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Item 1. Business

2024-02-23 compared with 2023-02-24 · 179 added, 291 removed, 257 unchanged (65% of the section changed)

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Our vision is to bring richer experiences to every consumer by supporting a fair and open internet that enables discovery, innovation, and choice – powered by trusted and impactful advertising.

Since 2018, and accelerating since 2020, we have deeply transformed the Company from a single-product to a multi-solution platform provider, fast diversifying our business into new solutions.

Since 2018, and accelerating since 2020, we have deeply transformed the Company from a single-product to a multi-solution platform provider, diversifying our business.

We enable brands', retailers' and media owners’ growth by providing best-in-class marketing and monetization services and infrastructure on the open Internet, driving approximately $29 billion of commerce outcomes for our customers – in the form of product sales for retailers, brands and marketers and advertising revenues for media owners.

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Our focus is on commerce media.

As of December 31, 2022, we served approximate ly 22,000 cl ients including many of the largest and most sophisticated consumer brands, retailers, commerce companies and media owners in the world.

As of December 31, 2023, we served approximately 18,000 clients including many of the largest and most sophisticated consumer brands, retailers, commerce companies and media owners in the world.

We partner with them to capture user activity on their websites and mobile applications ("apps"), which we define as digital properties, and leverage that data to deliver superior ad performance to help marketers, brands and agencies reach their campaign objectives from top to bottom of the marketing funnel.

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In each of the last three years, our average client retention rate, as measured on a quarterly basis, was a pproximately 90%.

Demonstrating the depth and scale of our commerce data, we have exposure to over $1 trillion in online sales transactions on our clients' digital properties in the year ended December 31, 2022.

Based on this data and other assets, we activated over $3 billion of media spend on behalf of our clients and delivered 1.8 trillion tar geted ads in the year ended December 31, 2022.

Demonstrating the depth and scale of our commerce data, we have exposure to $1 trillion in online sales transactions on our clients' digital properties in the year ended December 3 1, 2023.

Based on this data and other assets, we activated over $4 billion of media spend on behalf of our clients and delivered 1.9 trillion target ed ads in the year ended December 31, 2023.

We have established our leading market position in commerce media by focusing on three key assets that differentiate us:

actionable commerce data, extensive media access, and world-class predictive AI technology.

Our large dataset is uniquely focused on commerce and shoppers, our media access across our broad direct network of media owner partners provides large consumer reach as we see over 750 million daily active users, and our purpose-built AI technology activates this data and media to drive multiple commerce outcomes for our customers.

We continuously innovate, broaden our reach and leverage and strengthen Cri teo’s Buyer Index, one of the world's biggest privacy-compliant data sets built through collaboration within our open ecosystem of marketer and media owner clients.

Criteo's Buyer Index uses shopper intent data mapped to contextual signals to drive superior marketing outcomes.

Our large dataset is uniquely focused on commerce and shoppers, our media access across our broad direct network of media owner partners provides large consumer reach as we see approximately 700 million daily active users, and our purpose-built AI technology activates this data and media to drive multiple commerce outcomes for our customers.

Each day, we are presented with billions of opportunities to connect consumers with relevant advertising messages from our commerce and consumer brand clients in compliance with the highest privacy standards, including the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") and California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA").

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The accuracy of our algorithms improves with every ad we deliver, as they incorporate new data while continuing to learn from prior interactions.

Historically, the legacy Criteo model had focused solely on converting our clients' website visitors into customers, enabling us to charge our clients when users engage with an ad we deliver, usually by clicking on it.

This pay-for-performance pricing model clearly links the cost of an advertising campaign to its effectiveness and performance in driving conversions, and continues to be valued as such by our clients.

We have since expanded our solutions to address a broader range of marketing and monetization goals for our clients, including audience targeting and brand awareness.

We leverage pricing models consistent with industry standards that include cost-per click, cost-per-impression and cost-per-install, as well as volume-based fees for brands and large retailers using our Retail Media solutions, and, in certain cases, a set fee for the use of our platform capabilities.

In August 2022, we acquired the business of IPONWEB Holding Limited ("IPONWEB"), a market-leading AdTech company with world-class media trading capabilities, for $250 million, including approximately $180 million paid in cash and approximately $70 million paid in Criteo treasury shares at closing.

The acquisition includes a potential earn-out consideration of up to $100 million to be paid in cash subject to certain financial and other performance milestones to be achieved in 2022 and 2023.

This strategic acquisition is expected to accelerate our Commerce Media Platform vision by adding scale, complementary products, and stronger first-party data capabilities, further reducing our reliance on third-party cookies and other identifiers.

During 2022, we operated in 94 countries.

Our financial results include:

• Revenue of $2,017.0 million, $2,254.2 million and $2,072.6 million for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively;

• Gross profit of $795.2 million, $781.9 million and $688.0 million for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively;

• Contribution excluding Traffic Acquisition Costs, or Contribution ex-TAC, which is a non-U.S.

GAAP financial measure, of $928.2 million, $920.8 million and $825.0 million for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively;

• Net income of $10.9 million, $137.6 million and $74.7 million for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively;

• Adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-U.S.

GAAP financial measure, of $267.3 million, $322.5 million and $251.0 million for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively.

Please see the Non-GAAP Financial Measure Reconciliation, included in "Item 7.

Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in this Form 10-K for reconciliations from Gross Profit to Contribution ex-TAC and net income to Adjusted EBITDA, in each case the most directly comparable financial measures calculated and presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States or "U.S.

Industry Trends

We operate in commerce media, the fourth wave in digital advertising, leveraging our performance assets along with our Retail Media expertise to deliver impactful ads and reach consumers throughout their shopping journey, when they are the most willing to purchase.

We operate in commerce media, the fourth wave in digital advertising after display, search and social, leveraging our performance assets along with our Retail Media expertise to deliver impactful ads and reach consumers throughout their shopping journey, when they are the most willing to purchase.

We believe the following trends are relevant in assessing our current and future business:

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According to eMarketer, global retail ecommerce penetration is expected to grow to 23% in 2027, up from 19% in 2023.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the boom of ecommerce as brands and retailers rapidly transformed their ecommerce presence.

Ecommerce growth creates more advertising inventory in places where commerce audiences are, and it increases our ability to attract more ad spend.

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First-Party Data Unlocks Huge Potential:

Amazon opened the way in the commerce media category, and other large retailers also leverage their shoppers’ first-party data to drive momentum to their advertising revenue.

Many more retailers are now following suit in creating media experiences around their content assets utilizing their first-party data to curate and monetize their audiences.

Driving advertising spend to their content requires advertising technology ("AdTech") and a huge network of shared data.

Trade Marketing Shifts to Digital:

Brands have been taking advantage of this surge in ecommerce and accelerating the shift of their trade marketing budgets to online to address consumers at the digital point of sales, recreating in-store experiences on digital shelves.

According to LUMA Partners, online trade marketing represents a market opportunity of approximately $80 billion and it is growing rapidly.

This potential of digital trade marketing is enabling significant growth in the supply of retail media, available for brands to bid on to promote their products.

Retailers leverage their shoppers’ first-party data to drive advertising revenue.

They are creating media experiences around their content assets utilizing their first-party data to curate and monetize their audiences.

First-party data is also increasingly valuable in the absence of third-party identifiers.

Budgets Shift to Retail Media:

Retail Media budgets come from shopper and trade marketing budgets.

Brands are taking advantage of this surge in ecommerce and accelerating the shift of their trade marketing budgets to online to address consumers at the digital point of sales, recreating in-store experiences on digital shelves.

Retail Media budgets also include performance marketing dollars, and full-funnel Retail Media strategies attract brand marketing budgets as well.

Brands, Retailers and Publishers Increasingly Depend on AdTech Partners :

As technology quickly evolves in today's highly competitive environment, AdTech becomes increasingly critical for marketers.

Consumers' shopping journeys are fragmented across multiple environments, websites, apps, devices, and physical stores, and we believe most marketers increasingly look at diversifying their significant reliance on walled-garden digital advertising partners, as walled gardens are closed online environments where advertisers have less access to customer data and less control over how to measure success.

Changes in online identity make the environment more complex for both marketers and media owners around addressability and measurement, and require brands and retailers to better leverage AdTech providers to solve these problems for them.

Changes in online identity make the environment more complex for both marketers and media owners around addressability and measurement.

These changes require brands and retailers to better leverage AdTech providers to solve these problems and continue to drive performance for them.

The ability for media owners, retailers, brands and agencies to identify users, create and monetize commerce audiences, and drive sales and customer loyalty, today relies on having the right technology partner, able to activate the right data in an efficient way and measure the results in a transparent way across channels.

Addressable Market

Starting with Retail Media, we estimate that our serviceable available market (excluding Amazon and China), or SAM, will reach $42 billion in advertising spend that we activate on behalf of our clients by 2025.

Starting with Retail Media, we estimate that our serviceable available market (excluding Amazon and China), or SAM, will reach $42 billion in advertising spend by 2025.

We also estimate that our serviceable available market for the broader Commerce Media opportunity is expected to reach $110 billion in advertising spend by 2025.

When including Amazon and China, the Total Addressable Market, or TAM, for Commerce Media is expected to reach $290 billion in advertising spend by 2025.

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Criteo's Transformation

Since 2018, and accelerating since 2020, Criteo has deeply transformed itself from a single-product (retargeting) to a multi-solution Commerce Media platform provider, fast diversifying the business.

As of Q4 2022, non-Retargeting solutions represented approximately 47% of Contribution ex-TAC, compared to 32% in Q4 2021.

The Criteo Commerce Media Platform

We have made significant progress in our transformation journey to meet the needs of brands, marketers, retailers, and media owners in the evolving commerce landscape.

With our unique Commerce Media Platform, we offer marketer and media owner clients a single platform for first-party data-based marketing and monetization, that provides a holistic suite of solutions, powered by AI technology and activates the world’s largest set of commerce data.

Criteo's Transformation and the Commerce Media Platform

Since 2018, and accelerating since 2020, Criteo has deeply transformed itself and is now a multi-solution Commerce Media platform provider.

The Criteo Commerce Media Platform is the only unified platform that directly connects advertisers with retailers and publishers on the open internet.

We offer marketer and media owner clients a single platform for first-party data-based marketing and monetization, that provides a holistic suite of solutions, powered by AI technology and activates the world’s largest set of commerce data.

Our technology is optimized to drive trusted and impactful business outcomes efficiently and effectively for our brand, retailer and media owner clients.

These include, for example, driving engagement for our clients' brand, shop, app, products and services, driving product sales, driving app installs and consumer visits, driving product consideration from targeted commerce audiences, or driving advertising revenue for media owners and retailers by monetizing their data and audiences with consumer brands.

The Criteo Commerce Media Platform is focused on performance, outcomes, commerce audiences, retail media and measurement.

It is made available as individual products and services as part of our offering.

On the demand side:

• Commerce Max is a Commerce self-service Demand Side Platform (“DSP”) used by brands, agencies and retailers, enabling media planning and buying on retailer and open internet inventories leveraging Criteo's AI atop approved retailer data and unique commerce data, all with closed-loop product-level conversion measurement.

• Commerce Growth is a powerful, self-service performance marketing tool used by Direct-to-Consumer brands and their agencies to activate outcomes-optimized customer acquisition and retention objectives.

On the supply side:

• Commerce Yield is a Commerce Media monetization stack and ad server giving retailers and marketplaces full control to achieve maximum monetization of their digital assets through inventory and data management, packaging, and in-depth insights.

• Commerce Grid is a Commerce Media Supply Side Platform ("SSP") giving media owners the control to optimize the monetization of their inventory and data assets.

Criteo's solutions work seamlessly across digital devices (desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets), commerce and advertising environments (browsers, apps, connected TV and physical retail stores), platforms and operating systems (Windows, Android, iOS/MacOS), advertising channels and formats (display, including social and native, online video, connected TV and ads on retailers' properties) and media environments (retail media, thousands of direct publishers and mobile app developers in the open Internet, and all major real-time bidding exchanges).

McKinsey, Magna Global, eMarketer, GroupM

Our Solutions

On the demand side, our goal is to maximize returns for advertisers by delivering impactful advertising to the right consumer across the entire shopping journey:

• Commerce Max is a Commerce self-service Demand Side Platform (“DSP”) used by brands, agencies and retailers, enabling media planning and buying on retailer and open internet inventories, all with closed-loop product-level conversion measurement.

• Commerce Growth is a powerful, self-service performance marketing tool used by Direct-to-Consumer brands and their agencies to acquire and retain customers.

On the supply side, we enable media owners to earn more revenue by enriching and activating their first-party data and inventory:

• Commerce Yield is a suite of monetization solutions giving retailers and marketplaces full control to achieve maximum monetization of their digital assets through inventory and data management, packaging, and in-depth insights.

• Commerce Grid is a Commerce Supply Side Platform ("SSP") for media owners and access from agencies through the DSP of their choice.

Criteo reports its business results as three operating and reportable segments:

Marketing Solutions, Retail Media and Iponweb.

Marketing Solutions are available through Commerce Growth to help advertisers achieve their customer acquisition and retention goals.

Examples of potential business outcomes driven by Criteo Marketing Solutions include:

creating and building brand awareness for a client's existing or new product or service, by targeting relevant high-quality consumer audiences showing intent for that particular product or service and reaching these audiences, for example, through online video ads and through Connected TV channels;

driving visits from new prospects on the website of our clients, or driving installations of our clients' apps by new consumers, by engaging such commerce audiences online (either on the web, in apps or on connected TV), with personalized ads offering products or services tailored to their predicted interest;

driving sales for commerce clients by engaging consumers online, with personalized ads offering products or services for which they have already expressed shopping intent;

or driving more sales from existing customers of our commerce clients, by accurately targeting and re-engaging these existing customers online with personalized ads offering new products or services that they have not yet purchased nor been exposed to.

Our clients have access to an integrated self-service client interface that reduces unnecessary complexity and cost associated with manual processes of having to use multiple DSPs and sources of inventory supply.

We also offer a managed-service approach to our larger clients, providing deep business intelligence and analytics services.

Our teams of advisers aid our larger clients in setting goals for, extracting insights from, and evaluating trends and performance of their various advertising campaigns with us across multiple marketing goals, sources of inventory, advertising channels and formats, and the multiple digital devices that consumers may use.

In Marketing Solutions, our Commerce Audiences solutions are focused on attracting more customers for our marketer clients and growing their existing customer relationships, leveraging our AI engine to engage commerce audiences with the right ad for each opportunity:

• Increase awareness and interest in a brand, product, or services;

• Attract new consumers to an online and/or offline store;

• Generate leads from consumers who are in market for a brand, product or services;

• Get more shoppers and grow sales on an online and/or offline store;

• Encourage consumers who purchased in the past to make additional purchases.

For Criteo Marketing Solutions, we typically purchase inventory programmatically on a CPM basis from our direct publisher partners and Real-Time Bidding (RTB) platforms, through standard terms and conditions for the purchase of advertising inventory.

This means that inventory purchased for Criteo Marketing Solutions is paid to the publisher irrespective of whether the user engages, in whatever form, with the advertisement delivered on that publisher's digital property.

Pursuant to such arrangements, we purchase impressions for users that Criteo recognizes on these publishers' digital properties.

Retail Media assists retailers in generating high-margin advertising revenues from brands and agencies looking to address multiple marketing goals with strong ROAS, and to drive sales for themselves, by monetizing their audiences through personalized ads, either on their own digital store (also called "onsite") or on media owner properties on the open Internet (also called "offsite").

Examples of expected business outcomes driven by Criteo Retail Media include:

• Generating advertising revenue for retailers on their online store, by providing retailers with self-service access to our technology platform for them to monetize their ad inventory, commerce data, traffic and audiences directly with consumer brands across various marketing goals;

• Driving sales for consumer brand clients on the site of retailer partners, by connecting consumer brands and retailers and engaging consumers on the retailer's digital property with personalized ads offering specific brand products available on the retailer's digital store and for which consumers have expressed interest;

• Driving sales for consumer brand clients on the site of retailer partners, by connecting consumer brands and retailers and engaging consumers outside of the retailer property on the open Internet with personalized ads offering specific brand products available on the retailer's digital store and for which consumers have expressed interest.

Our retailer and brand customers respectively manage their Retail Media revenues and budgets using a self-service interface .

We charge retailers a negotiated supply-side platform fee and sometimes a technology or licensing fee, while brands pay us a negotiated demand-side platform fee.

In addition, we may charge brands a managed-service fee and other fees for accessing additional insights.

On the supply side of Retail media, Criteo's retailer monetization solution suite, Commerce Yield , provides retailers, marketplaces and commerce companies with a complete media tool set.

Commerce Yield combines Criteo's former Retail Media Platform with several solutions derived from recent strategic acquisitions, including:

• Commerce Yield Marketplace:

We help monetization officers integrate marketplace tactics and formats.

• Commerce Yield In-Store:

Our in-store monetization technology provides advertisers access to a wide range of offline inventory.

• Commerce Yield Insights:

Our cutting-edge suite of insight and data tools provides digital-shelf insights to support enterprise-level retail media buys.

On the demand side of Retail Media, Criteo’s self-service demand-side platform (DSP), Commerce Max, gives brands and agencies a single point of entry to Retail Media inventory onsite and across premium publishers offsite.

• Brands and agencies across the globe can use Commerce Max to access data and inventory across multiple retailers and marketplaces, finding valuable audiences on these sites and extending these audiences offsite.

• This is underpinned by closed-loop measurement, enabling brands and agencies to quickly and efficiently determine the effectiveness of campaigns and optimize accordingly.

Criteo’s supply-side platform (SSP), Commerce Grid, brings additional monetization opportunities.

It allows retailers to curate their first party audiences and make them available for access through all DSPs.

Iponweb specializes in building real-time advertising technology and trading infrastructure, delivering advanced media buying, selling, and packaging capabilities for media owners, agencies, performance advertisers, and third-party AdTech platforms.

It mainly includes:

• Criteo's commerce supply-side platform (SSP), Commerce Grid, which is purpose-built for agencies and publishers looking to efficiently connect media and commerce with programmatic.

• Criteo’s commerce services which provide platform customization for our most strategic enterprise and agency clients, and the BidSwitch media trading marketplace, connecting 140 demand and 130 supply partners, to broaden the distribution of commerce audiences on the open Internet.

For additional information regarding our segments, refer to Note 3, Segment information, in the Consolidated Financial Statements in this Form 10-K .

Our Competitive Strengths

Criteo First-Party Media Network

Our First-Party Media Network is a component of our Commerce Media Platform and represents the combination of our unique data and media assets.

Our First-Party Media Network is a key pillar of our addressability strategy and represents the combination of our unique data and media assets.

It is the powerful combination of our network of direct relationships with media owners, including retailers, together with our Buyer Index dataset focused on commerce and shoppers that powers Criteo's First-Party Media Network.

Our First-Party Media Network enables consented data to interoperate across marketers, retailers and publishers to engage addressable consumers on a one-to-one basis.

Our First-Party Media Network enables consented data to interoperate across marketers and, media owners to engage addressable consumers on a one-to-one basis.

It also acts as our Truth set to predict how commerce audiences behave and how ads will perform and convert in the same way.

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Our high quality first-party data assets help fuel the accuracy of our algorithms, which improve with the increasing quantity and quality of the data we obtain from our marketer and media owner customers and partners, as well as insights gained through our own extensive operational history.

The combination of marketer data, media owner data and proprietary metadata gives us powerful insights into consumer purchasing habits that we use to price media inventory and create relevant ads to drive user engagement and impactful commerce outcomes for our customers.

In addition to commerce data at the granular product SKU level, we seek to use as much relevant information as possible about the context and intent of a given user, collected from customers and media owner partners, to further refine our prediction accuracy.

In addition, we seek to use as much relevant information as possible about the context and intent of a given user, collected from customers and media owner partners, to further refine our prediction accuracy.

We believe our access to first-party commerce data validates the trust that our clients place in us and differentiates us.

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Our algorith ms link user identifiers together when they are deemed to belong to the same user.

Examples of user identifiers, collected from our customers and partners, and part of our Identity Graph include:

hashed customer logins and hashed emails, first-party and third-party cookies, app identifiers such as Android's AAID, in addition to linkages such as LiveRamp's IdentityLink.

The graph has billions of identifiers, which we believe cover over 750 million unique Daily Active Users globally, for whom we collect commerce data in real time.

Examples of user identifiers include:

hashed customer logins and hashed emails, first-party and third-party cookies, app identifiers, in addition to linkages such as LiveRamp's RampID.

The graph has billions of identifiers, which we believe cover approxim ately 700 million unique Daily Active Users globally, for whom we collect commerce data in real time.

In addition, the Identity Graph allows us to leverage offline CRM data of our clients' physical stores to match it with online user profiles, based on their offline shopping history.

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Every day, we have exposure to data on close to $3 billion in online sales on average through 82 million buyer journeys.

With the Interest Map, we seek our clients' permission to use their data, on an aggregated and anonymized basis, to power products that are jointly offered to our clients in the collective.

We seek our clients' permission to use their data.

The design and governance of Cr iteo’s Buyer Index are b ased on strict and differentiated guiding principles.

we commit to a two-way exchange of data with our marketer and media owner clients and partners, whereby all parties contributing data to the collectives, in return for their contribution, benefit from the collective dataset via the Commerce Media Platform, and access cross-device user IDs and relevant Key Performance Indicators to better inform and optimize their advertising with us.

• Transparency :

our clients' contribution and sharing of data within the data pools are based on a clear and permission-based usage by Criteo for the mutual benefits of all participants in the data collectives.

we apply high levels of data security and user privacy standards to the data we hold and manage for ourselves and our clients.

our data collectives are designed and governed in ways such that the value gained by each participant largely exceeds the individual contribution to the collectives, irrespective of the participant’s size.

We prioritize openness by facilitating a reciprocal data exchange with our marketer and media owner clients.

All contributing parties benefit from the shared dataset through our Commerce Media Platform, gaining access to cross-device user IDs and relevant Key Performance Indicators, enhancing their advertising optimization.

Transparency is upheld through clear and permission-based data sharing within our data pools, ensuring mutual benefits for all participants.

We maintain high levels of data security and user privacy standards for the data we handle.

Our data collectives are designed to ensure fairness, ensuring that the value gained by each participant surpasses their individual contribution, irrespective of size.

Consistent with our data minimization principles, our technologies only rely on categories of data that are strictly necessary for the purpose of our services.

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We also actively encourage our clients and media owner partners to provide transparent and clear information to consumers about our collection and use of data relating to the ads we deliver and monitor.

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2 Products are not unique and may appear in the catalogs of different customers.

Our Media assets:

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We define inventory as the combination of desktop web, mobile web, mobile in-app display, including social and native, online video displays, connected TV, and ad inventory on major retail ecommerce properties, including standard banners, native and sponsored product formats.

In some cases, we have negotiated direct and privileged access with publishers, giving us the opportunity to select, buy and price, on an impression-per-impression basis and in real time:

(1) inventory that a publisher might otherwise only sell subject to minimum volume commitments;

and/or (2) particular ad impressions before such impressions are made available to other potential buyers.

Among their multiple benefits, these direct relationships can give us privileged access to first-party publisher data which allow us to bid on impressions without using third-party cookies or other third-party identifiers.

Our publisher relationships can give us privileged access to first-party publisher data which allow us to bid on impressions without using third-party cookies or other third-party identifiers.

Many of our direct publisher partners have granted us preferred access to portions of their inventory because of our ability to effectively monetize that inventory.

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We believe this inventory and data from ecommerce retailers is particularly valuable for consumer brands looking to advertise their products in a multi-brand retail environment.

We price and buy inventory in real time and typically do not pre-buy any impression.

In addition, in some instances, we may commit to buying minimum volumes of impressions to certain publisher partners.

Across both our direct publisher relationships and inventory purchasing done on Real-Time Bidding (RTB) exchanges, we leverage our commerce-focused machine learning technology, also called the Criteo AI Engine, to value available advertising inventory quickly and accurately, and utilize that information to bid for inventory on a programmatic, automated basis.

Alongside our existing technologies to integrate directly with publishers, we have developed Criteo Direct Bidder , our header-bidding technology now integrated with Iponweb's publisher SSP, The MediaGrid.

Header-bidding allows publishers to make their inventory simultaneously available for public auction to several competitive bidders, including RTB exchanges.

Thanks to our large scale, Criteo Direct Bidder allows us to connect directly to the ad server of publishers in situations where publishers use header bidding to monetize their inventory, allowing us, among other advantages, to bypass RTB exchanges in the bidding process and to save publishers the take-rate RTBs would typically charge them.

As a result, Criteo Direct Bidder helps publishers increase the average monetization of their inventory sold through Criteo Direct Bidder, relative to our overall spend through all channels.

Using Criteo Direct Bidder, we were connected to publishers globally, on both web and apps, including:

IBM Watson Advertising (The Weather Channel), Globo, OLX, NBC, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Leboncoin, Daily Mail, Viber, Axel Springer's websites, Marktplaats, M6, AJA Japan and EstSoft.

We take a variety of brand safety measures to ensure that the brand equity of our clients is preserved at all possible times.

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In recognition of our efforts to combat fraud and ensure a brand safe digital ecosystem for our advertisers, Criteo has been independently certified by the Trustworthy Accountability Group for the Certification Against Fraud and the Brand Safety Certification.

We believe that our ability to efficiently access, value and monetize inventory at scale results in a deeply liquid marketplace for both buyers and sellers of advertising, allowing us to deliver effective ads at the right price for our clients, even as the size and complexity of the marketing campaign increases.

Criteo AI Engine

Criteo AI Engine consists of multiple artificial intelligence algorithms, and the proprietary global hardware and software infrastructure that enables the Commerce Media Platform to operate in real time at significant scale, and activate our commerce datasets and unique media for effective marketing and monetization.

Criteo AI Engine le verages the Buyer Index, with th e goal of maximizing consumer engagement to drive impactful business outcomes for clients through the delivery of highly relevant and personalized ads in real time.

Criteo AI Engine consists of:

• Lookalike finder algorithms.

These algorithms create user audiences, or groups of consumers likely to be interested in and engage with a specific category of our clients’ products or services, from a predetermined audience seed based on other clients’ audiences that were already targeted and exposed to similar products or services in the context of previous advertising campaigns.

Once created, these audiences are used by Criteo AI Engine as targets to reach and be exposed to tailored ads for relevant products or services for the purpose of a dedicated campaign.

AI is core to continuously optimizing the performance of our solutions in ways that deliver effective advertising and highly personalized experiences to consumers.

AI is also key to driving operational efficiency across our business.

The Criteo AI Lab

The Criteo AI Lab was established in 2018 and is pioneering AI innovation with 140 engineers and researchers who closely collaborate to deploy AI at scale through the Criteo AI Engine, and advance new AI technologies.

The Criteo AI Lab is recognized as a center of scientific excellence for its research on Deep Learning, Generative AI, Game theory AI, Information Retrieval and Privacy Preserving Machine Learning.

The Criteo AI Engine

The Criteo AI Engine is our software and hardware highly scalable AI infrastructure.

It leverages the Buyer Index, with the goal of maximizing consumer engagement to drive impactful business outcomes for clients through the delivery of highly relevant and personalized ads in real time.

A wide variety of machine learning and deep models power the Criteo AI Engine to optimize each and every touch point on the advertising journey, all the way from media planning to shopper conversion.

Lookalikes finder algorithms create and activate audiences built out of shopping insights derived from Criteo unique shopper data.

This set of algorithms typically supports Commerce Audiences campaigns to drive new prospects to consider brands, products or services with which they have not yet engaged in the past.

• Recommendation algorithms.

These algorithms create ads tailored to specific consumer interest and intent by determining the specific products or services to include in the ad.

These products and services may be ones that the consumer has already been exposed to, or that the algorithms predict the customer could be interested in.

Alternatively, these may be products and services that other consumers within Criteo Buyer Index have been interested in.

• Dynamic Creative Optimization+ (DCO+).

Based on the results of our dynamic creative algorithms, Criteo AI Engine automatically and dynamically assembles customized creative ad content on an impression-per-impression basis in real time, by optimizing each individual creative component in the ad, from the font, color, size and format of product images to the "call to action" or price discount.

Our patented Dynamic Creative Optimization+ technology offers virtually unlimited personalization, with up to 17 trillion visual ad variations, without the need to define ad sizes or layouts upfront, while always maintaining the consistency of our clients' brand image.

• Predictive bidding algorithms.

These algorithms predict the probability and nature of a user's engagement with a given ad.

Such predicted user engagement can take the form of, for example, customer site visits, clicks, conversions, shopping basket value, specific product categories purchased, or even the gross margin of the purchased product or service that our client generates from such purchase.

This prediction of engagement incorporates data from our marketer clients, our media owner clients and partners, including user intent, who our client is, the products offered in the ad, as well as data on the creative content of the ad and the media context in which the ad is displayed, as well as third-party sources.

Together with our recommendation algorithms, the prediction algorithms allow us to determine the most appropriate price to pay for an ad impression, based on an individual user's predicted engagement, what our client is willing to pay for that engagement, as well as Criteo's own target margin (or economic "take rate" retained by Criteo) from placing that individual ad.

Our bidding engine executes campaigns based on certain objectives set by our clients (such as cost-per-click, cost-per-order, cost-of-sales, cost-per-visit, cost-per-impression, cost-per-install or total campaign budget).

After a bid for an ad impression is placed and won, Criteo AI Engine assembles and delivers individualized ads, and provides campaign reporting in near-real time.

• Software systems and processes.

Our algorithms are supported by robust software infrastructure that allows us to operate seamlessly at a large scale through our network of approxima tely 45,000 servers as of the end of 2022.

The architecture and processing capabilities of this technology have been designed to match the massive computational demands and complexity of our algorithms in real time.

Recommendation algorithms build on top of our cutting-edge Deep KNN (Deep K-Nearest Neighbour) technology, and determine the specific products or services to include in the ad, based on shopper past interactions, or those shopper lookalikes.

Deep KNN is Criteo's proprietary Vector Database technology that processes billions of products from our client product feeds.

Dynamic Creative Optimization+ (DCO+) algorithms optimize banners layout in real time, on a per impression, per user basis.

Our patented Dynamic Creative Optimization+ technology offers unlimited personalization, with up to 17 trillion visual ad variations, without the need to define ad sizes or layouts upfront, while always maintaining the consistency of our clients' brand image.

Predictive bidding algorithms compute the fair price for each potential ad to show.

It does so by predicting a user’s engagement with a given ad, while optimizing toward client campaign objectives.

User engagement may range from site visits, clicks, conversions, shopping basket value, specific product categories purchased, or even the gross margin of the purchased product or service that our client generates from such purchase.

Sponsored Product placement algorithms combine recommendation and predictive bidding algorithms to determine which sponsored products to show on our Retail Media client search result pages, in response to a user’s search queries.

Our robust software infrastructure allows us to operate seamlessly at a large scale through our network of approximately 39,000 servers as of the end of 2023.

The architecture and processing capabilities of this technology have been designed to match the massive computational needs and complexity of our algorithms in real time.

This technology enables data synchronization, storage and analysis across a large-scale distributed computing infrastructure in multiple geographies, as well as fast data collection and retrieval using multi-layered caching infrastructure.

• Experimentation platform.

Our Research & Development team continuously tunes our Criteo AI Engine via experimentation and A/B tests.

Our Experimentation platform enables our Research & Development team to continuously tune our Criteo AI Engine via experimentation and A/B tests.

For example, in 2023, we performed about 1,250 online A/B tests and over 100,000 offline experiments and tests.

We use an online/offline testing platform to improve the capabilities and effectiveness of our prediction models by measuring the correlation of specific parameters with user engagement, usually measured by consumer visits, clicks and conversions, typically in the form of sales.

A dedicated team is constantly testing new types and sources of data, as well as new variables, to determine whether they help diminish the gap between, for example, predicted visits, click-throughs and conversions, and actual visits, click-throughs and conversions over the course of a live campaign.

A key attribute of Criteo AI Engine is the vast metadata of learnings on marketing and commerce effectiveness that we have accumulated from having delivered and measured responses to close to 12.5 trillion advertising impressions since our Company's inception.

Privacy-by-design approach .

We have long established and adopted Privacy-by-design as a central element of our technology and product design and development cycles, with a strong commitment to ensuring best practices in privacy, security and safety for consumers and our marketer and media owner customers.

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We regularly review and document our internal privacy policies, amend existing policies as necessary and enforce these policies with our clients, media owner partners and vendors.

Criteo reports its business results for three operating and reportable segments:

Marketing Solutions, Retail Media and Iponweb.

• Marketing Solutions allow commerce companies to connect with their most valuable audiences to achieve their customer acquisition and retention goals.

◦ Examples of expected business outcomes driven by Criteo Marketing Solutions include:

driving sales for commerce clients by engaging consumers online, with personalized ads offering products or services for which they have already expressed shopping intent;

Our clients' use and consumption of Criteo Marketing Solutions is made flexible through a set of tools and services, including:

▪ Access to an integrated self-service client interface that reduces unnecessary complexity and cost associated with manual processes of having to use multiple DSPs and sources of inventory supply.

▪ We also offer a managed-service approach to our larger clients , providing deep business intelligence and analytics services.

In Marketing Solutions, our Commerce Audiences solutions are focused on attracting more customers for our marketer clients and growing their existing customer relationships with an always-on strategy, leveraging our AI engine to engage commerce audiences with the right ad for each opportunity:

• Increase awareness and interest in a brand, product, or services;

• Attract new consumers to an online and/or offline store;

• Generate leads from consumers who are in market for a brand, product or services;

• Get more shoppers and grow sales on an online and/or offline store;

• Encourage consumers who purchased in the past to make additional purchases.

For Criteo Marketing Solutions, we typically purchase inventory programmatically on a CPM basis from our direct publisher partners and RTBs, through standard terms and conditions for the purchase of advertising inventory.

Pursuant to such arrangements, we purchase impressions for users that Criteo recognizes on these publishers' digital properties.

Such arrangements are cancellable upon short notice and without penalty.

• Retail Media assists retailers in generating high-margin advertising revenues from consumer brands looking to address multiple marketing goals, and to drive sales for themselves, by monetizing their audiences through personalized ads, either on their own digital store (also called "onsite") or on media owner properties on the open Internet (also called "offsite").

◦ Examples of expected business outcomes driven by Criteo Retail Media include:

▪ generating advertising revenue for retailers on their online store, by providing retailers with self-service access to our technology platform for them to monetize their ad inventory, commerce data, traffic and audiences directly with consumer brands across various marketing goals;

▪ driving sales for consumer brand clients on the site of retailer partners, by connecting consumer brands and retailers and engaging consumers on the retailer's digital property with personalized ads offering specific brand products available on the retailer's digital store and for which consumers have expressed interest;

▪ driving sales for consumer brand clients on the site of retailer partners, by connecting consumer brands and retailers and engaging consumers outside of the retailer property on the open Internet with personalized ads offering specific brand products available on the retailer's digital store and for which consumers have expressed interest.

◦ Our retailer and brand customers respectively manage their Retail Media revenues and budgets using a self-service interface .

We charge retailers a negotiated supply-side platform fee and sometimes a technology fee, while brands pay us a negotiated demand-side platform fee.

In addition, we may charge brands a managed-service fee and other fees for accessing additional insights.

For Retail Media onsite, we do not incur our own media cost as retailers use our platform to sell their inventory directly to consumer brands and we bill and collect media cost on their behalf.

We believe Criteo Retail Media is a particularly differentiated offering in the marketplace with significant growth opportunities.

We will continue to roll out our Retail Media offering to new markets and adjacent verticals, making the digital stores of large retailers a key advertising channel to generate high gross margin revenue from consumer brands.

In addition, we intend to grow the number of retailers we work with in the U.S.

and Europe, deepen our share of wallets with existing retailer and brand customers, accelerate our geographic expansion in the APAC region, grow our offsite advertising capabilities for brands across our premium publisher network on the open Internet with our Commerce Max DSP, grow Retail Media for retailer marketplaces, bring more commerce insights to brands as a key value-added service and provide brands with an integrated view on their Retail Media spend on retailer sites.

• Iponweb specializes in building real-time advertising technology and trading infrastructure, delivering advanced media buying, selling, and packaging capabilities for media owners, agencies, performance advertisers, and third-party AdTech platforms.

It enhances our scale and brings complementary capabilities on both the demand and the supply side to accelerate the execution of our Commerce Media Platform strategy by:

▪ Integrating Iponweb's BidCore DSP for mid- and upper-funnel marketing into Commerce Max to find valuable commerce audiences on retailer sites, extend to commerce audiences that exist offsite across the open internet, and cover the entire consumer buying journey;

▪ Adding The MediaGrid SSP to our Criteo Direct Bidder to expand our direct publisher footprint and enhance first-party data distribution and activation potential;

▪ Strengthening our own R&D capabilities and allow platform customization for our most strategic enterprise and agency clients;

▪ Leveraging the BidSwitch media trading marketplace, connecting 126 demand and 145 supply partners, to broaden the distribution of commerce audiences on the open Internet.

Our Competitive Strengths

We believe the Commerce Media Platform is transforming digital marketing and media monetization for our clients.

We enable brands' and retailers' growth by making their marketing and monetization efforts more efficient, effective and measurable by driving trusted and impactful business outcomes across multiple marketing goals.

We believe the following competitive strengths, supported by our first-mover advantage and 16 years of deep machine learning and AI expertise, have enabled us and will continue to enable us to capture a significant share of our commerce media opportunity:

Shopper Data.

Our First Party Media Network leverages massive amounts of granular first-party data focused on commerce and shopping behaviors, through data sharing among our clients.

With an estimated 750 million unique Daily Active Users in our Identity Graph, we are building one of the largest data sets focused on shoppers, with a scope and scale among the largest in the industry.

Close to $3 billion worth of daily transactions across 4 billion product SKUs from 3,500 product categories are incorporated into our graph, allowing us to analyze about 75 million daily buyer journeys.

Consumer Reach, Scale and Network Effects.

Our large and loyal base of customers and first-party media owner partners provide for stability and positive network effects.

As of December 31, 2022, we had approximately 22,000 clients, including some of the largest ecommerce/retailers companies in the world, and our client retention rate was approximately 90%.

Our direct integrations on both the demand and supply sides ensure privacy-compliant access to first-party data, shielding from the consequences of third-party cookie limitations.

As we continue to grow our client base, we continue to grow the number of users who interact with our ads, increasing our consumer reach and allowing us to benefit from greater scale when buying inventory from publisher partners, many of whom have granted us preferred access to portions of their advertising inventory.

There are also significant opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell our product portfolio within our large existing customer base.

As clients spend more with us and we attract more media inventory and deliver more ads, our data assets grow, enabling us to deliver even more precisely targeted and personalized ads and generate a greater impact for our customers, both marketers and media owners.

As a result, we believe more brands, commerce marketers and media owners may use our offering and potentially increase their spend with us.

This, in turn, may enable us to increase monetization for media owners and retailers, further expanding our media network and enhancing our ability to drive performance for all clients.

This cycle of self-reinforcing network effects, based on our large scale and loyal base of marketer and media owner customers and partners, may continue to fuel our business in the future.

Retail Media .

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This creates a network effect where the value for clients only increases as more brand and retailer participants join the ecosystem.

In addition, our deep technical integrations with retailers, requiring meaningful engineering investment from the retailer, make us very sticky with them and enable us to offer preferred or exclusive inventory to brands and agencies, as well as a superior shopper experience to consumers.

In addition, our deep technical integrations with retailers make us instrumental to their digital success and enable us to offer preferred or exclusive inventory to brands and agencies, as well as a superior shopper experience to consumers.

We require multi-year commitments and product ads exclusivity as part of our standard retailer services agreements.

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For example, our API partner program embeds our technology into ad platforms that brands and agencies already use to buy search, social, and other large platforms' ad inventory.

Additionally, with many major brand and agency clients, we connect our reporting data directly into client analytics and reporting platforms via our APIs.

Superior Insights and Measurement .

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Scaled Global Presence.

We do business in 94 countries and have a direct operating presence through 27 offices in 18 countries.

We do busine ss in 109 countries an d have a direct operating presence t hrough 29 offices in 17 countries.

We have achieved this global presence by replicating and scaling our effective business model across all geographic markets.

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Our company has a sustainable, robust profitability margin.

In the year ended December 3 1, 2022, our Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of Contribution ex-TAC was 29%, including the impact of Iponweb’s lower margin profile.

In a ddition, we manage our expense base in a disciplined way, and we have a clear plan to drive operating leverage fr om scaling and transitioning to more self-service solutions over time, as well as synergies with IPONWEB and optimizing our business processes.

Our financial model generates a sustainable and significant amount of free cash flow.

In 2022, net cash flows provided by operating activities were $256.0 million and consisted of net income of $10.9 million, $185.0 million in adjustments for non-cash and non-operating items and $60.1 million of cash flows used for working capital.

For the year ended December 31, 2022, we generated free cash flow of $200.1 million .

In addition, our company maintained a strong cash position of $348.2 million at the end of fiscal 2022, which, together with marketable securities and our Revolving Credit Facility, provides for financial liquidity of about $835 million, offering flexibility for executing on our strategic roadmap.

We believe ha ving a profitable, cash-generative financial model providing financial flexibility and investment capacity is a strong competitive advantage, compared to multiple sub-scale companies in our industry.

In addition, we manage our expense base in a disciplined way, and we have a clear plan to drive operating leverage fr om scaling and transitioning to more self-service solutions over time, as well as optimizing our business processes.

Our Business & Growth Opportunities

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We are further expanding our rapidly growing retailer client base, becoming a platform of choice for agencies and brands and reinforcing our performance advantage.

Other core elements of our broader business strategy include:

Strengthen the Core.

We continuously strengthen our retargeting product, aimed at converting our clients' customers in both the web and apps.

We intend to achieve this by leveraging our strong differentiators, including around Criteo Buyer Index and user identification thanks to our first-party media network, continuously improving Criteo's AI Engine technology and the strong performance of our core product in all environments despite the loss of third-party signals.

Expand Our Product Portfolio .

As part of our transformation, we intend to continue to leverage our existing assets to diversify and strengthen our business outside of retargeting , continue to build and expand our suite of fast-growing new solutions, including Commerce Audiences and new capabilities from Iponweb and build further competitive moats around our core assets.

In fiscal year 2022, our non-retargeting solutions alrea dy represented close to 37% of our total business, as measured on a Contribution ex-TAC basis, including 47% in the fourth quarter 2022.

We are investing in the growth of these non-retargeting solutions and expect them to represent close to 50% of our overall business in 2023, including of the integration of Iponweb.

Explore Strategic Game Changers.

We look for opportunities to extend and accelerate the growth of our business by exploring and bringing strategic assets and capabilities through partnerships and M&A , in addition to executing organically.

For example, in 2022, we entered and expanded a number of partnerships.

• We expanded our efforts with leading ecommerce platforms, most notably Shopify.

Criteo became a Shopify Plus partner and was included in their first AdTech partner cohort.

• We continued to invest in connecting with all the major Customer Data Platforms our client use.

These enables consistent, real time 1st party customer data across our platform, including Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, Segment (Twilio), Klaviyo and more.

• In the fourth quarter, we launched proof of concept testing with two of the leading data clean room providers to evaluate their usage as secure environments that enable first-party data connections and syncing across marketers and media owners.

• Our growing reseller network for Commerce Growth continued to develop in APAC and has now started to roll out across EMEA.

• Over 70 agencies joined our training and incentive program, Criteo Premium Partners, showing promising signs of growth.

• Criteo’s clients are using partner powered creatives like United Plankton that helps to create video assets from static images expanding our portfolio of solutions.

• We entered proof of concept tests with a leading data provider, Axciom, to explore adding demographic data to performance to enhance client campaigns.

In the future, we intend to continue to collaborate with existing and new industry partners to extend the capabilities and functionalities of our Commerce Media Platform, beyond what we currently offer on a standalone basis.

As part of our transformation, we intend to continue to leverage our existing assets to diversify and strengthen our business outside of retargeting , continue to build and expand our suite of fast-growing new solutions in Commerce Media, and build further competitive moats around our core assets.

In fiscal year 2023, new solutions represented more than half of our total business.

We are investing in the growth of these new solutions and expect them to represent more than 50% of our overall business in 2024.

We continue to invest in building the world’s leading Commerce Media Ecosystem with notable wins and valuable expansions across our partner network.

Our ecosystem is a critical part of Criteo’s moat and the unique value we provide to clients.

• E-Commerce Platforms – Criteo became the first open web marketing platform available to merchants using Shopify Audiences to activate their high intent audiences alongside other major advertising platforms like Meta, Google, Pinterest, Snap, and TikTok.

• Strategics – We have been working to extend Criteo’s integrations with major platforms, beyond Shopify, and in Q4 launched our first series of Criteo audiences available in Google’s DV360 buying platform.

• 1st party Data – We drove significant scale in receiving first-party customer records from clients with major CDP partners like Adobe, Klaviyo, Amperity as well as extending our partnership with data specialists like LiveRamp and Oracle.

• Measurement & Verification – Criteo is the first platform to make Integral Ad Science’s measurement technology available seamlessly to all retailers globally, supporting increased monetization from brands that rely on this standard being available.

• Innovation – We signed a new integration to deliver in-store media with leading digital screen provider SES-Imagotag.

• Addressability – We added four new data partnerships to our Commerce Grid supply-side platform including AirGrid by MiQ, Anonymized and Oracle’s Blue Kai data, which will provide our supply-side curation business with additional dimensions for creating deals leverage by partners such as Dentsu UK.

All of the partners provide solutions that are protected from the upcoming changes related to access to third-party cookies in Chrome.

• API Accessibility – We have the largest global independent API program and expanded to 13 partners including SaaS providers, in house agency technology, and in house brand direct technology, such as Skai and Flywheel.

We provide our retailers and brand clients the ability to utilize their platform of choice to drive the greatest outcomes for their business.

We also continue to expand our partnerships into more regional markets including EMEA and APAC.

We continue to have an active M&A pipeline, with a critical assessment on technologies and businesses that have the potential to accelerate our Commerce Media Platform strategy by enhancing, complementing or expanding our strategic capabilities, primarily through technology and broadening our Commerce Media capabilities across all channels.

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We believe our entrepreneurial culture, growth opportunity, global scale, financial profile, strong brand and market position enable us to be an attractive acquirer.

• In August 2022, we closed the acquisition of IPONWEB, a market-leading AdTech company with world-class media trading capabilities, for $250 million comprised of a mix of cash and treasury shares of the Company, with an earn-out consideration of up to $100 million subject to certain financial and performance milestones.

This strategic acquisition is expected to accelerate our Commerce Media Platform strategy by adding scale, complementary products, and stronger first-party data capabilities, further reducing our reliance on third-party cookies and other identifiers.

Drive Technology and Operations Excellence.

We take a portfolio management approach to managing our business, organization and expense base:

right-sizing or streamlining the parts of the business with stabilizing revenue in order to enable investments on the growing parts of our business into technology innovation and other strategic priorities.

We intend to continue to invest in growing our business, while driving productivity and efficiency gains through operational excellence across the company and maintaining healthy profitability.

We intend to continue to invest in growing our business, while driving productivity and efficiency gains through organization simplification and operational excellence across the company and maintaining healthy profitability.

We believe these investments will feed the long-term sustainable growth of Criteo.

We intend to continue to make disciplined investments in our technology innovation and new product development, including in Retail Media, our first-party media network, customer acquisition and retention solutions, online video, Connected TV and Commerce Insights.

We expect these investments to further strengthen our Commerce Media Platform.

Driving operational excellence through the company to self-fund for our investments involves increasing automation and the scalability of our operations.

Infrastructure

We also leverage cutting-edge technology to streamline processes and enhance operational efficiency

Infras tructure

Our ability to execute depends on our highly sophisticated global technology software and hardware infrastructure.

As of December 31, 2022, our global infrastructure included approximately 45,000 servers through a global network of ten data centers, including one Hadoop cluster, that comprise to 3,000 servers hosting 800,000 processing cores, providing a storage capacity exceeding 280 petabytes and 1 petabyte of random-access memory.

Our global infrastructure is divided into three independent geographic areas:

As of December 31, 2023, we manage our global infrastructure of servers through a global network of data centers.

Our global infrastructure is divided into three geographic areas:

Americas, Asia-Pacific and EMEA, and our services are delivered through one or more data centers that support each particular area.

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In addition, we consider sustainability factors as we evaluate our infrastructure footprint, including prioritizing resource efficiency and clean energy to operate sustainable data centers.

Within each data center, computing power is provided by horizontal build-outs of commodity servers arranged in multiple, highly redundant pools.

Some of these pools are dedicated to handling incoming traffic and delivering ads while others are devoted to the data analytics involved in creating our ads.

In particular, we use software specifically designed for processing large data sets, such as Hadoop, to run offline data analyzes and to train our AI and machine learning models.

The results are then fed back to refresh and improve our prediction and recommendation algorithms.

As part of our growth strategy, some of our products rely on major public cloud providers.

Performance, response time and reach are driving how we manage cloud capacity.

We use multiple-layered security controls to protect Criteo AI Engine and our data assets, including hardware- and software-based access controls for our source code and production systems, segregated networks for different components of our production systems and centralized production systems management.

On the demand side for media activation, our diversified client base consists of more than 1,800 established brands and agencies, and more than 20,000 performance marketers, primarily in the retail, travel and classifieds verticals, and including some of the largest and most sophisticated commerce companies in the world.

On the supply side for media monetization, we power the Retail Media Networks of approximately 175 retailers, as media owners.

On the demand side for commerce media activation, our diversified client base consists of more than 2,600 established brands and agencies, and more than 15,400 performance marketers, primarily in the retail, travel and classifieds verticals, and including some of the largest and most sophisticated commerce companies in the world.

On the supply side for commerce media monetization, we power the Retail Media Networks of approximately 220 retailers, as media owners.

We also partner with approximately 75% of the top 100 ComScore publishers in our largest markets.

As of December 31, 2022, we had a total of approximatel y 22,000 clients.

At the end 2022, approximately 67% of our client relationships were held directly with the client and the remaining 33% with advertising agencies or other third-parties on the Criteo Marketing Solutions side of the business, whereas 37% of our Criteo Retail Media revenue comes from agencies.

We believe our business is not substantially dependent on any particular client or group of clients.

As of December 31, 2023, we had a total of approximately 18,000 clients.

4 In 2023, approximately 49% of our client relationships were held directly with the client and the remaining 51% with advertising agencies or other third-parties on the Criteo Marketing Solutions side of the business, whereas 30% of our Criteo Retail Media revenue comes from agencies.

In 2023 and 2022, our largest client represented 2.1%, and 1.9% of our revenue, respectively, and in 2023 and 2022, our largest 10 clients represented 12.3% and 9.8% of our revenue in the aggregate, respectively.

There is no group of clients under common control or clients that are affiliates of each other constituting an aggregate amount equal to 10% or more of our consolidated revenues, the loss of which would have a material adverse effect on Criteo.

We define a client to be a unique party from whom we have received a signed contract or an insertion order and for whom we have delivered an advertisement or monetized an advertising inventory during the previous 12 months.

We count specific brands or divisions within the same business as distinct clients so long as those entities have separately signed insertion orders with us.

In the case of some solutions within Criteo Retail Media, we count the parent company of the brands as an individual client, even if several distinct brands pertaining to the same parent company have signed separate contracts or insertion orders with us.

On the other hand, we count a client who runs campaigns in multiple geographies as a single client, even though multiple insertion orders may be involved.

When the insertion order is with an advertising agency, we generally consider the client on whose behalf the advertising campaign is conducted as the “client” for purposes of this calculation.

In the event a client has its advertising spend with us managed by multiple agencies, that client is counted as a single client.

Our client base is composed of two client categories:

the Enterprise client category (large clients), and the Growth client category (midmarket clients).

Each client category is serviced through a combination of direct and indirect approaches, including through brand agencies for the Enterprise category, and performance agencies and resellers for the Growth category.

Our clients are serviced through a combination of direct and indirect approaches, including through brand agencies for large clients, and performance agencies and resellers for midmarket clients.

Research and Development

We invest substantial resources in research and development to maintain our leading position in Commerce Media.

Aside from the walled garden platform, we have the largest concentration of R&D talents in the AdTech industry.

Our engineering group is primarily located in research and development centers in Paris, France, Grenoble, France and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

With the acquisition of Iponweb, we also have expanded our R&D engineering centers to include Berlin, Germany, Limasol, Cyprus and Yerevan, Armenia.

We expect to continue to expand capabilities of our technology in the future and to invest significantly in continued research and development and new solutions efforts.

Aside from the walled garden platforms, we have one of the largest R&D teams in the AdTech industry and our Criteo AI Lab pioneering innovations in computational advertising.

Our engineering group is primarily located in research and development centers in France, Germany, Cyprus, Armenia, Canada and in the U.S.

We expect to continue to expand our technological capabilities in the future and to invest significantly in continued research and development and new solutions.

We had 1,021 employees primarily engaged in Research and Development and Product as of December 31, 2023.

Research and development expenses, including expenses related to the Product group, tot aled $187.6 millio n, $151.8 million and $132.5 million for 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively.

Research and development expenses, including expenses related to the Product group, tot aled $242.3 million, $187.6 million and $151.8 million for 2023, 2022 and 2021, respectively.

Intellectual Property

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We also generally require our employees and consultants to execute invention assignment agreements with us that protect our intellectual property rights.

4 In the first quarter of 2023, we streamlined our client count methodology which is now based on unique billing accounts while the previous methodology included clients from whom Criteo has received a signed contract or an insertion order during the previous 12 months.

The new methodology led to the consolidation of some clients accounts but does not change the underlying activity or the overall trends.

Intellectual property laws, together with our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, provide only limited protection, and any of our intellectual property rights may be challenged, invalidated, circumvented, infringed or misappropriated.

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As of December 31, 2023, we held 30 patents issued by the U.S.

Patent and Trademark Office and various foreign counterparts, and had filed four non-provisional patent applications in the U.S.

Patent and Trademark Office and various foreign counterparts, and had filed three non-provisional patent applications in the U.S.

We also own and use registered and unregistered trademarks on or in connection with our products and services in numerous jurisdictions.

In addition, we have also registered numerous internet domain names.

Our industry is characterized by the existence of a large number of patents and frequent claims and related litigation regarding patent and other intellectual property rights.

Our industry is characterized by the existence of patents and occasional claims and related litigation regarding patent and other intellectual property rights.

In particular, leading companies in the technology industry have extensive patent portfolios.

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Various states have also enacted legislation that governs these practices.

For example, on September 27, 2013, the governor of California signed into law AB 370, an amendment to the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003, or CalOPPA.

This amendment requires that we disclose in our privacy policy how we respond to web browser "do not track" signals.

Our current privacy policy discloses that we do not respond to web browser "do not track" signals but that we do respond to opt-out requests made through our proprietary opt-out button or through industry opt-out platforms (namely Network Advertising Initiative and Digital Advertising Alliance).

However, the U.S.

privacy law framework may be subject to significant evolutions in the near future both at a federal and at a state level.

At a federal level, lawmakers are currently considering the possibility of adopting a federal privacy law and a draft bill published in this regard in 2022 ("American Data Privacy and Protection Act").

In 2018, the State of California adopted the California Consumer Privacy Act, or the CCPA.

The CCPA has been characterized as the first “GDPR-like” privacy statute to be enacted in the U.S.

because its scope, and a number of the key provisions, resemble the GDPR.

The CCPA establishes a new privacy framework for covered businesses by, among other requirements, creating an expanded definition of personal information, establishing new data privacy rights for consumers in the State of California, imposing special rules on the collection of personal data from minors, creating new notice obligations and new limits on the sale of personal information, and creating a new and potentially severe statutory damages framework for violations of the CCPA and for businesses that fail to implement reasonable security procedures and practices to prevent data breaches.

As currently enacted, we and partners in our industry have been required to comply with these requirements since January 1, 2020, when the CCPA became effective.

As with GDPR, the advertising technology marketplace may have to adapt to operating under the CCPA where it applies.

Our advertising or publishing partners may impose new CCPA restrictions with which we must adapt and comply.

In November 2020, the voters in California voted to pass the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”), an Act that both amends and expands the scope of the CCPA.

The CPRA became effective on January 1, 2023, with a look back period to January 1, 2022.

The CPRA creates new criteria by which businesses can be regulated, expands the definition of “personal information” to more closely match Europe, a new audit requirement, and the creation of an agency to oversee enforcement of the CPRA.

The CPRA also explicitly provides an opt-out right for cross-contextual behavioral advertising.

We cannot predict the timing or outcome of this adaptation or the effect on our business.

Adapting our business to the CCPA and the new requirements under the CPRA could involve substantial resources and expense, and may cause us to divert resources from other aspects of our business, all of which may adversely affect our business.

At a federal level, lawmakers are considering the possibility of adopting a federal privacy law and a draft bill was published in this regard in 2022 ("American Data Privacy and Protection Act").

In 2018, the State of California adopted the CCPA, which went into effect on January 1, 2020.

The CCPA establishes a privacy framework for covered businesses by, among other requirements, creating an expanded definition of personal information, establishing new data privacy rights for consumers in the State of California, creating new notice obligations and new limits on the sale of personal information, and creating a statutory damages framework for violations of the CCPA and for businesses that fail to implement reasonable security procedures and practices to prevent data breaches.

We and partners in our industry have been required to comply with these requirements since January 1, 2020, when the CCPA became effective.

In November 2020, the voters in California passed the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”), which both amends and expands the scope of the CCPA.

The CPRA, which became effective on January 1, 2023, created additional privacy rights and protections for California consumers with respect to their personal information and additional obligations on businesses.

We cannot predict the full effect of these laws and regulations on our business, but adapting our business to comply with them could involve substantial resources and expense, and may cause us to divert resources from other aspects of our business, all of which may adversely affect our business.

Other states in the U.S.

are quickly adopting state enacted privacy laws.

Virginia, Colorado and more recently, Connecticut and Utah passed consumer and privacy laws that differ slightly from the CCPA/CPRA.

Virginia, Colorado and more recently, Connecticut and Utah have passed consumer and privacy laws that differ slightly from the CCPA and CPRA.

If other states follow suit, it could lead to a varied and complex regulatory landscape, which could result in material costs.

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jurisdictions.

In the European Union, the two main pillars of the data protection legal framework are the E-Privacy Directive (Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was implemented in May 2018.

In the European Union (the "EU"), the two main pillars of the data protection legal framework are the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications (the "E-Privacy Directive") and GDPR.

The E-Privacy Directive directs EU member states to ensure that accessing information on an Internet user’s computer, such as through a cookie and other similar technologies, is allowed only if the Internet user has been informed about such access and given his or her consent.

A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union clarified that such consent must be reflected by an affirmative act of the user, and European regulators are increasingly agitating for more robust forms of consent.

The Court of Justice of the EU clarified that such consent must be reflected by an affirmative act of the user, and European regulators are increasingly agitating for more robust forms of consent.

These developments result in ending reliance on implied consent mechanisms that have been used to meet requirements of the E-Privacy Directive in some markets.

A replacement for the E-Privacy Directive is still under discussion by EU member states to complement and bring electronic communication services in line with the GDPR and force a harmonized approach across EU member states.

It is possible that the proposed e-privacy regulation could further raise the bar for the use of cookies and the fines and penalties for breach could be significant.

In December 2016, the EU institutions reached an agreement on the GDPR.

The GDPR has updated principles drawn from the 1995 Data Protection Directive while imposing new levels of sanctions for non-compliance.

The EU data protection authorities have also been granted power to impose administrative fines of up to a maximum of €20 million or 4% of the data controller's or data processor's global turnover for the preceding financial year, whichever is higher.

We believe that the regulation has no material impact on our business or the way our technologies operate.

However, GDPR is still a relatively recent regulation with no established case law.

Therefore interpretations of the GDPR may vary, especially with respect to the articulation between GDPR (lex generali) and E-Privacy Directive (lex speciali) and the conditions for the collection of a valid "cookie" consent, and thus there can be no assurance that this will not have any particular impact on our business, technologies or practices in the medium to long term.

Further, on October 1, 2020, the French data protection authority ( Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés , or CNIL) issued the final version of its guidelines on the use of cookies and other trackers and its final recommendations on modalities for obtaining users’ consent to store or read non-essential cookies and similar technologies on their devices.

A replacement for the E-Privacy Directive is still under discussion by EU member states to align the E-Privacy Directive to GDPR and force a harmonized approach across EU member states.

It is possible that the proposed e-privacy regulation could further raise the bar for the use of cookies.

However, the advancement of the legislative process for the adoption of the e-privacy regulation remains quite uncertain.

Under GDPR, data protection authorities have the power to impose administrative fines of up to a maximum of €20 million or 4% of the data controller's or data processor's global turnover from the preceding financial year, whichever is higher.

On October 1, 2020, the French data protection authority (the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés , or the "CNIL") issued the final version of its guidelines on the use of cookies and other trackers and its final recommendations on modalities for obtaining users’ consent to store or read non-essential cookies and similar technologies on their devices.

The recommendations provide that, when required, consent must be indicated by a clear and positive action of the data subject, such as by clicking on an “accept all” button on the first layer of the consent management platform.

CNIL also noted that it should be as easy to refuse consent to the use of cookies as it is to accept consent, and an equivalent to the “refuse all” button should be present on the first layer of the consent management platform.

The CNIL also noted that it should be as easy to refuse consent to the use of cookies as it is to accept consent, and an equivalent to the “refuse all” button should be present on the first layer of the consent management platform.

Further, the ability to withdraw consent must be readily available at all times.

Companies had until March 2021 to ensure compliance with these guidelines, and CNIL is still auditing many websites in France to verify if they comply with its guidelines.

As we continue to expand into other foreign jurisdictions, we may be subject to additional laws and regulations that may affect how we conduct business.

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For example, the Internet Advertising Bureau EU & US, the Network Advertising Initiative, the European Digital Advertising Alliance and the Digital Advertising Alliance have developed and implemented guidance for companies to provide notice and choice to users regarding targeted advertising.

We also provide consumers with notice about our use of cookies and our collection and use of data in connection with the delivery of targeted advertising, and allow them to opt out from the use of such data for the delivery of targeted advertising.

We also provide consumers with notice about our use of cookies and our collection and use of data in connection with the delivery of targeted advertising, and allow them to withdraw consent or opt out from the use of such data for the delivery of targeted advertising.

In an effort to harmonize the industry’s approach to internet-based advertising, these programs facilitate a user's ability to disable services of integrated providers, but also educate users on the potential benefits of online advertising, including access to free content and display of more relevant advertisements to them.

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Criteo became one of the first companies to broadly include an "Ad Choices" link in all the advertisements we deliver, which gives users access to clear, transparent, detailed and user-friendly information about personalized advertisements and the data practices associated with the advertisements they receive.

In addition, we provide consumers with an easy-to-use and easy-to-access mechanism to control their advertising experience and opt out of receiving targeted advertisements we deliver.

In addition, we provide consumers with an easy-to-use and easy-to-access mechanism to control their advertising experience and withdraw consent or opt out of receiving targeted advertisements we deliver.

We believe that this transparent consumer-centric approach to privacy empowers consumers to make better-informed decisions about our use of their data.

We also actively encourage our clients and publishers to provide information to consumers about our collection and use of data relating to the advertisements we deliver and monitor.

We also require our clients and publishers to provide information to consumers about our collection and use of data relating to the advertisements we deliver and monitor.

Content Control and Brand Safety

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The costs of compliance with these laws and regulations are high and are likely to increase in the future and any failure on our part to comply with these laws may subject us to significant liabilities and other penalties.

For additional information regarding a pending investigation into the Company's compliance with GDPR, please refer to Refer to Note 19, Commitments and Contingencies, in our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Form 10-K .

For additional information regarding a recent investigation into the Company's compliance with GDPR, please refer to Refer to Note 20, Commitments and Contingencies, in our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Form 10-K .

We compete in the commerce media market and in the broader market for digital marketing and media monetization, primarily through Display Advertising.

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We face significant competition in this market, which we expect to intensify in the future, partially as a result of potential new entrants in our market, including but not limited to large well-established internet publishers and players, in particular as we continue to expand the breadth of the Criteo Commerce Media Platform.

We currently compete with large, well-established companies, such as Amazon, Meta Platforms, Google, and Microsoft, pure play Demand-Side Platforms ("DSPs"), such as The Trade Desk, Viant Technology or Google's DV360, pure play Supply-Side Platforms (“SSPs”) such as Magnite, PubMatic or Google Ad Manager, and pure play retail SSPs such as Microsoft's PromoteIQ or Publicis' CitrusAd, that focus on monetizing retailers' media, as well as smaller, privately held companies.

We currently compete with large, well-established companies, such as Amazon, Meta Platforms, Google, and Microsoft, pure play Demand-Side Platforms ("DSPs"), such as The Trade Desk or Google's DV360, pure play Supply-Side Platforms (“SSPs”) such as Magnite, PubMatic or Google Ad Manager, and pure play retail SSPs such as Microsoft's PromoteIQ or Publicis' CitrusAd, that focus on monetizing retailers' media, as well as smaller, privately held companies.

Potential competition could emerge from large enterprise marketing platforms, like Adobe Systems Inc.

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As of December 31, 2023, we had 3,563 employees.

Our employees employed by French ent iti es (1,053 employees) are represented by a labor union and employee representative bodies (works' council, employee delegates and a health and safety committee) and covered by collective bargaining agreements.

Our employees employed by French entities (971 employees) are covered by a collective bargaining agreement and are represented by employees through a Social and Economic Committee (Work Council) affiliated to a trade union.

As part of the Social and Economic Committee, five sub-committees have been appointed:

Health & Safety Committee, Economic Committee, Gender Equality Committee, Training Committee and a Housing Committee.

We consider labor relations to be good and have not experienced any work stoppages, slowdowns or other serious labor problems that have materially impeded our business operations.

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We are committed to offering an environment in which employees are ensured equal job opportunities and have a chance for advancement.

As part of our transformation, we have undertaken a number of initiatives to enhance our employee value proposition and experience, very flexible working practices and the renovation of our main offices to offer attractive workplaces.

Our compelling employee value proposition, attractive compensation packages and vibrant culture are instrumental in our ability to attract and retain talent.

Additionally, we strive to provide exceptional training opportunities and development programs for our employees.

In 2022, over 45,924 training hours were delivered to our employees.

In 2023, approximately 30,000 training hours were delivered to our employees.

To assess and improve employee retention and engagement, we periodically survey employees, and take action to address areas of employee concern.

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We are proud that our employees can be themselves at work and we value diversity in the workforce;

as of December 31, 2022, 41% of our 3,716 employees are women.

as of December 31, 2 023, 41% of our employees are w omen.

As stated in our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policy, our mission is to sustain our focus on equity, and building stronger diversity through how we hire, develop, reward, and retain all talent at Criteo.

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We are proud to have gender pay parity.

Our efforts to foster a diverse and inclusive workplace are led by a dedicated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion leadership team who partner through the business and leverage our seven active Employees Resource Groups (“ERGs”) who engage with employees, support allyship and sponsorship to encourage community, networking and safe spaces for all diverse groups throughout Criteo.

In 2022, 40% of our employees were involved in at least one of our seven ERGs.

Our efforts to foster a diverse and inclusive workplace are led by a dedicated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion leadership team who partner through the business and leverage our seven active Employees Resource Groups (“ERGs”) who engage with employees, sup port allyship and sponsorship to encourage community, networking and safe spaces for all diverse groups throughout Criteo.

In 2023, 41% of our em ployees were involved in at least one of our seven ERGs.

This work extends to our efforts to strengthen our inclusive culture and drive sustainable efforts that impact our environment and societal interests throughout and beyond Criteo.

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We devote time and effort across all of our locations to provide positive working conditions, work-life balance and a healthy office environment for our employees.

The COVID-19 pandemic has helped us shape, define, and evolve our work model.

We have built a flexible work approach for employees to be able to choose where they work best.

We recognize and support employees with their work life integration and believe that flexibility is an essential element to remain engaged, efficient, and productive.

We also believe in the importance of employee contribution and results, rather than focusing on where work is being completed.

We foster a dynamic environment where employees are empowered to reach their highest potential.

Total Rewards

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We seek coherence and fairness in total compensation with reference to external market comparisons, internal equity, and the relationship between management and non-management compensation.

Our total compensation packages include base pay, performance-based incentives, long-term incentives such as equity awards, retirement plans, healthcare and other insurance benefits, paid time off, paid family leave, employee assistance and wellbeing programs among many others.

Financial Information about Segments and Regions

Prior to the third quarter of 2022, we managed our operations as two reportable segments.

Beginning in the third quarter of 2022, and following our acquisition of Iponweb, we report our segment results as Marketing Solutions, Retail Media and Iponweb:

• Marketing Solutions allow commerce companies to address multiple marketing goals by engaging their consumers with personalized ads across the web, mobile and offline store environments.

• Retail Media allows retailers to generate advertising revenues from consumer brands, and/or to drive sales for themselves, by monetizing their data and audiences through personalized ads, either on their own digital property or on the open Internet, that address multiple marketing goals.

For information about revenues, and contribution ex-TAC of our reporting segments, please see our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Form 10-K.

For a breakdown of our revenue and non-current assets by region, please see Note 20 to our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Form 10-K.

For information regarding risks associated with our international operations, please refer to the section entitled "Risk Factors" in Item 1A of Part I in this Form 10-K.

Available Information

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Compared sentence by sentence after normalising whitespace, quotation marks, case and digits, so re-formatting and restated figures do not read as changed language. Wording changes appear as one removal and one addition. The current filing and the prior one are authoritative.

What changed 10-K

Item 1. Business