Roku’s user base continues to grow as the company continues to set more OEM partnerships and product launches designed to get more people onto its platform.
During the third quarter, Roku added 1.7 million new active accounts to take its total to 32.3 million, up 36% year over year. The company pointed toward new player launches and smart TV OS integrations as being key to spurring further user growth. That includes new Roku streaming players launched in September, new smart soundbars at Best Buy and Walmart and new Roku smart TVs from OEM partners like TCL.
Roku said it’s in good position to capitalize on the cord cutting trend. The company cited eMarketer research suggesting that around 56 million households in total will have canceled cable or satellite TV subscriptions by 2023. The company said its own research suggests that roughly 50% of U.S. cord cutters are Roku customers.
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As Roku continues to grow its user base, the company’s platform business is becoming a larger portion of overall revenues. During the quarter, platform revenues totaled $179.3 million, up 79% year over year. Advertising is a big part of platform revenue and the company said that monetized video ad impressions on its platform more than doubled year over year.
“The Roku Channel contributed to this growth as impressions within the channel are growing faster than our impressions within the overall platform,” the company wrote in a letter to shareholders. “While we continue to work with the majority of the Ad Age 200, our ad clientele continues to diversify and now also includes a wider range of small- and medium-sized businesses as well as local, direct-to-consumer, mid-market, performance, programmatic and direct-response advertisers.”
Roku said that its recent acquisition of dataxu will help accelerate its advertising product roadmap. Due to the transaction and the company’s performance in the third quarter, Roku raised its full-year 2019 revenue outlook to $1.106 billion, representing roughly 49% year over year growth.
While player revenue only rose 11% during the quarter, total net revenue grew 50% to reach about $261 million. Gross profit of $118.5 million was also up 50% year over year. The company's net losses grew to $26.5 million.