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2021-08-27
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Roku Should Overcome Recent Headwinds
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{"i18n":{"language":"zh_CN"},"detailType":1,"isChannel":false,"data":{"magic":2,"id":819606273,"tweetId":"819606273","gmtCreate":1630060615092,"gmtModify":1704955340632,"author":{"id":3574847649995442,"idStr":"3574847649995442","authorId":3574847649995442,"authorIdStr":"3574847649995442","name":"bluem","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9586aa4999245b11d8fe4bd7d34be55d","vip":1,"userType":1,"introduction":"","boolIsFan":false,"boolIsHead":false,"crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"fanSize":9,"starInvestorFlag":false},"themes":[],"images":[],"coverImages":[],"extraTitle":"","html":"<html><head></head><body><p>Like</p></body></html>","htmlText":"<html><head></head><body><p>Like</p></body></html>","text":"Like","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/819606273","repostId":1173774337,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1173774337","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1630055976,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1173774337?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-08-27 17:19","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Roku Should Overcome Recent Headwinds","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1173774337","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nRoku, in the short term, is facing a slowdown in user growth, lower engagement and tough ye","content":"<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>Roku, in the short term, is facing a slowdown in user growth, lower engagement and tough year-over-year comps from last year's pandemic-fueled growth.</li>\n <li>In the long term, Roku has the strong secular trend of consumers, content providers, and advertisers moving to streaming that will drive the stock price upwards.</li>\n <li>The company has four key areas to monitor which is content distribution, advertising, The Roku Channel and International.</li>\n <li>Both Google and Roku seem to have two different visions about where Connected TV is headed.</li>\n <li>Roku is a buy for growth investors.</li>\n</ul>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7f5f7d688172dadb785e353ee435d849\" tg-width=\"768\" tg-height=\"512\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images Entertainment</span></p>\n<p>Roku (NASDAQ:ROKU) reported earnings on August 4th and its results only added to the downtrend in share price since the stock peaked in late July. Among the biggest reasons for the stock decline, COVID reopening is a main one as there is a slowdown in both Roku's user growth and engagement as people start to venture outside their homes.</p>\n<p>Roku's Q2 active accounts number came in lower than analyst expectations and growth in user numbers are considered key to many investors' thesis on Roku. In 2020, \"pandemic-related lockdowns drove a surge in active accounts and engagement\" that won't be replicated in 2021. Roku faces tough year-over-year comps in active accounts and streaming hours in second half of 2021.</p>\n<p>Last, but not least, Cathie Wood, the founder and CEO of ARK Investment Management, was reported to be selling Roku shares from ARK’s exchange-traded funds. Wood has sold 520,000 shares of Roku since the end of June 2021, with total sales amounting to around $243 million.</p>\n<p>ROKU’s slowing growth, lower profit forecasts, high valuation and potential strong competition from companies like Alphabet(NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) have driven the stock price down to current levels with some investors' confidence in the company having been shaken.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/078198ca36f66ed10fbb4ea78c122e86\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"417\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>On the other hand, the disappointment with Roku's latest quarter are all short-term concerns. Roku has strong long-term drivers to the stock price that are still in play. An investment in Roku is essentially a wager that there is a long-term secular trend of audiences, content providers and advertisers shifting to TV streaming all around the world.</p>\n<p>Roku, as an emerging Connected TV platform company, is monetizing the shift to streaming through digital advertising, and the company benefits as ad spend increasingly shifts towards streaming platforms from linear TV. Investors that buy into Roku at current prices believe these secular trends toward streaming are very real and will continue well into the future, thereby driving up Roku's stock price over the long term.</p>\n<p><b>Four Key Areas</b></p>\n<p>There are four key areas to monitor with Roku to judge its potential for future growth which are:</p>\n<ol>\n <li><b>Content Distribution -</b>Investors want to see media and entertainment companies continue to utilize Roku “audience development” tools like Roku Pay and performance marketing to build out their streaming services. In Roku's Q2 shareholder letter, the company mentioned that media and entertainment promotional spending grew significantly faster than the overall platform during Q2.</li>\n <li><b>Advertising</b>- Roku is considered among the most powerful advertising companies in CTV. Roku management believes their competitive advantages come from their rich first-party customer relationships & data, ad innovation, ad measurement tools. and ad technology like the OneView Ad Platform. In Q2, Roku’s monetized video ad impressions more than doubled YoY. There are also an increasing number of small/medium sized businesses starting to advertise on Roku platform, as shown by the number of advertisers outside the Ad Age 200 growing over 50% YoY in Q2. What is driving this growth is that many small/medium sized businesses that never had the budget to advertise on cable TV before are now able to afford the lower cost of advertising on CTV. So, the thesis of advertisers moving ad budgets to CTV is still a strong long-term trend.<b>ARPU growth</b> is a measure of how increasingly attractive it is for brands to advertise through the Roku platform.</li>\n <li><b>The Roku Channel -</b>TRC or The Roku Channel is the company's owned and operated streaming service that's primarily free ad-supported. TRC is a source of ad revenue and it's also a place where the company can innovate with new ad formats like interactive ads and other new ad experiences. The company considers TRC as a big driver of their P&L statement. Currently, TRC is really growing like a weed. It was mentioned in the Roku earnings call that in terms of streaming hours year-over-year, TRC is growing much faster than the overall Roku platform and even faster than the whole AVOD, ad-supported segment overall. Management appears to have a virtuous flywheel strategy for TRC where viewers seek out free content, advertisers follow viewers, and Roku reinvests the ad revenue back into better and better content, which, of course, attracts even more viewers. The Roku Channel doesn't get talked about often enough as a big driver for Roku's future revenues. Often when Roku enters international markets, they will lead with The Roku Channel.</li>\n <li><b>International</b>- As the market in the USA eventually will become saturated, international growth will increasingly become important to the company. Roku updated investors about what they are doing internationally in the shareholder letter by mentioning the launch of TCL Roku TV models in the UK, which is expected to drive further platform adoption and further announcing that Roku is coming to Germany later this year, starting with a player launch.</li>\n</ol>\n<p>Let's look at the latest earnings.</p>\n<p><b>Roku Q2 2021 Earnings</b></p>\n<p>Just looking at the drop in stock price after earnings were released, one would probably never believe that Roku actually had a very good quarter by beating on both the top and bottom lines. Total net revenue grew 81% YoY to $645 million, surpassing the $618 million estimated by analysts.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/69856356e9099b2e98319e3dec9b5ee0\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"317\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Source: Roku Q2 2021 Shareholder Letter</span></p>\n<p>Platform revenue increasing 117% YoY to $532 million or 83% of total revenue. Platform revenue was driven by significant contributions from both <b>content distribution</b> and <b>advertising activities</b>. Average Revenue Per User or ARPU came in at $36.46 on a TTM basis, up 46% year-over-year. Growth in <b>ARPU has been accelerating</b> over the last three or four quarters. The ARPU number shows strong growth in monetization for Roku and outpaces most other companies in the streaming sector.</p>\n<blockquote>\n So, we're just seeing strong interest in advertisers starting to follow their viewers to streaming that's one of the drivers [of ARPU]. We're also seeing the launch of all these new direct-to-consumer streaming services in ARPU becoming popular, and we're a great platform for merchandising, promoting and distributing those services.Source: Roku CEO Anthony Wood -Roku Q2 2021 Earnings Report\n</blockquote>\n<p><b>The ARPU number should be closely followed</b> because this number serves as a proxy for how much advertisers value Roku's viewers. Ideally, we want to see Roku grow the value of advertising on its platform and ARPU is a measure of that.</p>\n<p>Player revenue was up only 1% year-over-year to approximately $113 million. Roku's Q2 Player YoY revenue numbers were impacted by headwinds from comps to the pandemic-related surge of Q2 2020 and the company has also been affected by the worldwide chip shortage. Roku mentioned in the shareholder letter that they protected consumers from the rise in chip prices by not raising Roku player prices, which resulted in Roku Player gross margin turning negative in the quarter.</p>\n<p>Since active accounts are driven by sales of Roku TV models and streaming players, the Q2 Active account and net add numbers also showed the impact of headwinds and were not as robust as analysts expected. Active accounts grew by 1.5 million or 28%, to 55.1 million, which was short of an expected 55.8 million by analysts.</p>\n<p>In the earnings call CFO Steve Louden admitted that the company faces tough YoY comps within the current quarter because of the Covid-19-related surge in demand in Q3 2020. In addition, he also admitted the company is expecting increasing negative player gross margins during the second half of the year.</p>\n<p>Roku Q2 2021 net adds came in higher than pre-covid levels in Q2 2019, but lower than the pandemic-related surge of Q2 2020. Investors were also disappointed in the net adds.</p>\n<p>The reopening of the economy also strongly affected Roku's engagement numbers, although, the company is doing better than the overall streaming industry.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d39dae96088dcea67887a8afc9024774\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"474\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Source: Roku Q2 2021 Shareholder Letter</span></p>\n<p>While Q2 2021 YoY streaming hours increased 19% globally, investors were very disappointed that the total streaming hours dropped sequentially by 1 billion hours from the prior quarter to 17.4 billion hours. So, the bad news of both user growth and engagement showing signs of slowing overrode the good news of revenue & EPS beats as well as strong ARPU growth.</p>\n<p>Gross profit was <b>up 130% YoY</b> to $338 million. Platform gross profit was $345 million, up 149% YoY, while Player gross profit came in at a loss of approximately 7 million, down 180% YoY.</p>\n<p>Platform gross margin came in at 65%, which was more than the company expected. The high Platform gross margin was due to a favorable mix toward higher margin, media and entertainment spend by content publishers. Player gross margin of negative 6% was lower than normal due to global supply chain issues (chip shortage), which are affecting logistics and component pricing.</p>\n<p>Total Operating Expenses came in at $269 million,<b>up 42% YoY</b>. This number allowed Roku to record an Operating Income of $69 million, compared to a year-ago loss of $42.2 million. It has been the Gross Profit growth beginning to outpace Operating Expenses growth during the depths pandemic that has given Roku a growing Operating Profit.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/35c41549dfb0844d3097509a7fbc436d\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"450\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>Roku recorded a Q2 GAAP EPS of $0.52 beating analyst expectations by $0.45.</p>\n<p>Roku posted better-than-expected Q2 adjusted EBITDA of $122.4 million, for an adjusted EBITDA margin of 19% compared to last years -1%.</p>\n<p><b>Balance Sheet</b></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/69e7152a4909e224e91dc98aab52c2b8\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"450\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>Roku ended Q2 with approximately $2.1 billion of cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments.</p>\n<p>Roku had $611.35 million in current liabilities and 92.31 million in long term debt.</p>\n<p>Roku had a quick ratio of 4.37. A company with a quick ratio of 1.0 and above can easily pay current liabilities.</p>\n<p>Roku had a debt-to-equity ratio of .04 which is a measure of the ability to pay long-term liabilities. Companies with a Debt-to-Equity ratio of less than 1.0, means a company tends to use more equity than debt to finance operations which is generally less risky than firms whose Debt-to-Equity ratio is greater than 1.0.</p>\n<p>This is an extremely good balance sheet.</p>\n<p><b>Guidance</b></p>\n<p>Roku projects a total Q3 net revenue of $680 million at the midpoint (up 51% YoY) and total gross profit of $320 million at the midpoint (up 49% YOY). The company also projects a quarterly sequential increase in operating expenses in the second half of 2021 from investments in headcount, product development, and sales & marketing. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $65 million at the midpoint in Q3.</p>\n<p>The company also mentioned that they expect global supply chain constraints and component cost increases to worsen in the second half of 2021 in the player segment and this is why they project increasing negative player gross margin in the second half of 2021 and into 2022.</p>\n<p>As for the Platform segment, while monetization remains strong, there will be a slowdown in YoY growth relative to last year. However, Roku management stressed that growth was only slowing, not halting, as they projected \"continued significant growth in the second half of the year\".</p>\n<p>Of course, with evidence of a slowdown that took place in Q2 2021 in hand and with Roku management projecting revenue decelerating in the current quarter, as well as worsening margins in the player segment, the market had a negative reaction to the earnings report. The earnings report also had the effect of many analysts trimming their price targets for the stock.</p>\n<p><b>Valuation</b></p>\n<p>Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall lowered his price target to $488 from $519. Stephens & Co. analyst Kyle Evans lowered his price target to $475. Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet lowered its price target on Roku to $410 from $450.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/cc3f90188ade97a2ebb92907466d0c0a\" tg-width=\"490\" tg-height=\"399\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Source: Yahoo Finance</span></p>\n<p>The above is based on 24 Wall Street analysts offering 12-month price targets for Roku in the last 3 months. The average price target is $471.38 with a high forecast of $650.00 and a low forecast of $170.00. The average price target represents a 33.3% increase from the last price of $353.55.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0459417567b93d779f4a08c938a51453\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"433\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>Roku, even with the drop in price, sells at a high valuation, with a price-to-earnings ratio above 200 and a price-to-sales ratio above 20. With the company reporting that streaming hours decreased sequentially over Q1 2021, slowing user growth, margins shrinking in the player segment, and guidance projecting a continued slow down, expect Roku to be a battleground stock in the near- to mid-term, where investors worried about shorter term concerns like slowing growth battle with investors that believe in the strong secular growth story in the long term.</p>\n<p><b>Google vs. Roku</b></p>\n<p>Both Google and Roku seem to have two different visions about where Connected TV is headed. The short explanation of these competing visions is that Google appears to consider CTV as just another computing platform destined to be annexed into the Google walled garden.</p>\n<p>While Roku seems to have a vision of the Connected TV being a completely different new platform separate from computing platforms.</p>\n<p><b>The Google Vision</b></p>\n<p>The Google vision of Connected TV was stated succinctly by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the company's latest earnings call:</p>\n<blockquote>\n You know, on the first question on the smart TV ecosystem. Look, I mean,\n <b>there is a shift to these becoming computing devices over time</b>. They are going to be connected computing experiences. People who both consume content passively, actively, including gaming, over the top video and so on.Source: Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai -Alphabet Q2 2021 Earnings Call\n</blockquote>\n<p><b>The Roku Vision</b></p>\n<p>The Roku vision of Connected TV was stated succinctly by Roku CEO Anthony Wood during the Roku Q2 earnings call:</p>\n<blockquote>\n ...we compete extremely well. And the primary difference in the way we compete versus Google as we \n <b>built from the beginning, a software platform designed specifically for TV</b>, whereas they take their phone, operating system, Android, and they ported it to TVs. So if you look at the history of computing platforms, whether it's windows on PCs, or Android on phones, or Roku on TVs, purpose built, operating systems traditionally have always won in terms of market share.Source: Roku CEO Anthony Wood - Roku Q2 2021 Earnings Call\n</blockquote>\n<p>Roku's software platform is built specifically to run with less memory and smaller chips than all of the rest of their competitors, which is the source of what Roku believes is their competitive advantage. The Smart TV Operating Systems of many Roku competitors tend to use a lot more memory, which requires larger chip sizes, which tend to cost more, especially in these times of a chip shortage.</p>\n<p>TV manufacturing is currently a commodity business and as in all commodity businesses, the lowest cost structure wins. The way TV manufacturers can get an edge over other TV manufacturers is by controlling their costs and one way to control Smart TV costs is to use a smaller chip that cost less.</p>\n<p>The Roku OS allows TV manufacturers to use smaller chips in their Smart TVs, which lowers the costs over other TV manufacturers that might use a competing OS that requires larger chips. A Chinese TV manufacturer named TCL, one of Roku's main partners, has risen to prominence over the Roku OS giving TCL a lower cost structure in making Smart TVs.</p>\n<p>The partnership between Roku and TCL, which began in 2014, has been good for both companies. It has been the partnership with TCL that has largely helped Roku-powered Smart TVs rise to prominence.</p>\n<p>Roku's deal with TCL, however, was not exclusive on either side and recently Google has also partnered with TCL to bring a Google OS to Smart TVs. So, Google is now showing they intend to compete strongly with Roku.</p>\n<p>Google, along with Facebook, largely controls advertising on the internet but Google does not have the same dominance in CTV. It appears Google's strategy is to try to extend their Chrome/Android-based dominance on computers and smartphones by porting the Android-based operating system on to the Smart TV.</p>\n<p>Roku, however, appears to be saying that it is better to build an Operating System from scratch for the new medium of a Smart TV. Expect these two competing visions and companies to continue to clash, in many different ways, on many different levels. It is no accident that Roku currently has a dispute with Google over YouTube TV.</p>\n<p>In the Roku Q2 earnings call, CEO Anthony Wood alluded to the fact that much of the dispute over YouTube TV was over language preventing Google from dictating search behaviors on the Roku platform or accessing data that was unavailable to other Roku customers.</p>\n<p>Anthony Wood also implied that Google was making hardware and software request changes to the Roku platform and he indicated that was not happening because those changes might cause Roku to lose competitive advantages against other streaming platforms including Chromecast.</p>\n<p>Roku investors should monitor this tussle between Roku and Google over the vision of how Smart TVs will evolve. The winner of this battle of competing visions will likely become the more dominant CTV platform.</p>\n<p><b>Conclusion</b></p>\n<p>Long-term growth investors that believe that Roku is very well positioned to benefit from the long-term secular trend of audiences, content and advertisers shifting to TV streaming around the globe should buy Roku on the current dip in stock price. Roku's stock should remain volatile in the short to medium term but this stock should be a market-beater in the long term.</p>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Roku Should Overcome Recent Headwinds</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nRoku Should Overcome Recent Headwinds\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-08-27 17:19 GMT+8 <a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4452151-roku-should-overcome-recent-headwinds><strong>seekingalpha</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Summary\n\nRoku, in the short term, is facing a slowdown in user growth, lower engagement and tough year-over-year comps from last year's pandemic-fueled growth.\nIn the long term, Roku has the strong ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4452151-roku-should-overcome-recent-headwinds\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"ROKU":"Roku Inc"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4452151-roku-should-overcome-recent-headwinds","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1173774337","content_text":"Summary\n\nRoku, in the short term, is facing a slowdown in user growth, lower engagement and tough year-over-year comps from last year's pandemic-fueled growth.\nIn the long term, Roku has the strong secular trend of consumers, content providers, and advertisers moving to streaming that will drive the stock price upwards.\nThe company has four key areas to monitor which is content distribution, advertising, The Roku Channel and International.\nBoth Google and Roku seem to have two different visions about where Connected TV is headed.\nRoku is a buy for growth investors.\n\nImeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images Entertainment\nRoku (NASDAQ:ROKU) reported earnings on August 4th and its results only added to the downtrend in share price since the stock peaked in late July. Among the biggest reasons for the stock decline, COVID reopening is a main one as there is a slowdown in both Roku's user growth and engagement as people start to venture outside their homes.\nRoku's Q2 active accounts number came in lower than analyst expectations and growth in user numbers are considered key to many investors' thesis on Roku. In 2020, \"pandemic-related lockdowns drove a surge in active accounts and engagement\" that won't be replicated in 2021. Roku faces tough year-over-year comps in active accounts and streaming hours in second half of 2021.\nLast, but not least, Cathie Wood, the founder and CEO of ARK Investment Management, was reported to be selling Roku shares from ARK’s exchange-traded funds. Wood has sold 520,000 shares of Roku since the end of June 2021, with total sales amounting to around $243 million.\nROKU’s slowing growth, lower profit forecasts, high valuation and potential strong competition from companies like Alphabet(NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) have driven the stock price down to current levels with some investors' confidence in the company having been shaken.\nData by YCharts\nOn the other hand, the disappointment with Roku's latest quarter are all short-term concerns. Roku has strong long-term drivers to the stock price that are still in play. An investment in Roku is essentially a wager that there is a long-term secular trend of audiences, content providers and advertisers shifting to TV streaming all around the world.\nRoku, as an emerging Connected TV platform company, is monetizing the shift to streaming through digital advertising, and the company benefits as ad spend increasingly shifts towards streaming platforms from linear TV. Investors that buy into Roku at current prices believe these secular trends toward streaming are very real and will continue well into the future, thereby driving up Roku's stock price over the long term.\nFour Key Areas\nThere are four key areas to monitor with Roku to judge its potential for future growth which are:\n\nContent Distribution -Investors want to see media and entertainment companies continue to utilize Roku “audience development” tools like Roku Pay and performance marketing to build out their streaming services. In Roku's Q2 shareholder letter, the company mentioned that media and entertainment promotional spending grew significantly faster than the overall platform during Q2.\nAdvertising- Roku is considered among the most powerful advertising companies in CTV. Roku management believes their competitive advantages come from their rich first-party customer relationships & data, ad innovation, ad measurement tools. and ad technology like the OneView Ad Platform. In Q2, Roku’s monetized video ad impressions more than doubled YoY. There are also an increasing number of small/medium sized businesses starting to advertise on Roku platform, as shown by the number of advertisers outside the Ad Age 200 growing over 50% YoY in Q2. What is driving this growth is that many small/medium sized businesses that never had the budget to advertise on cable TV before are now able to afford the lower cost of advertising on CTV. So, the thesis of advertisers moving ad budgets to CTV is still a strong long-term trend.ARPU growth is a measure of how increasingly attractive it is for brands to advertise through the Roku platform.\nThe Roku Channel -TRC or The Roku Channel is the company's owned and operated streaming service that's primarily free ad-supported. TRC is a source of ad revenue and it's also a place where the company can innovate with new ad formats like interactive ads and other new ad experiences. The company considers TRC as a big driver of their P&L statement. Currently, TRC is really growing like a weed. It was mentioned in the Roku earnings call that in terms of streaming hours year-over-year, TRC is growing much faster than the overall Roku platform and even faster than the whole AVOD, ad-supported segment overall. Management appears to have a virtuous flywheel strategy for TRC where viewers seek out free content, advertisers follow viewers, and Roku reinvests the ad revenue back into better and better content, which, of course, attracts even more viewers. The Roku Channel doesn't get talked about often enough as a big driver for Roku's future revenues. Often when Roku enters international markets, they will lead with The Roku Channel.\nInternational- As the market in the USA eventually will become saturated, international growth will increasingly become important to the company. Roku updated investors about what they are doing internationally in the shareholder letter by mentioning the launch of TCL Roku TV models in the UK, which is expected to drive further platform adoption and further announcing that Roku is coming to Germany later this year, starting with a player launch.\n\nLet's look at the latest earnings.\nRoku Q2 2021 Earnings\nJust looking at the drop in stock price after earnings were released, one would probably never believe that Roku actually had a very good quarter by beating on both the top and bottom lines. Total net revenue grew 81% YoY to $645 million, surpassing the $618 million estimated by analysts.\nSource: Roku Q2 2021 Shareholder Letter\nPlatform revenue increasing 117% YoY to $532 million or 83% of total revenue. Platform revenue was driven by significant contributions from both content distribution and advertising activities. Average Revenue Per User or ARPU came in at $36.46 on a TTM basis, up 46% year-over-year. Growth in ARPU has been accelerating over the last three or four quarters. The ARPU number shows strong growth in monetization for Roku and outpaces most other companies in the streaming sector.\n\n So, we're just seeing strong interest in advertisers starting to follow their viewers to streaming that's one of the drivers [of ARPU]. We're also seeing the launch of all these new direct-to-consumer streaming services in ARPU becoming popular, and we're a great platform for merchandising, promoting and distributing those services.Source: Roku CEO Anthony Wood -Roku Q2 2021 Earnings Report\n\nThe ARPU number should be closely followed because this number serves as a proxy for how much advertisers value Roku's viewers. Ideally, we want to see Roku grow the value of advertising on its platform and ARPU is a measure of that.\nPlayer revenue was up only 1% year-over-year to approximately $113 million. Roku's Q2 Player YoY revenue numbers were impacted by headwinds from comps to the pandemic-related surge of Q2 2020 and the company has also been affected by the worldwide chip shortage. Roku mentioned in the shareholder letter that they protected consumers from the rise in chip prices by not raising Roku player prices, which resulted in Roku Player gross margin turning negative in the quarter.\nSince active accounts are driven by sales of Roku TV models and streaming players, the Q2 Active account and net add numbers also showed the impact of headwinds and were not as robust as analysts expected. Active accounts grew by 1.5 million or 28%, to 55.1 million, which was short of an expected 55.8 million by analysts.\nIn the earnings call CFO Steve Louden admitted that the company faces tough YoY comps within the current quarter because of the Covid-19-related surge in demand in Q3 2020. In addition, he also admitted the company is expecting increasing negative player gross margins during the second half of the year.\nRoku Q2 2021 net adds came in higher than pre-covid levels in Q2 2019, but lower than the pandemic-related surge of Q2 2020. Investors were also disappointed in the net adds.\nThe reopening of the economy also strongly affected Roku's engagement numbers, although, the company is doing better than the overall streaming industry.\nSource: Roku Q2 2021 Shareholder Letter\nWhile Q2 2021 YoY streaming hours increased 19% globally, investors were very disappointed that the total streaming hours dropped sequentially by 1 billion hours from the prior quarter to 17.4 billion hours. So, the bad news of both user growth and engagement showing signs of slowing overrode the good news of revenue & EPS beats as well as strong ARPU growth.\nGross profit was up 130% YoY to $338 million. Platform gross profit was $345 million, up 149% YoY, while Player gross profit came in at a loss of approximately 7 million, down 180% YoY.\nPlatform gross margin came in at 65%, which was more than the company expected. The high Platform gross margin was due to a favorable mix toward higher margin, media and entertainment spend by content publishers. Player gross margin of negative 6% was lower than normal due to global supply chain issues (chip shortage), which are affecting logistics and component pricing.\nTotal Operating Expenses came in at $269 million,up 42% YoY. This number allowed Roku to record an Operating Income of $69 million, compared to a year-ago loss of $42.2 million. It has been the Gross Profit growth beginning to outpace Operating Expenses growth during the depths pandemic that has given Roku a growing Operating Profit.\nData by YCharts\nRoku recorded a Q2 GAAP EPS of $0.52 beating analyst expectations by $0.45.\nRoku posted better-than-expected Q2 adjusted EBITDA of $122.4 million, for an adjusted EBITDA margin of 19% compared to last years -1%.\nBalance Sheet\nData by YCharts\nRoku ended Q2 with approximately $2.1 billion of cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments.\nRoku had $611.35 million in current liabilities and 92.31 million in long term debt.\nRoku had a quick ratio of 4.37. A company with a quick ratio of 1.0 and above can easily pay current liabilities.\nRoku had a debt-to-equity ratio of .04 which is a measure of the ability to pay long-term liabilities. Companies with a Debt-to-Equity ratio of less than 1.0, means a company tends to use more equity than debt to finance operations which is generally less risky than firms whose Debt-to-Equity ratio is greater than 1.0.\nThis is an extremely good balance sheet.\nGuidance\nRoku projects a total Q3 net revenue of $680 million at the midpoint (up 51% YoY) and total gross profit of $320 million at the midpoint (up 49% YOY). The company also projects a quarterly sequential increase in operating expenses in the second half of 2021 from investments in headcount, product development, and sales & marketing. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $65 million at the midpoint in Q3.\nThe company also mentioned that they expect global supply chain constraints and component cost increases to worsen in the second half of 2021 in the player segment and this is why they project increasing negative player gross margin in the second half of 2021 and into 2022.\nAs for the Platform segment, while monetization remains strong, there will be a slowdown in YoY growth relative to last year. However, Roku management stressed that growth was only slowing, not halting, as they projected \"continued significant growth in the second half of the year\".\nOf course, with evidence of a slowdown that took place in Q2 2021 in hand and with Roku management projecting revenue decelerating in the current quarter, as well as worsening margins in the player segment, the market had a negative reaction to the earnings report. The earnings report also had the effect of many analysts trimming their price targets for the stock.\nValuation\nWells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall lowered his price target to $488 from $519. Stephens & Co. analyst Kyle Evans lowered his price target to $475. Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet lowered its price target on Roku to $410 from $450.\nSource: Yahoo Finance\nThe above is based on 24 Wall Street analysts offering 12-month price targets for Roku in the last 3 months. The average price target is $471.38 with a high forecast of $650.00 and a low forecast of $170.00. The average price target represents a 33.3% increase from the last price of $353.55.\nData by YCharts\nRoku, even with the drop in price, sells at a high valuation, with a price-to-earnings ratio above 200 and a price-to-sales ratio above 20. With the company reporting that streaming hours decreased sequentially over Q1 2021, slowing user growth, margins shrinking in the player segment, and guidance projecting a continued slow down, expect Roku to be a battleground stock in the near- to mid-term, where investors worried about shorter term concerns like slowing growth battle with investors that believe in the strong secular growth story in the long term.\nGoogle vs. Roku\nBoth Google and Roku seem to have two different visions about where Connected TV is headed. The short explanation of these competing visions is that Google appears to consider CTV as just another computing platform destined to be annexed into the Google walled garden.\nWhile Roku seems to have a vision of the Connected TV being a completely different new platform separate from computing platforms.\nThe Google Vision\nThe Google vision of Connected TV was stated succinctly by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the company's latest earnings call:\n\n You know, on the first question on the smart TV ecosystem. Look, I mean,\n there is a shift to these becoming computing devices over time. They are going to be connected computing experiences. People who both consume content passively, actively, including gaming, over the top video and so on.Source: Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai -Alphabet Q2 2021 Earnings Call\n\nThe Roku Vision\nThe Roku vision of Connected TV was stated succinctly by Roku CEO Anthony Wood during the Roku Q2 earnings call:\n\n ...we compete extremely well. And the primary difference in the way we compete versus Google as we \n built from the beginning, a software platform designed specifically for TV, whereas they take their phone, operating system, Android, and they ported it to TVs. So if you look at the history of computing platforms, whether it's windows on PCs, or Android on phones, or Roku on TVs, purpose built, operating systems traditionally have always won in terms of market share.Source: Roku CEO Anthony Wood - Roku Q2 2021 Earnings Call\n\nRoku's software platform is built specifically to run with less memory and smaller chips than all of the rest of their competitors, which is the source of what Roku believes is their competitive advantage. The Smart TV Operating Systems of many Roku competitors tend to use a lot more memory, which requires larger chip sizes, which tend to cost more, especially in these times of a chip shortage.\nTV manufacturing is currently a commodity business and as in all commodity businesses, the lowest cost structure wins. The way TV manufacturers can get an edge over other TV manufacturers is by controlling their costs and one way to control Smart TV costs is to use a smaller chip that cost less.\nThe Roku OS allows TV manufacturers to use smaller chips in their Smart TVs, which lowers the costs over other TV manufacturers that might use a competing OS that requires larger chips. A Chinese TV manufacturer named TCL, one of Roku's main partners, has risen to prominence over the Roku OS giving TCL a lower cost structure in making Smart TVs.\nThe partnership between Roku and TCL, which began in 2014, has been good for both companies. It has been the partnership with TCL that has largely helped Roku-powered Smart TVs rise to prominence.\nRoku's deal with TCL, however, was not exclusive on either side and recently Google has also partnered with TCL to bring a Google OS to Smart TVs. So, Google is now showing they intend to compete strongly with Roku.\nGoogle, along with Facebook, largely controls advertising on the internet but Google does not have the same dominance in CTV. It appears Google's strategy is to try to extend their Chrome/Android-based dominance on computers and smartphones by porting the Android-based operating system on to the Smart TV.\nRoku, however, appears to be saying that it is better to build an Operating System from scratch for the new medium of a Smart TV. Expect these two competing visions and companies to continue to clash, in many different ways, on many different levels. It is no accident that Roku currently has a dispute with Google over YouTube TV.\nIn the Roku Q2 earnings call, CEO Anthony Wood alluded to the fact that much of the dispute over YouTube TV was over language preventing Google from dictating search behaviors on the Roku platform or accessing data that was unavailable to other Roku customers.\nAnthony Wood also implied that Google was making hardware and software request changes to the Roku platform and he indicated that was not happening because those changes might cause Roku to lose competitive advantages against other streaming platforms including Chromecast.\nRoku investors should monitor this tussle between Roku and Google over the vision of how Smart TVs will evolve. The winner of this battle of competing visions will likely become the more dominant CTV platform.\nConclusion\nLong-term growth investors that believe that Roku is very well positioned to benefit from the long-term secular trend of audiences, content and advertisers shifting to TV streaming around the globe should buy Roku on the current dip in stock price. Roku's stock should remain volatile in the short to medium term but this stock should be a market-beater in the long term.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":163,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":4,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"isTiger":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"url":"/m/post/819606273"}
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