Roku hits record profit in second quarter
Roku hits record profit in second quarter
The company reported a net income of $164.2 million in the quarter, and streaming hours rose as well.
Roku will soon no longer be a standalone company. Fox is set to acquire the company in a deal worth $22 billion. Until the deal closes, however, Roku will continue to issue quarterly earnings reports of its own, and its second-quarter results show that the company is quite healthy as it prepares to be brought under the Fox tent.
Key Details:
- Record profit: Roku had a record high net income of $164 million in the second quarter.
- Everyone’s watching: Streaming hours on Roku hit nearly 38 billion during the quarter.
- New and improved: Roku also launched a new home screen in Q2.
Roku generated total revenue of $1.35 billion in the second quarter, up 22%. The company recorded a net income of $164.2 million, its highest ever, and more than 10 times its net income in the year-ago quarter of $10.5 million. The second quarter marked Roku’s fifth straight profitable three-month period.
Streaming hours were also up for the Roku platform during the quarter. Total hours streamed across all Roku platforms reached 37.9 billion, a 7% year-over-year increase. In April, the company announced that it had surpassed 100 million streaming households globally, giving it a commanding presence in the marketplace.
Subscription revenue also rose in the quarter, moving up 26% to $548 million, and ad sales were up 25% to $673 million. In all, the report paints a rosy picture of the company as it moves toward its acquisition by Fox. In discussing the Roku deal during Fox’s earnings call on Thursday, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said that “together, Fox and Roku combine premium live content, deep market relationships, scale distribution and leading platform capabilities, including subscriptions, to respond to the evolving needs of consumers and advertisers.”
A new Roku home screen experience launched during the second quarter, and company executives called the early returns on that launch “encouraging” in their letter to shareholders. They say the new experience has “improved our ability to retain households in the U.S., resulting in more users we can serve and thus reducing overall costs to grow streaming households.”
Roku Channel
The Roku Channel is a free, ad-supported streaming service that offers a broad mix of movies, TV shows, live linear channels, and original programming. Available to all viewers — not just Roku device owners — the service features licensed content from major studios alongside Roku Originals, which include exclusive series, movies, and specials previously produced for Quibi, as well as new original projects developed specifically for the platform.