Roku Q3 2023 earnings: Stock soars

Shares of Roku soared in after-hours trading Wednesday after the company reported better-than-expected revenue for the third quarter.

Here’s how Roku performed for the quarter ending Sept. 30, compared to analysts’ estimates from LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv:

• Loss per share: $2.33 vs. $2.12 expected
• Revenue: $912 million vs. $855.2 million expected

Roku reported a net loss of $330.1 million for the third quarter, or $2.33 per share, nearly triple the loss of $122.2 million, or 88 cents per share, which is what the company reported in the year-ago quarter.

But revenue was up 20% year over year, the company reported, largely driven by “strong performance in content distribution and video advertising, along with unit sales of Roku-branded TVs, which launched in March 2023,” Roku said in a shareholder letter.

Roku-branded smart TV’s come pre-installed with the Roku interface users would experience on an external plug-in Roku Streaming Player. The smart TVs were first made available at Best Buy earlier this year and drove a device segment revenue increase of 33% from the year-ago quarter, the company said during its earnings call Wednesday.

“Branded TVs also drove a higher portion of net adds in active accounts than the streaming players in international markets,” Roku Devices President Mustafa Ozgen said during Wednesday’s earnings call.

The company said it fared better during the quarter with advertisements, weathering an industry-wide ad slowdown.

“We had a solid rebound in video ads in the third quarter,” Roku Media President Charlie Collier said during the earnings call. “We expect year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter to be similar, but we remain cautious about the ad market recovery going forward.”

Active accounts also beat the Street’s estimates, coming in at…