Roku reported substantial increases in both revenue and income during the first quarter despite a slight slowdown in active account growth.
The company took in approximately $574 million in revenue—$466.5 million in platform revenue (up 101% year over year) and $107.7 in device revenue—up 79% from the year-ago quarter. Growth in gross profits helped offset higher operational costs to leave Roku with $75.8 million in operational income at the end of the quarter, a significant improvement over the $55.2 million the company lost during the same quarter of 2020.
Roku attributed its quarterly growth to advertising and said that the Roku Channel, its ad-supported streaming service, now reaches U.S. households with an estimated 70 million people. The company added that the Roku Channel’s account reach and streaming hours more than doubled and clocked a growth rate at twice as fast as the overall Roku platform.
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“This demonstrates the power of The Roku Channel flywheel: easy access to content with broad appeal attracts viewers, that viewer engagement attracts advertisers, and advertiser spend in turn allows us to invest in more content,” the company wrote in a letter to shareholders. “This flywheel is enabling us to be more creative and expansive in sourcing content suited to an AVOD (advertising video on demand) business model, and we expect that our content investment will continue to be commensurate with the scale and growth trajectory of The Roku Channel.”
During the first quarter, Roku grew its active accounts by 35% year over year to a total of 53.6 million, though the new additions of 2.4 million accounts is slightly lower than what the company added in the same quarter last year.
Roku attributed its continued active account expansion to sales of players and Roku TV models in both the U.S. and international markets. The company claimed that Roku OS remains the top operating system for smart TVs sold in the U.S. It also said it’s now number one in Canada, where more than one in three smart TVs sold are a Roku TV model, and number two among smart TVs sold in Mexico.