to gross profit, which leaves revenue minus traffic acquisition costs, the payments made to publishers and other media partners for the space where ads run. This time the add-back also includes a $6.4 million non-cash impairment of what the release calls "a publisher commercial agreement asset". The reconciliation table adds back $32.6 million, which is the $26.2 million of other cost of revenue plus that $6.4 million, so the impairment was booked inside the $148.0 million traffic acquisition cost line. Stripping it out, by PPC Land's calculation, traffic acquisition costs came to $141.6 million, or 60.2% of revenue, compared with 59.0% a year earlier. Teads kept a slightly smaller share of each advertising dollar after paying its media partners. The release does not name the publisher or describe the agreement that was impaired.
The ex-TAC gross margin was 39.8%. The release text gives 40.9% for the prior-year quarter, while its own reconciliation table shows 41.0%; the underlying figures, $130.5 million on $318.8 million, work out to 40.95%, so the gap is a matter of rounding rather than a restatement.
Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes interest, taxes, depreciation, stock-based compensation, restructuring, acquisition costs and impairments, was a loss of $8.1 million, compared with a profit of $19.2 million. Measured against ex-TAC gross profit, the margin was minus 8.7%, down from 14.7%. Net loss per share was $3.31; on the adjusted basis Teads prefers, the loss was $0.48 per share, against $0.14 a year earlier.
Three quarters, one direction
The sequence across 2026 is stark. In the first quarter, revenue fell 7% to $266.0 million while ex-TAC gross profit still grew 5%. In the second, revenue dropped 17% to $284.6 million, adjusted EBITDA came in at $7.0 million against guidance of $14 million to $22 million, and Teads suspended a full-year outlook that had included adjusted EBITDA of about $100 million. Third-quarter revenue was 17% below the second quarter and ex-TAC gross profit 24% lower, by PPC Land's calculation.
For the nine months to September 30, revenue fell 17% to $785.6 million and adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $0.4 million, against $56.8 million in the same period of 2025. The prior-year figures include Legacy Teads only from February 3, 2025, the day the acquisition closed, so on a like-for-like basis the nine-month decline would be slightly larger. Set against the roughly $100 million of full-year adjusted EBITDA that Teads was guiding to until August, the nine-month figure shows how far the year has moved from plan.
Two businesses moving at different speeds
Teads reports its activity in two parts, and Kostman's breakdown on the earnings call showed both deteriorating. Ex-TAC gross profit for the Enterprise business, which sells branding campaigns to large advertisers and their agencies, was $75 million, down 14% year on year "compared to a decline of just 6% in Q2". Direct response and small and medium-sized enterprise customers, the performance side, produced $20 million, down 50%.
In the second quarter, the Enterprise unit had generated $89 million and direct response $34 million, the latter down 30%. On those figures, Enterprise ex-TAC gross profit fell 16% from the second quarter to the third and direct response fell 41%, according to PPC Land's calculation. The two segment numbers given on the call are rounded and add up to about $95 million, slightly more than the $93.5 million total reported in the release; no reconciliation was offered.
Regionally, Kostman said APAC grew 5% year on year in the third quarter, while North America declined 15%. The sharper problem was in Europe. "This sequential deceleration was primarily driven by an unexpectedly weak August in our EMEA region, influenced by macroeconomic factors and the structural headwinds in the open Internet," he said, according to a transcript of the call published by The Motley Fool. Later he narrowed it to "some weakness in Europe, particularly in August in a couple of countries", without naming them.
Kiviat described the mechanics of the miss. "As the quarter played out, we saw a lower level of budget conversion than we expected at the onset of the quarter, ultimately resulting in a deterioration across both Enterprise and direct response and SME customers, despite the former showing momentum as we entered the quarter," he said.
The traffic problem
For the performance business, Kostman pointed to search. "Here, we are experiencing major headwinds due to the rapid adoption of AI-generated search summaries and algorithm updates that are significantly reducing traditional referral traffic across the open Internet," he said. "This is heavily impacting publisher page views and impressions and performance advertising across our entire ecosystem."
Asked by Laura Martin of Needham for "more granularity" on the traffic declines, he put a range on it. "So we see anywhere from - in page view declines, anywhere from 20% to, some of them, even 60% page view declines that are coming primarily from AI summaries and algorithmic changes," Kostman said. Monetization had become harder as well. "I mean, in the past, we used to offset a lot of it by better RPMs," he said, referring to revenue per thousand page views. He added a cautious note: "So the page view declines, we think they've reached - we hope they reached the bottom."
The range has widened each time Teads has addressed the subject. In the third quarter of 2025, the company put page view declines at about 10% to 15%, a figure PPC Land cited when Teads launched its EngageOS publisher platform in June. By August 2026, Kostman was describing declines of 15% to 25% at premium publishers. The new range of 20% to 60% is wider at both ends. All three are executive estimates given on calls rather than audited figures, and Teads has not said which publishers sit behind them, so the samples may differ from one quarter to the next.
Why does the performance side suffer more than the branding side? Kostman's answer to Edward Alter of Jefferies was about inventory. "The direct response and SME is impacted in a more severe way because we, on the feed product, have 100% that we need to fill," he said. "On the in-read and other placements, I think it's less of an impact because we still have opportunity to fill more than what we're filling today." Put simply, the feed placements that carry direct response ads exist only where there are pages to fill, so they shrink as page views fall, while in-read and other placements still have unsold capacity to absorb some of the loss.
Third-party data points the same way. Chartbeat figures published in March showed small publishers had lost 60% of their search referral traffic over two years, medium-sized publishers 47% and large publishers 22%. Algorithm changes have also hit Teads' closest rival directly: in August, Taboola said a Google spam policy against back-button hijacking had ended its Explore More product and would cost it more than $20 million of ex-TAC gross profit in the second half of 2026. Kostman did not name Google or any specific update on the call.
Connected TV: still growing, more slowly
The one part of the business Teads described as a "structural tailwind" grew. Connected TV revenue rose 37% year on year, according to the release, and represented 12% of third-quarter revenue and about 20% of the Enterprise business. Year-to-date CTV revenue reached "nearly $100 million". For comparison, CTV crossed $100 million in revenue for the whole of 2025, with fourth-quarter growth of 55%, and grew 67% in the second quarter of 2026, when it was 13% of revenue.
Those shares allow a rough estimate. Applying 12% to third-quarter revenue gives about $28 million of CTV revenue, while 13% of second-quarter revenue gives about $37 million, so on PPC Land's calculation CTV revenue fell by roughly a quarter from one quarter to the next, even as it grew 37% on the year. Because both percentages are rounded, the estimate is approximate, but the direction is clear. The release does not say whether "approximately 20% of our Enterprise business" refers to revenue or to ex-TAC gross profit.
Alter raised the slowdown directly: "on CTV, it looks like that slowed a little bit from the past couple quarters." Kostman agreed. "So generally CTV has been a little bit of a slower quarter versus the previous one. But for example, October, we saw, again, acceleration. So we think it's pretty seasonal," he said. No October growth rate was given.
The home screen bet
Teads' CTV pitch rests on home screen advertising, the placements a smart TV shows when it is switched on, before a viewer opens an app. "Our focus on the home screen, or the front door to the living room, is paying off," Kostman said, adding that Teads is "securing home screen inventory, in many instances, on an exclusive basis."
The company says its home screen placements now reach "more than 500 million devices worldwide through expanded partnerships, including with Whale TV and Telly." That headline figure has not moved this year. Teads used the same "more than 500 million" when it secured access to the Google TV Masthead in the US and UK in February, and again when it extended its Whale TV partnership to more than 100 countries in September. The call did not provide an updated count.
New in the quarter was Telly: the release says Teads was selected as the launch demand-side platform for Telly's "persistent, 100% viewable HomeScreen ads, which are integrated programmatically via Magnite." Earlier deals include the renewal of LG HomeScreen exclusivity across 17 European and nine APAC markets in April and an exclusive 10-day Black Friday takeover of V smart TV home screens in about 30 markets, which falls in the current quarter.
Kostman also claimed a structural edge: "We believe we're the only company that allows the big agencies to place campaigns across multiple OEMs on the home screen." That is Teads' own assessment. The market around it is opening up. In June, Samsung made its Smart TV home screens available programmatically through The Trade Desk and Google's DV360, with a rollout from the third quarter of 2026, which gives buyers another route to one large manufacturer's screens without going through Teads.
Omnichannel and the research claim
Teads wants CTV to pull other formats along with it. Branding customers running omnichannel campaigns accounted for 15% of branding revenue in the quarter, up from 10% a year earlier. "Importantly, the CTV momentum is the hook that we expect to drive our broader omnichannel sales," Kostman said. He cited "third-party research data" showing that combining CTV and web campaigns through Teads "delivered a 25% increase in total campaign impact" and "a 10-point lift in ad recall." Neither the release nor the call named the research firm, the sample, the period or how "total campaign impact" was measured.
A $272.4 million write-down and a negative balance sheet
The headline loss came from goodwill, the premium over identifiable assets recorded when Outbrain bought Teads. "As a result of recent declines in our share price and overall market capitalization, we were required under accounting standards to perform an impairment assessment and ultimately recorded a full impairment to goodwill of $272 million," Kiviat said. "This accounting adjustment is entirely noncash and does not impact our liquidity, operating cash flows, or debt covenants."
The balance sheet shows goodwill of $281.0 million at December 31, 2025, and none at September 30, 2026. This is the second large write-down in a year: Teads recorded a $352.1 million goodwill impairment in the fourth quarter of 2025. Together, by PPC Land's calculation, the two charges total $624.5 million, against an acquisition valued at about $900 million when it closed on February 3, 2025. Intangible assets still stand at $328.0 million, down from $376.6 million at the end of 2025.
The impairment pushed shareholders' equity well below zero. Teads ended September with a stockholders' deficit of $318.2 million, compared with positive equity of $95.4 million at the end of 2025 and $7.4 million at the end of June. Total liabilities of $1.149 billion now exceed total assets of $831.2 million, and the accumulated deficit has reached $1.09 billion.
Taxes added to the adjusted loss. According to the release, adjusted net loss included a $1.7 million income tax expense, compared with a $6.5 million benefit a year earlier, "primarily due to impairment of goodwill and U.S. and various non-U.S. losses" being subject to valuation allowances. In plain terms, Teads can no longer count those losses as future tax savings on its books.
Cash, debt and a new receivables facility
Cash and cash equivalents stood at $90.3 million at September 30, down from $128.2 million at the end of 2025, when Teads also held $10.5 million of short-term investments that have since been run down to zero. Total debt obligations were $657.2 million. Most of that is $608.6 million, the carrying value of the 10.000% senior secured notes due 2030, whose principal is $628.2 million. The rest consists of $30.9 million drawn under a new accounts receivable financing facility, $15.0 million under the revolving credit facility, and $2.8 million on a short-term overdraft line assumed in the acquisition.
At the end of June, total debt was $614.5 million, so obligations rose by $42.7 million in the quarter, according to PPC Land's calculation, as the company drew on the receivables facility and the revolver while reducing its overdraft.
The notes are expensive. A 10% coupon on $628.2 million of principal amounts to about $62.8 million a year, by PPC Land's calculation, paid in two instalments. The August instalment shows up in the cash flow figures: cash interest payments were $31.7 million in the quarter and $63.9 million over nine months.
A new cash flow measure
Operating activities used $27.9 million of cash in the quarter, compared with $23.7 million a year earlier. After $0.5 million of equipment purchases and $4.7 million of capitalized software, free cash flow was negative $33.1 million. With no acquisition costs to add back this year, adjusted free cash flow was the same figure.
Teads also introduced a new non-GAAP measure with these results. According to the release, "free cash flow before interest payments" is free cash flow plus cash paid for interest, and it came to negative $1.4 million in the quarter, against positive $3.1 million a year earlier. Over nine months it was negative $7.2 million, compared with positive $18.1 million. Kostman and Kiviat both used it on the call to say the business was "close to breakeven" before debt service. The measure is useful for separating operations from financing, but it excludes a cost of more than $60 million a year that Teads has to pay.
"Despite the use of cash, in part due to seasonality and timing of interest payments, we are comfortable with our liquidity position," Kiviat said.
The receivables facility
During the quarter Teads closed a $125 million borrowing facility secured against part of its accounts receivable, which Kiviat described as "a cost-efficient source of capital". The amount available "will fluctuate based on borrowing base and various factors that influence it," he said. "At closing, the available borrowing base was approximately $60 million, with $55 million of cash drawn."
That last figure does not match the financial statements. The release and balance sheet show $30.9 million outstanding under the receivables facility at September 30, and the cash flow statement records $30.9 million of proceeds from it in the quarter, with no line for repayments. The transcript does not explain the difference, and the documents do not reconcile the two. Teads also paid $6.8 million of deferred financing and debt issuance costs in the quarter, compared with $0.2 million a year earlier; the release does not break that figure down.
Kiviat put total liquidity at about $140 million at September 30, including $90 million of cash and the amounts available under the receivables facility and the revolver. That implies roughly $50 million of undrawn capacity, by PPC Land's calculation.
Debtholders and the Nasdaq listing
The balance sheet is now an explicit priority. "We're also focused on optimizing our capital structure and expect to continue to engage in constructive discussions with our debtholders as we seek a long-term, stronger balance sheet," Kostman said. Neither executive described the discussions, the parties involved or a timetable.
The release's forward-looking statements also refer to the company's ability "to regain compliance with and satisfy the continued listing requirements of The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC, including the potential adverse effects on market liquidity and share price if our common stock is delisted." The wording indicates that Teads is currently out of compliance with at least one Nasdaq listing requirement, but the documents do not say which one or by when it must be cured. The same section lists the company's "ability to raise additional financing in the future" and to comply with covenants "including our accounts receivable financing facility" among the risks.
Costs: about 10% lower, with more to come
Excluding the impairment, "other cost of sales and operating expenses decreased around 10% year-over-year, even despite ongoing FX headwinds," Kiviat said. The income statement supports the figure. Research and development spending fell 2% to $10.5 million, sales and marketing fell 9% to $62.5 million, and general and administrative expense fell 27% to $23.3 million. Adding other cost of revenue, which rose 6% to $26.2 million, the total came to $122.4 million against $136.2 million a year earlier, a decline of 10.1%, by PPC Land's calculation.
Smaller lines moved the same way. Restructuring charges were $0.3 million, acquisition and integration costs $1.3 million against $3.7 million, stock-based compensation $1.7 million against $3.6 million, and the provision for credit losses $2.0 million against $4.2 million.
Martin pressed on how much further cuts could go: "how many more costs do you think you can cut out of the enterprise at this point?" Kiviat did not give a number. "We're down on cost maybe 10% year-over-year in Q3. But we do think there's more to go," he said, adding that there was "room to adjust our cost structure for this, as well as our balance sheet." No new restructuring plan or headcount reduction was announced. The company's standard description still puts its workforce at "around 1,700 people in 30+ countries". After the merger closed in 2025, Teads launched a restructuring plan affecting about 15% of staff.
A new chief financial officer
Coyle, 53, takes over as chief financial officer on November 11, 2026. According to the 8-K, Kiviat ceases to serve as CFO on November 10 and will then move into an advisory role, whose terms "will be disclosed in accordance with SEC rules once finalized."
The filing sets out Coyle's career in more detail than the press release. He was a managing director at DTCC from October 2015 to March 2026, with roles covering corporate financial planning and analysis, divisional CFO responsibilities, mergers and acquisitions, and enterprise finance transformation. From May 2008 to September 2015 he held leadership positions at Merck & Co. in the United States and Switzerland. Earlier, he spent 13 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers serving clients in the US and the UK. He holds a business administration degree from La Salle University and a joint executive MBA from Columbia Business School and London Business School, and is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive). None of the roles listed is in advertising or media.
According to the CFO release, the appointment "aligns directly with Teads' strategic focus on accelerating agility, driving operational efficiencies, achieving a sustainable capital structure and prioritizing high-impact growth initiatives." Kostman said Coyle "brings a proven track record of executing complex global business transformations, instilling operational rigor and fostering a culture of accountability." Of Kiviat, he said: "Jason has been an invaluable partner and a key pillar of our organization."
Coyle's own statement was brief. "I am stepping into this role because I believe in the company's strategic plan and its ability to capture the opportunities ahead," he said in the release. On the call he was more specific about the task: "I'm excited to partner with David and the leadership team to drive this operational transformation forward, to build a resilient capital structure, and unlock the long-term value I see in the business."
Most of Kiviat's 13 years were spent at the company when it was still Outbrain, which completed its rename to Teads Holding Co. and began trading as TEAD in June 2025. "It has been a privilege to help build the Company over the last 13 years and work alongside such a talented group of people," he said in the release.
The contract
The 8-K summarizes Coyle's executive agreement, effective November 11. It provides:
- an annual base salary of $500,000;
- a target annual cash bonus of $400,000, with a guaranteed minimum bonus for 2027 of 75% of target, or $300,000 by PPC Land's calculation;
- a grant of 300,000 restricted stock units under the company's equity incentive plan, equal to about 0.3% of the 98.8 million shares outstanding at September 30, by PPC Land's calculation. The filing gives no vesting schedule or grant-date value.
If Teads terminates him without cause after the two-month anniversary of his start date, or he leaves for good reason, outside a change-in-control window, he receives a lump sum equal to one year's base salary, any unpaid bonus for a completed year, a pro-rata target bonus at the company's discretion, and six months of subsidized health insurance premiums. A termination without cause on or before that two-month mark pays one month of salary.
A separate window runs from three months before to 12 months after a change in control. A termination without cause or for good reason in that period brings the same salary and benefits, a pro-rata bonus without discretion, and full vesting of all outstanding equity awards. Coyle must give three months' notice to leave without good reason; Teads must give one month's notice to dismiss him without cause. He is bound by 12-month non-competition and non-solicitation covenants covering employees and customers.
The full agreement will be filed with the annual report for 2026. Coyle will also sign the company's standard indemnification agreement, in a form first filed with a Form S-1/A on July 20, 2021. The filing states there are no family relationships or related-party transactions to report and no arrangement under which he was selected.
The change comes seven weeks after Teads hired Alex Underwood as managing director of North America and Alena Morris as senior vice president of client solutions and strategic products, both reporting to chief commercial officer Mollie Spilman.
Products, publishers and partners named in the quarter
Most of the product news had been announced before. The release says Teads "launched the next evolution of our buying platform, which now leverages agentic workflows through Model Context Protocols." The Model Context Protocol is an open standard that lets AI applications call external tools and data. When Teads released that version of Teads Ad Manager on October 29, it made cross-screen performance buying generally available to global enterprise clients but placed the AI copilots and the MCP connections to Claude, Gemini Enterprise and Microsoft Copilot in a closed beta, with broader access planned "through the end of 2026". The results release does not repeat that qualification.
Kostman linked the platform to agency behavior, saying major agencies "are actively consolidating their buying with partners that offer exclusive inventory, integrated data, and agentic planning."
On the publisher side, Kostman named EngageOS, which Teads launched in June with Magnite as programmatic demand partner and which runs editorial recommendations and ads in a single auction. He listed Huffington Post, Le Monde and Prisma in France, Axel Springer in Germany and Politico in the US as users, and ABC News and Fandom as new additions. "Some of them already experienced double-digit growth in yields and user engagement," he said, without giving figures or naming which ones.
Teads is also testing formats beyond the open web. Kostman listed "in-app advertising using our native feed for more premium brand experiences," new social formats designed to sit alongside walled garden platforms, "and LLM testing as part of the OpenAI ChatGPT pilot program." ChatGPT ads began in the US on February 9, 2026 and reached the UK in June. Teads did not describe its role in the pilot or any results.
The release lists renewed joint business partnerships with BMW Group, Lenovo, Shell and Kia. On the call, Kostman described the same four as "new joint business partnerships". The documents do not resolve whether the agreements are renewals or first-time deals, and give no values.
Why this matters for the marketing community
Teads sells both open-web advertising and smart TV inventory, and is partnered with more than 10,000 publishers and 20,000 advertisers, according to its own description. Its third quarter puts numbers on a split that many in the market have described in general terms. The performance business, which depends on people arriving at publisher pages, halved. The TV business grew 37%, but from a base that is still only 12% of revenue, and its growth rate fell by 30 percentage points from the second quarter.
For publishers, Kostman's 20% to 60% range is the most direct signal. The feed product needs page views to fill, and when they fall the revenue Teads pays out falls with them. Teads is pitching EngageOS as a way to raise revenue per session rather than per page.
For advertisers and agencies, the interest lies in the home screen. Teads has deals covering LG, Whale TV, V, Telly and Google TV placements, some of them exclusive, and argues that buying across several manufacturers through one platform is something only it offers. Manufacturers such as Samsung are meanwhile opening their own screens to the big demand-side platforms, giving buyers routes that do not run through Teads.
The financial position adds a third dimension: two goodwill write-downs in a year, negative equity, a reference to regaining Nasdaq compliance and talks with debtholders. Teads is also suing Google in the Southern District of New York, a case the release lists among its risks, noting "the uncertainty and timing of any resolution and the amount of damages or other remedies we may recover, if any." The incoming CFO's stated mandate, a "resilient capital structure", reflects that.
Kostman closed the call with a line that summed up the quarter: "We look forward to updating you in the future, hopefully, with a better quarter than this one."
Timeline
- February 3, 2025 - Outbrain completes its roughly $900 million acquisition of Teads and announces a restructuring plan affecting about 15% of the workforce
- June 10, 2025 - Outbrain, renamed Teads Holding Co., begins trading on Nasdaq as TEAD
- Third quarter of 2025 - Teads reports revenue of $318.8 million, ex-TAC gross profit of $130.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of $19.2 million
- Fourth quarter of 2025 - Teads records a $352.1 million goodwill impairment as CTV passes $100 million in annual revenue
- February 5, 2026 - Teads secures access to the Google TV Masthead in the US and UK, citing more than 500 million home screen devices
- March 17, 2026 - Chartbeat data shows small publishers lost 60% of search referral traffic over two years
- April 23, 2026 - LG and Teads renew HomeScreen exclusivity across 17 European and nine APAC markets
- May 7, 2026 - Teads reports first-quarter revenue down 7% to $266.0 million, with CTV up more than 50%
- June 6, 2026 - OpenAI extends the ChatGPT ads pilot to the UK
- June 10, 2026 - Samsung opens its Smart TV home screens to programmatic buying through The Trade Desk and DV360
- June 11, 2026 - Teads launches EngageOS with Magnite as programmatic demand partner
- August 3, 2026 - Teads sues Google in the Southern District of New York
- August 5, 2026 - Taboola says a Google spam policy will cost it more than $20 million of second-half ex-TAC gross profit
- August 6, 2026 - Teads suspends its 2026 guidance as second-quarter revenue falls 17% and direct response ex-TAC drops 30%
- August 18, 2026 - Teads gains an exclusive 10-day Black Friday takeover of V smart TV home screens
- August 2026 - Teads makes its $31.7 million semiannual interest payment on its senior secured notes
- September 10, 2026 - Teads extends its Whale TV partnership to more than 100 countries
- September 15, 2026 - Teads names Alex Underwood and Alena Morris to commercial leadership roles
- September 30, 2026 - Quarter ends with $90.3 million in cash, $657.2 million in debt obligations, no goodwill and a $318.2 million stockholders' deficit
- October 29, 2026 - Teads releases a new version of Teads Ad Manager, with MCP connections in closed beta
- November 5, 2026 - Teads reports third-quarter results, records a $272.4 million goodwill impairment, names Michael Coyle CFO and files a Form 8-K; the earnings call is held at 8:30 am ET
- November 10, 2026 - Jason Kiviat's last day as CFO before moving to an advisory role
- November 11, 2026 - Michael Coyle starts as CFO under an agreement with a $500,000 base salary and 300,000 restricted stock units
- November 19, 2026 - Telephone replay of the earnings call ends
- 2027 - Coyle's guaranteed minimum bonus of 75% of target applies
- 2030 - Teads' 10.000% senior secured notes mature
Related PPC Land coverage
- Teads halts 2026 guidance as direct response profit drops 30% - The second-quarter results, the suspended outlook and the 15% to 25% page view estimate.
- Teads Q1 2026: CTV surges 50% but revenue falls 7% as integration pain lingers - The first quarter, when ex-TAC gross profit still grew and the $100 million EBITDA target stood.
- Teads posts $350M goodwill write-down as CTV surpasses $100M mark - The fourth-quarter 2025 impairment that preceded this quarter's full write-off.
- Teads cuts 15% of workforce after $900 million merger - The terms of the Outbrain-Teads deal and the first restructuring.
- Teads bets on unified feed OS to save publishers from AI traffic collapse - How EngageOS works and why Teads built it.
- Teads says AI cuts troubleshooting time from 15 minutes to under 60 seconds - The October 29 Teads Ad Manager release referred to in the results.
- Teads brings Whale TV home screen ads to 500 million TV devices worldwide - The global Whale TV expansion named in the quarter's highlights.
- Teads bags Google TV deal, expanding CTV reach to 500 million devices - The February deal behind the 500 million device figure.
- LG and Teads renew CTV HomeScreen exclusivity, adding Italy, Greece, and APAC - Teads' largest exclusive manufacturer arrangement.
- Teads gains exclusive 10-day Black Friday takeover of V smart TV screens - A home screen deal that runs in the fourth quarter.
- Teads sues Google, citing 6.88 trillion impressions lost to rival exchanges - The antitrust suit listed among the risks in the results release.
- Teads hires 2 commercial leaders after suspending 2026 guidance - The September leadership changes on the commercial side.
- Outbrain completes transformation to Teads brand with new ticker symbol - The 2025 rename that explains Kiviat's 13-year tenure.
- Google policy cuts $20 million from Taboola's second-half profit - How a Google search policy hit Teads' closest rival.
- Small publishers lost 60% of search traffic as AI reshapes the web - The Chartbeat data on search referral declines by publisher size.
- Samsung opens Smart TV home screens to programmatic via Trade Desk and DV360 - A competing route to home screen inventory.
- ChatGPT ads go live in the UK as OpenAI expands pilot beyond US - The OpenAI ads pilot in which Teads says it is testing.
Summary
Who: Teads Holding Co. (Nasdaq: TEAD), the New York-based advertising company formerly known as Outbrain; chief executive David Kostman; outgoing chief financial officer Jason Kiviat; incoming CFO Michael Coyle, formerly of DTCC and Merck & Co.; and analysts Laura Martin of Needham and Edward Alter of Jefferies.
What: Third-quarter 2026 revenue fell 26% to $235.1 million and ex-TAC gross profit 28% to $93.5 million. Direct response and SME ex-TAC gross profit halved to $20 million, while Enterprise fell 14% to $75 million. CTV revenue grew 37% to 12% of revenue. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $8.1 million. A $272.4 million goodwill impairment, which eliminated the remaining goodwill, and a $6.4 million publisher agreement impairment drove a net loss of $325.5 million and a $318.2 million stockholders' deficit. Debt obligations were $657.2 million and cash $90.3 million. Coyle was named CFO with a $500,000 salary, a $400,000 target bonus and 300,000 restricted stock units.
When: The results, the CFO announcement, the Form 8-K and the earnings call all came on November 5, 2026. The quarter ended September 30, 2026. Kiviat steps down on November 10 and Coyle starts on November 11.
Where: Teads is headquartered in New York and operates in more than 30 countries. Enterprise ex-TAC gross profit fell 15% in North America and grew 5% in APAC, with an unexpectedly weak August in EMEA.
Why: According to Teads, AI-generated search summaries and algorithm updates have cut publisher page views by 20% to 60%, shrinking the feed inventory its performance business depends on, while lower budget conversion and macroeconomic weakness in Europe hit the Enterprise side. The goodwill charge followed declines in the share price and market capitalization. The new CFO is tasked with cutting costs further and, in Coyle's words, building "a resilient capital structure" as Teads holds discussions with its debtholders.
Discussion