Connected TV advertising firm MNTN is making its market debut on the New York Stock Exchange.
The company announced a $16-per-share IPO on May 21, the high end of its expected range. The share price puts MNTN’s valuation at around $1.2 billion.
Actor Ryan Reynolds has served as MNTN’s chief creative officer since the company bought his creative shop, Maximum Effort, in 2021. MNTN divested from Maximum Effort in March, but Reynolds stayed on as CCO. However, Reynolds didn’t travel to New York for the IPO this week, MNTN founder and chief executive officer Mark Douglas told ADWEEK.
MNTN aims to capitalize on the demand the company has seen for performance-focused CTV ad placements by going public, Douglas said. MNTN’s advertisers are primarily small and medium-sized businesses, with 96% using the ad platform to experiment with TV advertising for the first time.
According to bankers’ estimates, there was demand for 14 times the shares that MNTN had available to sell, Douglas said, which helped bolster the case for an IPO.
“The market responded,” he said. “A lot of our customers depend on Google, Meta, and now MNTN to help drive the growth in their business. So we want to be transparent in terms of the strength of our business, [in terms of] scale and so forth, to those companies.”
MNTN’s offering consists of 11.7 million shares in total, with 8.4 million from the company itself and another 3.3 million from existing stockholders. Stockholders also gave underwriters—which include Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Evercore—the option to buy an additional 1.8 million shares at the initial price within 30 days of the IPO.
While MNTN didn’t make an overall profit in 2024, adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (also known ads EBITDA) were $39 million, Douglas noted. He expects that to increase in 2025.
Matchmaking in CTV land
As it eyes the next phase of growth, MNTN plans to continue focusing on small and medium-sized businesses, Douglas said. The company will also invest in product innovation using artificial intelligence.
“We like large brands also—we have some of those,” Douglas said about MNTN’s mix of clients. “But in the time it takes to get one of those, you can add 6,000 smaller brands on the platform.”
Douglas sees MNTN’s role as a matchmaker rather than as an advertising company, connecting consumers with brands and products they might love through 30-second ads on popular streaming platforms like HBO Max, Bravo, and ESPN.
“It’s a really impactful medium,” Douglas said.
Douglas founded the company in 2009 as SteelHouse, rebranding to MNTN in 2021.
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