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Internet stocks capturing investors attention including Warren Buffett. Looking to the year ahead our next guest highlights one attractive play with strengthening growth drivers. You got Rooney in City analyst joined us now. More uh you got always good to see you. So let's let's talk about this name. Um you're following CES and the announcements there you got and said you know what? We came away from CES. You told your clients incrementally positive on the trade desk. Now that name is already what what Rooney? You got it's up about what? 85% in the past 12 months, but talk us through, what did you hear at CES that made you even more positive on this name?

Yeah, thanks for having me and it's uh always great to be here. And so generally when people think of CES, we're thinking of consumer electronics, but actually at CES is probably the largest gathering of digital advertising executives um over the course of the whole year. And for for the trade that's right, they had they've had a great run. Uh they've been in a position of real strength within digital advertising. They've been gaining share uh regularly year in and year out, out growing the industry. Their growth is centered around streaming TV. So CTV advertising and though we saw a multitude of announcements coming out of CES that really benefit the trade desk and their positioning uh over the over the coming years, give us more conviction that we're going to see stronger growth not just this year, but but over over the coming years and the trade is really well positioned within uh this pocket of ad dollars that's seeing phenomenal growth, one of the strongest areas of growth within digital advertising and the trade desk is really well positioned there.

You go, I, you know, as we were preparing to talk to you, I was thinking about some of the bigger cross currents that might affect some of the companies in your coverage, including something like the trade desk. And I have to think of the TikTok situation and the questions over whether it's going to be banned. Does that potentially open up advertising opportunities for brands if they take, you know, if they if they take some of their traffic elsewhere? I don't know if there are any sort of knock-on effects that you're thinking about.

Yeah, I I think there's always going to be knock-on effects. Uh certainly with the amount of time that people spent on Tik Tok every day, uh it was the most amount of time spent per user on on social media. Um there's only a finite amount of time people could spend on on media, whether that's uh social media, Tik Tok or or or or meta on on Instagram, or whether whether they're watching regular TV, right? And we know certainly over the past number of years, the amount of time uh has shifted from linear television to streaming, but but also to short form video online, YouTube, uh reels on on Instagram and Tik Tok. So how people spend their time, those eyeballs are valuable. That's what advertisers are chasing. Uh it doesn't mean that people are going to go from Tik Tok uh back to watching TV. and all likely they'll go to other forms of short form content and those are going to be the ones that benefit the most uh if Tik Tok is banned.

Let me get your take on another trend, which was that mega AI trend. Obviously investors very enthusiastic, very interested as a financial analyst, you go, I'm just curious how you see that that trend and technology evolving over 2025. Now are there are there names, companies in your coverage universe you go, that you think are perhaps better positioned than others to leverage and benefit from it?

Yeah, well, that's a the big question for for 2025. It depends where you're looking. So certainly in in certain pockets, uh the like the hyper scalers or the chip makers where there's a lot of dollars being spent in in development um and investment where we've seen plenty of that. Uh part of the question that we get from investors now is where what is the ultimate payoff on that, right? So who's who's going to be generating revenue off of generative AI in the coming years, we need to see some proof that we're going to get results on on those investments. Within my coverage, probably the area that we've seen the best end market implementation of generative AI is around the website builders, so that's Wix and GoDaddy. Um they've they've done a phenomenal job adding generative AI into their products, making it easier for customers to build websites to run their businesses through their websites, helping things like product descriptions, image generation, uh business management tools. Uh they've done a phenomenal job. There's they're starting to see better conversion and growth being driven by generative AI and they're going to start to monetize those products more directly this year. Uh so within my coverage set, that's been certainly the the best end marketing implementation that we've seen so far.

And you go, I'm curious to how um, you know, sort of the AIification of search is affecting those businesses and then Verisign which you cover as well, because as you know, when you go to do a Google search now, you have the summary up top. And I know there were a lot of concerns about the click-through rate from those types of summaries. If I get the summary, I don't need to go to the website. But are, you know, are the likes of Wix and GoDaddy and Verisign, is that showing up in their business at all?

We're not seeing it there, but you are seeing some question marks around the point you're making on um on digital publishers. That's where the impacts uh potentially been and that's where investors are more concerned. So rather than going out to the publisher that is the source of the content in the generative AI search response, um if you're going to click through to that or not. If if users are not going to click click through, that's that's a potential issue. You're going to see lower traffic, you're going to see lower ad revenue. But then you're also going to see the digital publishers push back on the generative AI search companies. Um you know, we've seen this already, taking them to court, asking for licensing revenue uh because you're changing the quid pro quo within the internet of here's our content for search, but you're you're going to you're going to give us traffic. And so if that changes, there's going to be a lot of dynamics around that and I think it's going to take time for that to play out. On the Verisign and the domain side for for Wix and GoDaddy, our view is that websites are going to continue to be critically important. You know, we get the question a lot around uh social media and if uh small businesses are creating social media accounts, are they going to still need websites? we think emphatically yes. small business owners, any business really wants to own their customer. They want to own that final destination. So having that presence online is going to be as important as ever.

You go, always good to see you and have you on the show. Thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me.