Roku Shares Explode on First Day of Trading

Roku made its opening day debut in trading on the stock market on Thursday and shares skyrocketed.

The stock, which trades under the ticker symbol ROKU, gained 67% on its first day as a public company. Shares opened at $15.78 and closed at $23.50.

CEO Anthony Wood, a former Netflix executive, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” ahead of the IPO, “Roku’s position in this ecosystem is being the platform that ties together the customers, the advertisers, the user, and we’ve been competing with big companies for a long time very successfully.”

Wood will own 27.3 percent of Roku’s stock, and have control of approximately 32.1 percent of the voting power, according to the prospectus.

“What’s important in the evolution of the company is the platform business is becoming a greater and greater portion of Roku,” said Chief Financial Officer Steven Louden to MarketWatch in a telephone interview Thursday.

“It’s now 80% of our gross profit and I think it’s great proof-point for investors about really what the Roku business model is about.”

Roku had $398.6 million in revenue last year compared to $319.9 million in the year before.

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