Roku Beats on Revenue and Sees High User Growth

Roku shares were on fire after the company reported fourth quarter financial results on Thursday.

The company beat on revenue and reported a narrower than expected loss for the quarter.

Shares were up over 6% in after-hours trading on Thursday.

For the quarter, total revenues jumped 49% to $411.2 million, smashing forecasts of $392 million.

According to Roku, we’re now in the “streaming decade.” Retail sales were up 33 percent and total streaming hours up 60 percent compared to the same period last year. The total number of active Roku accounts reached 36.9 million.

CEO Anthony Wood said on the earnings call, “In Q4, we exceeded our outlook for revenue, gross profit, and EBITDA.
Moreover, 2019 was a tremendous year, both for the streaming industry and for Roku. Our revenue tops $1.1 billion and our customer stream roughly 40 billion hours. In only two years, we’ve doubled our topline and increased streaming hours by 170%.”

He added, “Streaming has come a long way in the last decade. 10 years ago, Netflix was about all I could stream on my TV and in fairly low resolution. But recently, I enjoy streaming the Super Bowl in brilliant 4k via Fox Sports on my quantum Roku TV with my Roku wireless speakers and subwoofer. In fact, streaming is often the easiest and sometimes the only way for people to watch in 4k.”

Looking ahead for the first quarter of 2020, Roku expects total revenue of $300-310 million and net loss of $55-60 million. For the full year of 2020, the company expects total revenue of $1.58 billion to $1.62 billion and net loss of $160-180 million.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Roku Inc (NASDAQ: ROKU) and have not been compensated for this article.