Roku Earnings Beat Expectations, Active Users Reach 73.5 Million

Roku this past week reported that it lost $108 million on revenues of $847 million in the quarter ending June 30. Revenues were up 11 percent year-over-year (YOY) and the results beat expectations, and Roku reported that it added 1.9 million new active users in the quarter, bringing the total to 73.5 million.

“We delivered solid results in Q2, growing scale, engagement, and monetization,” Roku’s letter to shareholders reads. “The operating environment remains largely unchanged from Q1, with strong consumer demand for Roku TV models while TV advertising remains muted industry-wide. We have begun to see some ad verticals improve, which resulted in modest YOY Platform revenue growth in Q2, and we are well positioned to re-accelerate growth as the ad market recovers.”

While Roku is perhaps best known for its dominant video streaming players, that part of the business delivers a small percentage of its total revenues. In this quarter, for example, Devices posted revenues of $103.3 million, while Roku’s Platform business—which is comprised of advertising, content distribution, and Roku Pay—delivered $743.8 million in revenues. Indeed, it is Roku’s devices that are responsible for the quarterly loss: the Platform business reported a profit of $395.8 million this past quarter, and it has been profitable for at least the past year, while Devices drove to a loss of $17.6 million and that business is rarely profitable.

In addition to its new active users milestone, Roku also reported that total streaming hours grew 4.4 billion hours YOY to 25.1 billion. And its average revenue per user was down 7 percent to $40.67 over the previous 12 sequential months. And Nielsen for the first time recognized The Roku Channel as a contributor to viewing share in the U.S. in May, reporting that it accounted for 1.1 percent of total U.S. viewing, tied with Peacock and just behind Max and Tubi. (The Roku Channel also accounted for 3 percent of all streaming hours that month.)