What happened

Shares of Telaria (TLRA), a company that provides a video management platform to premium connected-TV (CTV) publishers to help them manage and optimize their digital ad inventory, jumped on Thursday. Shares rose as much as 10.6%, and were up about 8% as of 2 p.m EDT.

The stock's gain follows Telaria's first-quarter earnings release, which featured accelerating revenue growth that easily beat analysts' consensus estimate for the metric.

A woman watching TV and eating popcorn

Image source: Getty Images.

So what

Telaria's first-quarter revenue increased 42% year over year to $13.6 million. This was an acceleration from 31% revenue growth in the fourth quarter. Analysts, on average, were expecting revenue to rise 23% to $11.8 million.

The company's adjusted loss per share for the period was $0.10, narrower than a loss per share of $0.12 in the year-ago quarter. The loss was in line with what analysts were expecting, according to data from Yahoo! Finance. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was negative $2.4 million, narrower than negative $3.3 million in the year-ago quarter.

Going into the quarter, management had guided for first-quarter revenue between $11.5 million and $12.5 million, and adjusted EBITDA between negative $3.5 million and negative $3 million.

Notably, connected-TV revenue surged 169% year over year, and accounted for 38% of Telaria's total revenue.

"The momentum that we saw last quarter continued into Q1, driven by our focus on expanding our CTV platform," said Telaria CEO Mark Zagorski in the company's first-quarter earnings release. "Our results were strong and demonstrate the success we've had tapping into increased advertiser demand for CTV while expanding the supply of premium CTV inventory that is available programmatically via the Telaria platform."

Now what

Management raised its guidance for the full year, guiding for revenue between $66 million and $70 million and adjusted EBITDA between $2 million and $5 million. Previously, management had said it expected 2019 revenue between $63 million and $67 million and adjusted EBITDA between $1 million and $4 million.

"[A]s more consumers cut the cord and publishers embrace programmatic technology at an increasing pace," said Zagorski, "we continue to believe that ad-supported OTT [over-the-top television] has significant long-term growth potential."