EuroBusiness Media (EBM): Criteo, the performance marketing technology company, has published its results for the first half of 2016. We're going to have a closer look, in particular the second-quarter results, with Eric Eichmann, hello.
You're the CEO of Criteo. You've just closed this other new strong quarter, can you tell us a bit more about it?
Eric Eichmann: Indeed Q2 was a very strong quarter of profitable growth, we continue to execute on both our plans for growth and operating leverage, and innovation and focused execution fueled that growth. Our results exceeded guidance for the eleventh quarter in a row. Revenue ex-TAC grew at constant currency at 35%. And EBITDA grew at 61% at constant currency.
EBM: Tell us a little bit more about what you believe your main achievements were in the second quarter.
Eric Eichmann: We performed well across all areas. The first area of growth is technology innovation. Mobile, a key area there, now represents over 50% of our revenue ex-TAC. And in particular there, the inner business grew over seven-fold versus last year. We also continue to roll out our universal match technology, we now have over two thirds of our clients that are participating in building a pulled cross-device graph. And then, all of those users that are match, we're matching the most valuable ones, they represent about 47% of the revenue ex-TAC and all of that, all of these technology innovations are leading to 14% growth year over year for existing clients. The second area is expanding publisher relationships, one of the key areas there, of course, is our relationship with Facebook. We now have 6000 clients connecting through us to buy inventory on Facebook, we also turned on Instagram last quarter where we have over 4000 clients, and there's a general movement for native inventory, we're actually seeing good growth on native inventory ex-Facebook, we're seeing about 50% growth over Q1. And then finally we're connecting to a lot of in-app inventory, in particular in Asian app-heavy markets. And that's the second area, and the third area is new clients. We added over 900 clients on the quarter. We're seeing a lot of those coming, of course, from mid-market but mid-market remains a very large opportunity for us, as we are only under 15% penetrated in that market. We've seen 70% growth year on year for mid-market and as we're doing all of this mid-market revenue per client, the revenue ex-TAC per client continues to grow.
EBM: Let's have a look now, region by region, at how the second quarter went.
Eric Eichmann: So the Americas is the largest contributor to growth this quarter with 38% at constant currency. In the Americas, we're seeing seen very good growth from mid-market, at around 70%. We also have a challenging geography in Brazil so we're seeing a lower growth there. EMEA grew very well, it's a more mature region for us, it grew at 25% at constant currency and we're seeing solid growth from mature markets within EMEA in particular Germany, and then we're also signing large clients in Spain, for example, we signed a large apparel client we're very pleased with and then travel clients continue to expand their business in EMEA. So that's quite encouraging and then APAC was the fastest-growing region for us, it grew at 50%, we're seeing very strong growth from new business in India and Japan. Talking about India, we just opened the office in India and we're seeing large clients being signed in India, so we're very excited about that. And Southeast Asia continues to be a very big driver of growth, we grew at 80%. And then finally, China, we're seeing good progress in building the domestic business there.
EBM: Looking forward, what do you expect your main areas of focus to be for the second half of 2016?
Eric Eichmann: Four key priorities for us. Number one is continue to innovate on our core platform, a key part of that in the second part of the year is building the infrastructure to make sure we take advantage of the cross device graph in our core engine, that's the first area. The second area is continuing to expand on new sources of inventory, in particular on native, social and mobile. Third area is strengthening our position in APAC, it remains a very large opportunity and Southeast Asia and China as well as India are three key geographies that are quite promising for us, and then finally continue to develop new products, in particular shopping within the search environment which is an area that we’ve been investing in. So, in short, I'm very pleased with our strong Q2 results. Our performance combines high growth, we've improved profitability and we continue to execute on our plans and have exciting new products in the pipeline.
EBM: Eric Eichmann, CEO of Criteo, thank you very much.
Eric Eichmann: Thank you.
