Israeli digital ad company Perion Network (Nasdaq: PERI; TASE: PERI) has again revised its outlook downwards. Two months after announcing that changes in pricing made by Microsoft's Bing search engine had detrimentally impacted the company's revenue, Perion has now announced that Microsoft Bing is excluding a number of publishers from its search distribution marketplace.
Perion's share price is currently down 29.34% on Nasdaq, giving a market cap of $425 million.
These latest actions by Bing, together with the changes in advertising pricing and mechanisms implemented by Microsoft Bing during the first quarter of 2024, the company says, means that revenue from Microsoft Bing is expected to represent less than 5% of Perion’s revenue in the second half of 2024. "As the company continues to work with other search engines, our agreement with Microsoft Bing is no longer material to Perion," the company added. Perion added that it has also seen a recent decline in revenue from standard video and display formats.
Perion has revised its revenue guidance down to $106-108 million inm the second quarter from $118-122 million with adjust EBITDA of $6.5-7.5 million, down from its previous forecast of $10-12 million.
Full year 2024 guidance has been cut from $590-610 million to $490-510 million after revenue of more than $700 million in 2023. 2024 EBITDA will be $48-52 million, down 70% from 2023.
Perion CEO Tal Jacobson said, "The recent changes Microsoft Bing implemented to its search distribution marketplace are unfortunate and significantly impacted our search advertising business. Perion remains committed to expanding our AI-driven advertising solutions business through product innovation and partnerships. Specifically, we are focused on expanding our growth engines into more countries, including CTV, retail media, and programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH). These represent a big opportunity for Perion due to their size and growth rate worldwide.
He added, "Furthermore, management and our board of directors are equally committed to delivering shareholder value by leveraging our strong balance sheet to invest in technology, acquire complementary solutions and execute our $75 million buyback program, which has already begun."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 10, 2024.
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