Roku Rises to 80 Million Active Accounts

It has been a while since we have heard from Roku, the nascent streaming service best known for its digitally-enabled set-top boxes and other smart products as well as its AVOD services. In its Q4 earnings report last week, it has just managed to pip Wall Street expectations, with a noted gain in active accounts on the service, too. Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment lawyer, Brandon Blake, has the details.

                                                  Brandon Blake

Beating Wall Street Expectations- Just

Roku beat Wall Street predictions to close the year at $984.4M, just ahead of the expected $964.2M results. While there was still a loss of $0.55c a share, this is a notable narrowing from the $1.70 loss in the same period of the previous year. Despite these gains, Wall Street did have some trepidations over the ‘uneven’ recovery in its advertising market, ultimately leaving the share price down by 14% for after-hours trading.

10 Million New Active Accounts

The news that they have reached the 80M active accounts benchmark represents about 10M newly active accounts onboarded over the year. Roku also announced that it has passed the 100 billion mark on streaming hours. Platform revenue rose by 13% to $829M, while gross margin stayed flat at 55%. As can be expected, we see lowered entertainment and media promotions thanks to last year’s disrupted labor environment.

 

However, there was a 4% slip in the average revenue per user, one of the key streaming metrics. This was explained as a general move to non-domestic active accounts in a bid to increase their global footprint- a sacrificing of short-term revenue for long-term growth. Given this mirrors the general streaming environment, it may be a smart choice.

 

Overall, despite some small setbacks, this is one of the most robust positions we’ve seen for Roku to date. Can they leverage it for further market share against the streaming giants? Their growth will be interesting to watch in 2024.