Roku continued to grow active accounts in the first quarter of 2022, though it moderated to 1.1 million incremental additions for a total of 61.3 million.
As more customers are added, usage also increased, with streaming hours increasing 14% year over year to 20.9 billion. That’s an increase of 1.4 billion hours over the fourth quarter of 2021.
During Roku’s earnings call CFO Steven Loudan said the more tepid active account growth was partly due to the government ending stimulus payments, which had provided a boost in 2021 as consumers had more money on hand for discretionary spending. He also cited continued supply chain disruptions that drove up the price of U.S. TVs, resulting in lower industry-wide TV sales that remained below 2019 pre-Covid levels for a third straight quarter.
During Q1 Roku grew revenue 28% year over year to $734 million, as it saw a 39% bump in platform revenue to $646.9 million, with player revenue declining 19% to $86.8 million. The platform segment benefited from higher distribution and strong growth in advertising revenue. However, profits saw a steep decline as the company reported income losses of $23.5 million, reflecting a 131% drop versus Q1 2021. Adjusted EBITDA was down 54% from the year prior to $57.6 million.
As more people tuned into streaming and TV during the pandemic, executives noted a difficult year over year comparison to 2021.
Loudan said financial performance was solid in the face of a challenging operating environment, but Roku expects to continue to have near-term challenges related to further uncertainties around supply chain disruptions, inflation pressures and geopolitical conflicts.
“We believe that the near-term headwinds are drove by the long-term opportunities in the secular shift to TV streaming and TV OS consolidation. The enormous value we deliver to consumers, content owners and advertisers will drive our growth,” Loudan said, according to a SeekingAlpha transcript.
For the full year Roku is forecasting total net revenue growth of about 35% year over year.
It’s Roku’s belief that “all audiences, all content and thus all advertising will shift to TV streaming,” Loudan said.
Roku’s letter to shareholders called out Nielsen data showing that TV streaming devices surpassed legacy pay TV set-top boxes and DVR in weekly reach in the U.S. for the first time, with 65% of adults 18-40 years streaming TV versus 63% watching pay TV in March.
“We will continue to enhance our OS, our ad platform, and drive the Roku Channel flywheel with great new content. And we will continue to provide content publishers with the audience and tools to grow successful streaming businesses.”
More AVOD benefits Roku
As more ad-supported options for streaming come to market, including potentially Netflix which has signaled it could introduce a lower-cost option that has ads, Roku sees opportunity.
Executives wouldn’t comment on what Netflix might do specifically other than to say the streaming giant “is a great partner” with Anthony Wood noting Roku has been working with the company since its streaming player launched in 2008.
Bringing in ads lowers the costs of services for consumers, attracting a wider audience and increasing interest in streaming.
As a streaming platform, Roku has a different business model than streaming services, making money by connecting consumers with content and advertisers.
“And so anything that causes more streaming to flow through the Roku platform is good for us and good for our business,” Wood commented. “More generally, I think we believe that more AVOD offerings will accelerate the movement of traditional TV budgets into streaming.”
Traditional TV advertising in the U.S. is a $60 billion opportunity, but most TV ad spending hasn’t moved to streaming yet with only 18% from traditional TV shifting to streaming so far, he said.
“Yet almost half of all TV time is streaming. And so it’s going to be 100% of ad budgets moving to streaming,” Wood continued.
In Q1 Roku retained 96% of advertisers that spent $1 million or more, and average spend among returning advertisers increased by more than 50% year over year.
In April, Roku took several steps to beef up advertising tools and capabilities. It integrated media mix modeling capabilities to its Measurement Partner Program and launched a data cleanroom for advertisers to have a secure environment for ad planning and measurement. It also rolled out a beta version of a dynamic linear ad product, and earlier this year built in Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings to its OneView platform.
As for popularity of ad-supported options, he said The Roku Channel, which is a free, completely ad-supported channel, is “doing incredibly well for us.”
In Q1 The Roku Channel was a top 5 channel on its platform in the U.S. both by reach and by hours of engagement.
Roku recently reached a licensing agreement with A+E networks to expand content, and closed its first theatrical film output deal with Lionsgate for upcoming releases through 2024.