As World Communication Week runs from November 1 to 7, Taboola.com Ltd. (Nasdaq: TBLA) and Townsquare Media, Inc. (NYSE: TSQ) put the week’s theme to a market test. Both reported third-quarter results on Wednesday, and their shares fell sharply. Meanwhile, the broader PRISM Comms & Media Index climbed 1.21% to $164.77 in morning trading, up 64.77% since its January 2024 inception. The split shows how quickly investors are repricing the businesses that carry the world’s messages, from open-web ads to local radio to satellite audio and wireless hardware.

Key Points

• Taboola: Revenue fell about 7% to $462.3 million, while ex-TAC gross profit rose 7% and Adjusted EBITDA jumped 16% to $56 million. Shares slid roughly 18% by mid-morning.
• Townsquare: Revenue grew 3.9% to $110.9 million, beating guidance, as digital advertising rose 12.7%. The company also suspended its dividend, and shares dropped about 26% by mid-morning.
• SiriusXM: The company raised its 2026 outlook for the second straight quarter last week.
• Coming up: iHeartMedia reports on November 9 and Airgain on November 10.

Taboola (TBLA) Grows Profit as Open-Web Traffic Shifts

Taboola (TBLA) delivered stronger profitability even as its top line shrank. Net income climbed to $18.4 million from $5.2 million a year earlier, and the Adjusted EBITDA margin widened to 29.7%. However, lower ad impressions and a slower-than-planned rollout of NextEngage weighed on revenue. NextEngage is the product Taboola built to replace Explore More.

On the positive side, Taboola’s full-page monetization now runs across all of NBCUniversal and covers 100% of Fox News. In addition, the company expects its Dianomi acquisition to close before year-end. It also bought back roughly 7 million shares during the quarter at an average price of $4.37. Still, investors focused on the revenue miss and pushed the stock below its 52-week low.

Townsquare Media (TSQ) Leans Into Digital as Broadcast Softens

Townsquare Media (TSQ) shows how local communication is moving online. Digital advertising revenue rose 12.7% to $45.3 million, led by 22.5% programmatic growth. As a result, digital now generates 57% of the company’s year-to-date net revenue.

Broadcast, however, kept slipping. Excluding political ads, broadcast advertising revenue fell 5.2%, and management expects that decline to deepen in the fourth quarter. Together with the dividend suspension, that outlook sent shares sharply lower despite the revenue beat. Townsquare kept its full-year guidance of $430 million to $432 million in revenue.

SiriusXM (SIRI) Turns Engagement Into Cash

In contrast, SiriusXM (Nasdaq: SIRI) entered the week on firmer footing. Last Thursday, the company posted third-quarter Adjusted EBITDA of $694 million, up 3%, and lifted free cash flow 14% to $293 million. It also raised its full-year targets by $25 million each, to $8.55 billion in revenue, $2.65 billion in Adjusted EBITDA and $1.4 billion in free cash flow.

Average listening time rose 5% year over year, and SiriusXM added 5,000 net self-pay subscribers. Furthermore, with YouTube Audio, SiriusXM Media now reaches about 255 million monthly listeners.

Next Up: iHeartMedia (IHRT) and Airgain (AIRG)

Looking ahead, iHeartMedia (Nasdaq: IHRT) reports third-quarter results after the close on Monday, November 9. Investors will watch whether podcasting keeps offsetting broadcast pressure. In the second quarter, podcast revenue grew 20.7% to $162 million. For the third quarter, management guided to mid-single-digit revenue growth and Adjusted EBITDA of $180 million to $220 million.

Then, on Tuesday, November 10, wireless connectivity provider Airgain (Nasdaq: AIRG) reports. Airgain guided to third-quarter sales of $14.25 million to $16.25 million and non-GAAP EPS of $0.04, up from $13.7 million in second-quarter sales. Even so, a memory-chip shortage and an FCC ruling have delayed parts of its consumer business.

The Takeaway

World Communication Week highlights a simple point: people now communicate across more channels than ever, and investors reward the companies that monetize those channels most efficiently. Track all 22 components on the PRISM Comms & Media Index.

The post World Communication Week: How PRISM Comms & Media Stocks Are Reshaping the Way the World Talks, Listens and Clicks appeared first on PRISM MarketView.

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