Say No To Trading
Public Markets Investor, Opportunistic Buying & Cost-Basis Management
AppLovin's ad yield engine has run out of gas, setting up the same structural decay that hit The Trade Desk as ad spend consolidates into walled gardens. Conversion rates stalling around 1.4%, delayed AI rollouts and mounting litigation point to a fundamental tailspin that Piper Sandler's cautious call understates. Being down 60% this year is not a bottom; buying here is catching a falling knife on a broken narrative. x.comÂ
AppLovin needs a very clean quarter to rebuild confidence. Investors question how much market-share runway its gaming ad business has left and how sustainable its very high margins are, and last quarter's model-upgrade cadence issues raised new execution concerns. Gaming ads must remain the central growth engine, since e-commerce will not be big enough for a while. x.com x.comÂ
AppLovin looks like an attractive ad-tech opportunity around $280 because its advertising platform has opened to all businesses, offering access to over 1 billion daily users, and management expects Q3 revenue above $2B. Shares are down nearly 62% from $733 despite Q2 revenue growth of 53% year over year. x.comÂ
AppLovin is probably stuck for a while after falling more than 50% this year, partly penalized unfairly for The Trade Desk's fall as a fellow black-box ad-tech name. Too few holders understood the business on the way up, which makes the way down painful. It may become a good long in 2027, pending more work on valuation. x.comÂ
AppLovin is in a dying, cutthroat business: mobile is not growing, and culturally people are tired of ads. x.com x.comÂ
AppLovin's selloff prices in a significant slowdown while the underlying numbers remain incredible, making the risk/reward interesting. Q2 revenue rose 53% to $1.92B at an 84% adjusted EBITDA margin, and Q3 guidance implies 46-48% growth. It generates billions in free cash flow on a ~$100B market cap, has only ~$700M of net debt and buys back shares. Expanding into e-commerce could greatly enlarge its market; slower AI model gains and competition from Meta and Alphabet are the risks. x.comÂ
AppLovin has zero moat in AI advertising, where 50 companies do the same thing and AI can do it without any of them. It is value-trap garbage, just another The Trade Desk, and all of these companies could be bankrupt someday. x.com x.comÂ
Amazon is eating the advertising lunch of both The Trade Desk and AppLovin. The Trade Desk fell 20% after a massive earnings miss and another 15% the next day, with no recovery in sight, while AppLovin has dropped as well. x.com x.comÂ
AppLovin's selloff on lawsuit news is ridiculous and unwarranted, leaving a higher-risk, high-reward setup. Citi published a bullish report this morning, the average Street price target is around $525, and CEO Adam Foroughi looks top tier. The e-commerce side still needs more research. x.com x.comÂ
AppLovin's slight revenue miss should drive momentum traders out of the 50% growth story; the stock fell 22%. Per @wallstengine, Q2 revenue was $1.92B against a $1.94B estimate, up 53%, adjusted EBITDA of $1.61B also missed, and free cash flow of $863.3M fell well short of the $1.29B estimate. x.comÂ