Roku Inc. benefited from improved advertising spending in the fourth quarter, while providing a surprise profit for the period.
The company posted a fourth-quarter profit of $ 67.3 million, or 49 cents a share, on Thursday, compared with a loss of $ 15.7 million or 13 cents a share a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected a loss of 5 cents per share.
YEAR OF THE YEAR,
reported adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) of $ 113.5 million, up from $ 15.1 million a year before and before the FactSet consensus, which required $ 43 million.
Shares rose 2.8% on Thursday after trading after the program.
Fourth-quarter revenue rose to $ 649.9 million from $ 411 million, while analysts demanded $ 619 million. The company generated revenue of $ 178.7 million from its gaming business and $ 471.2 million in revenue from its platform business, which includes licensing and advertising.
“Despite a slowdown in pandemic advertising in the US, our advertising business has proven resilient, Q4 Roku has generated video advertising impressions more than twice a year, as advertisers have increasingly targeted more and more users of traditional pay-TV streaming, ”the company said in a letter to shareholders.
Roku noted in the letter that the top six agency holding companies more than doubled their investment in Roku in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, “while also committing to significant advances. bigger for 2021 with Roku ”.
Roku’s average revenue per user was $ 28.76, up from $ 23.14 a year earlier.
The company disclosed 51.2 million active accounts as of the fourth quarter, after adding a net of 5.2 million accounts sequentially. Roku users delivered 17 billion hours of content in that quarter.
Roku revealed that The Roku Channel, which aggregates advertising content on the platform, doubled its coverage in the fourth quarter, with its use growing almost twice as fast as the overall Roku platform.
The company announced earlier this year that it would purchase an original programming catalog from Quibi, which Roku intended to present on The Roku Channel. Chief Financial Officer Steve Louden said in a media call with reporters following Roku’s earnings report that as the platform’s scale grows, the company will “continue to look for different ways to integrate content” in a way that matches the company’s ads. video model on request.
“We only have more options now that we are bigger,” he continued.
For the first quarter, Roku expects revenue of $ 478 million to $ 493 million. The company projects a net loss of 16 to 23 million dollars. Analysts forecast revenue of $ 463 million and a net loss of $ 52 million.
Looking at the full year, Roku declined to provide a quantitative forecast, but wrote to investors in the shareholders’ letter that it expects stronger comparisons in the first half of the year, given the impact of COVID-19 early last year and tougher comparisons in the second half. of the year.
“Thus, for the entire year, the overall increase in revenue from year to year will fall below the levels we expect to see in the first and second quarters of 2021,” Roku said in the letter.
Roku shares have gained 95% in the last three months as the S&P 500 SPX,
increased by 9.7%.