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2021-11-22

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Roblox: Buying A Piece Of The Metaverse

Summary The stock of Roblox has pretty much stagnated since its IPO in March due to worries that th

Roblox: Buying A Piece Of The Metaverse

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Pull back when u hve earned enough.","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/875994873","repostId":1165702862,"repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"1165702862","pubTimestamp":1637553333,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1165702862?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-11-22 11:55","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Roblox: Buying A Piece Of The Metaverse","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1165702862","media":"Seeking Alpha","summary":"Summary\n\nThe stock of Roblox has pretty much stagnated since its IPO in March due to worries that th","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>The stock of Roblox has pretty much stagnated since its IPO in March due to worries that the reopening of schools would cause engagement to fall on the platform.</li>\n <li>Roblox Q3 earnings release busted the thesis that COVID recovery would decrease engagement and slow growth, as all metrics pointed to a very healthy platform.</li>\n <li>In Q3, Roblox&nbsp;attracted an average of 47.3 million daily active users, which was 31% higher than in Q3 of 2020 and was 2.6x larger than in Q3 of 2019.</li>\n <li>The strategic roadmap for growth includes expanding international reach, broadening age demographics, expanding platform experiences, and improving monetization.</li>\n <li>While the valuation is high with the stock selling at 40 times sales, aggressive investors can buy right now, while more cautious investors might want to wait for a pullback.</li>\n</ul>\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/16fbce543fba6edff1ea388d07c70482\" tg-width=\"1536\" tg-height=\"1024\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Leon Neal/Getty Images News\nRoblox(NYSE:RBLX)came public on March 10 of this year at an initial IPO price of $64.25, while ending the day up $5 at 69.50. The stock traded as high as $103.87 intraday in early June because of investor excitement over the possibility that Roblox could evolve into one of the first Metaverse companies.\nHowever, on June 15, Roblox released its&nbsp;May 2021 Key Metrics&nbsp;and the stock dropped 8% because of the perception that&nbsp;growth was slowing. The stock essentially stagnated by bouncing around between $70 and $90 until November 9th when the stock shot up 42% after reporting&nbsp;very strong Q3 earnings. Roblox was further propelled upwards by excitement over the company's future initiatives after the Roblox Investor Day on November 16.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2e2ba6400655fc41f35ca87f8f770a72\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"433\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">\nAfter such a massive move, that now has the stock back to trading at 40 times sales, investors might be wondering whether or not to chase the stock higher after such a huge move in a short period of time.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c3f8fafccbc6a069f13c4d97cc87d7ca\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"467\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Data by YCharts\nReasons Why Roblox is Still a Buy\nRoblox started off simply as a platform where users could play games created by other users and share their own game creations to be played by others. However, if that was all there was to Roblox, then it would not likely be trading at a PS ratio of 40.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6f55c95c8bc74d8fa11a7a39c48feae2\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"454\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Presentation\nRoblox was designed almost from the beginning to be a human co-experience platform, which is now being more commonly called the Metaverse. The company's end goal is to have all human experiences that can be imagined to be available to be experienced with friends and family on the Roblox platform.\n<blockquote>\n Roblox's mission is to build a human co-experience platform that enables billions of users to come together to play, learn, communicate, explore and expand their friendships.\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n Source:Roblox Corporate Overview\n</blockquote>\nThe concept of the Metaverse or a human co-experience platform is still a very speculative idea but if Roblox successfully gets a Metaverse platform up and running worldwide, it will stand to gain significant first mover advantages and could totally replace today's major social networks like Facebook. The upside in Roblox is potentially being larger than Facebook is today, if the company is successful. In fact, at least part of the reason that I think Facebook(NASDAQ:FB)&nbsp;changed its name to Meta&nbsp;and branded itself a Metaverse company is because I think Mark Zuckerberg sees the potential of Facebook getting disrupted by Roblox.\nWhat is the business model?\nLet me give a brief explanation on how the Roblox is monetized. Roblox uses a freemium model, where games are free to play but advanced features and customizations are only unlocked through paying with an in-game currency called Robux, which can be purchased either through gift cards, ala carte or through subscription.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/02f69d2443db16542467c22831dfc32c\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"389\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Investor Day Presentation\nGrowth on the Roblox platform is largely organic and largely operates through word-of-mouth. There are two viral growth network effects associated with the platform, with one loop centered around content and the other loop centered around a social network.\nIn the content loop, developers and creators are the prime engine of growth by creating the content that powers the platform. The content attracts players which pay for the content, which allows developers to both make a living and reinvest the money they make into building better experiences. The better experiences result in even more players, higher engagement and more spend, which in turn attracts new developers and creators, while incentivizing existing creators and developers to create even more and higher quality experiences.\nIn Roblox's social network loop, players will play games with their friends, then invite even more of their friends to play the games which drives organic growth. The value of the Roblox platform increases to an individual when more of their friends play together. More friends and better experiences drive even more players to join.\nThis social network loop aspect of Roblox is also a huge competitive advantage for the company, as players want to play the games that they create with their friends, and it tends to make Roblox very sticky. This competitive advantage will also likely at some point turn into a powerful&nbsp;Network Effect Moat, if enough users join the platform.\nThe Key Factor\nThe key factor that drives monetization on the platform is engagement. The more engagement there is, the healthier the platform.\n<blockquote>\n Engagement is our north star. We're very pleased that during the third quarter, people of all ages from across the globe chose to spend over 11 billion hours on Roblox\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n Source: Roblox CEO David Baszucki - Roblox Q3 2021 Shareholder Letter\n</blockquote>\nRoblox measures engagement through two metrics which are Daily Active Users (\"DAUs\") and hours engaged. In Q3, Roblox attracted an average of 47.3 million daily active users (DAUs) which was 31% higher than in Q3 of 2020 and was 2.6x larger than in Q3 of 2019. Users spent 11.2 billion hours engaged on the Roblox platform in Q3 of 2021, up 28% from Q3 in 2020 and up 3x over Q3 of 2019. From these increasing engagement numbers, Roblox is able to support its developer community, who earned over $130 million in the quarter and is on pace to earn well over $500 million this year.\nRoblox experienced severe headwinds in late October this year, as the company experienced a&nbsp;platform outage&nbsp;that shut everything down for three days. Prior to the outage, daily active users in October were 50.5 million, up 43% year-over-year. Hours of engagement in October were 3.2 billion, up 41% year-over-year. These numbers are an indication that Q4 numbers are likely to be strong when they get reported.\nWhat are the growth drivers Moving Forward?\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/282a44eac5fa5aa525e22bb65ba76c05\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"435\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Presentation\nThe four growth drivers that the company self-identified as a priority moving forward are:\n<ol>\n <li>Extend International reach</li>\n <li>Broaden age demographics</li>\n <li>Expand how people use platform with new use cases</li>\n <li>Grow how engagement is monetized on platform</li>\n</ol>\nInternational Expansion\nOf the four growth drivers, Roblox considers international expansion the most advanced. Currently, the rest of the world (\"ROW\") is growing faster than the USA and Canada together, which is currently at only 25% of the traffic on the platform. International Growth, like the US, occurs primarily through strong organic word of mouth in both users and developers.\nRoblox has also been developing powerful machine translation infrastructure, soon to be complete, that should be a big driver for international growth. This translation infrastructure will have the capability of doing translation into all&nbsp;supported languages, which is currently sitting at 11 different languages. In prior years, Roblox experiences had to be manually translated by the developer.\nBroaden Age Demographics\nUp until now, Roblox has shown great success reaching the 13 and under audience. However, for Roblox to reach its goals, the platform will have to broaden its demographics into a brand that appeals to all ages. The company plans to do this in several ways:\n<ul>\n <li>Enable developers to build more polished experiences that will appeal to a wider range of users. Roblox is already giving tools to its developers to begin offering deeply immersive experiences through dynamic simulation, faster loading, and more sophisticated rendering.</li>\n <li>Rapidly evolve avatar technology to be more realistic. Roblox management considers avatars important because it was discovered that they promote loyalty, engagement and an investment by the user in their virtual identity. Roblox plans on giving users a wider range of identity options, as well as giving users more options in clothing. Another area that Roblox needed improvement was facial animation. In December 2020, Roblox acquired facial tracking and animation company Loom.ai in a bid to make avatars more lifelike by doing things like giving them the ability to smile and make eye gestures.</li>\n <li>Create better User Matching through better personalized recommendations based upon age, geography, and social graphing skill level. Roblox has also been working on content ratings based upon age. Since launching personalized search and discovery, there has been increased engagement from users as well as a wider distribution of engagement across all experiences which helps expand demographics through core network effects.</li>\n</ul>\nUltimately, as the technology on the Roblox platform improves, the ability to create content for older users will improve and as more content for older ages appears, it should attract older users. Roblox is still in the very early stages of expanding the age demographics, yet is already seeing better usage in ages above 13. The 17-24 years old segment is currently growing very rapidly. Measuring by DAUs, approximately 50.4% of users are over the age of 13 this year, compared to 44.5% last year and 51.2% of engagement was from users over the age of 13, up from 40.8% two years ago.\nExpanding How People Use the Platform\nExpanding how people use platform should greatly enhance both DAUs and engagement hours. The Roblox platform is essentially a medium of shared experiences and Roblox is currently in the process of expanding the range of those shared experiences beyond simply playing games to things like education, shared music experiences (concerts), virtual shopping, to maybe even one day working in virtual environments.\nRoblox recently held an&nbsp;Investor Day, in which the company announced they were setting up a \"Roblox Education\" division that aims \"to support 100 million students learning on the Roblox platform by 2030\". Roblox plans to do this by building dynamic learning environments that educators can use to create educational content and to teach people how to code on the Roblox platform.\nRoblox is also creating a&nbsp;$10 million fund&nbsp;dedicated \"to bringing high-quality educational experiences to Roblox and to support educators in using Roblox Studio in their classrooms\". The company has major plans to use Roblox Studio to help teach \"computer science, design, and development courses\" to millions of children.\nThe stock has continued rising after its initial 42% jump after earnings and that is largely due to excitement over the news of Roblox expanding outside of games. Investors are just now becoming aware of the possibilities of the platform.\nGrowing The Roblox Economy\nRoblox plans on expanding the whole economic system that was built around gaming into other economic activities like \"high quality immersive brand advertising that is native and authentic\". Advertising is only the start because ultimately shopping in virtual stores could make its way on to the Roblox platform.\nThe basic building blocks to improving economic activity on the Roblox platform identified by the company include:\n<ul>\n <li>Removing friction in purchasing Robux on the platform. One example of Robux friction removal is the introduction of the&nbsp;Roblox premium subscription&nbsp;offering. Roblox premium offers two things for subscribers which are providing premium subscribers with a stipend of recurring Robux at a discounted rate and also providing premium features like a VIP pass that enables subscribers to get access to premium only features or items only available for purchase with a premium subscription. What this does for Roblox is turn the platform into more of a subscription offering, which increases the stability of Roblox bookings.</li>\n <li>Making the process of purchasing the avatar and gear associated with the avatar, much easier. Also, improving how merchandise is created and sold on the platform. Roblox has long ago made the decision to make a move to a 100% user-generated content (\"UGC\") avatar marketplace. Prior to 2020, the avatar marketplace was primarily populated by Roblox designed items. Roblox is still relatively early in this transition to UGC.</li>\n <li>Testing ways to have select brands participate in the Roblox economy and engage with users in a way that enhances the user experience, which includes working with brands to sell branded merchandise in a catalogue. There are several examples of branding. One is with Disney(NYSE:DIS)having&nbsp;Avengers: Endgame&nbsp;themed collectibles&nbsp;available to be won in a game, another is Roblox teaming up with the NFL for a&nbsp;Superbowl promotion.Other examples of brands working with Roblox are entertainment brands working with Roblox to help them debut new content using interactive experiences like&nbsp;Ready Player One, Avengers and Aquaman. Roblox has even held concerts online and worked with artists like&nbsp;Ava Max&nbsp;on launching a single that attracted 1 million users. Various brands have also become interested in establishing their own presence on Roblox and Roblox calls these Branded Worlds. The first Branded World was launched with DC comics and today it has received millions of visitors. In an announcement made just recently, Nike(NYSE:NKE)teamed up with Roblox on building a&nbsp;'Nikeland' virtual space.</li>\n</ul>\nLet's now look at the earnings report that sent Roblox's stock up 42% in one day.\nRoblox Q3 2021 Earnings Report\nBefore getting into the revenues, I thought the following graphic from the&nbsp;Q3 2021 Supplemental materials&nbsp;would be very informative in describing how Roblox recognizes GAAP revenues:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ba131189d01319851cb518635499c00f\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"360\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nRoblox Q3 2021 bookings grew 28% to $637.8 million compared to $496.5 million last year. For Roblox, booking growth is more important than revenue growth because bookings is actually recorded when people purchase Robux, but revenues are only recognized as users spend the Robux on the platform.\nThe company has also estimated October bookings between $177 million and $179 million, up 30% to 34% year-over-year, which is an indication that Q4 could also outperform.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/04c23ff22edb1bffd9c81382aa468f4b\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"359\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nAverage bookings per daily active user (ABPDAU) was $13.49 in Q3 2021, compared to $13.73 last year. The small decline was due to a shift in the geographic mix of the user base. ABPDAU is defined as bookings in a given period divided by the DAUs for such period. The metric ABPDAU is used to understand monetization trends across active users when they buy virtual currency and subscriptions. This number is also sort of a proxy for the value of the platform to Daily Active Users.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/20cec146a312fc52bb7b913c52ab34ef\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"358\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nThe following graphic reconciles revenues to bookings and gives an investor a better idea of the relationship between revenues, deferred revenues and bookings.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5bc7c29257bf140ff5fb9035a7cf9d61\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"148\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Q3 2021 Earnings Release\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/178bc75cc39aabe79f36b10cd48be30f\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"358\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nRevenue in Q3 2021 was $509.3 million, an increase of 102% over Q3 2020. Cost of revenue totaled $130.0 million, up 98% year over year. Gross Profits were $379 million and Gross Margins were 74.47%.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/523097349367a48fa08c1307c0d380da\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"358\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8002fc5adb76eab895b5d2c06b3d8206\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"433\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Data by YCharts\nRoblox has additional Operating Expenses to the normal R&amp;D, S&amp;M, and G&amp;A expenses, which are labelled by the company as Developer Exchange Fees and Infrastructure &amp; Trust and Safety. The Developer Exchange Fee is the payout that developers can elect to receive by converting Robux back into real world cash, which Roblox reports as an expense. Infrastructure and Trust &amp; Safety are the costs associated with running&nbsp;Roblox cloud&nbsp;and the costs of operating the platform with security, safety and trust in mind.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e2df9d03933067820a908838201f50d5\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"359\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nRoblox is still heavily in investment mode, so operating expenses far exceed GAAP Gross Profit, resulting in an operating loss in Q3 2021 of $77.45 million compared to an operating loss of $51.52 million from the prior year.\nNet loss attributable to common stockholders, which includes a portion of the net loss attributable to the Luobu subsidiary, was $74.0 million, compared to a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $48.6 million last year. Net losses increased due to the higher levels of expense required to support the growth of the business and the fact that Roblox defers a significant amount of revenue to later periods.\nRoblox anticipates reporting net losses in the near and medium term, while also generating positive cash from operations. This occurs because deferred revenues are not included on the income statement, since deferred revenues are not considered revenue until they are earned, while, deferred revenues are included in the statement of cash flows.\nRoblox Q3 GAAP EPS of -$0.13 beats estimates by $0.01.\nYoung companies that are scaling often use a metric calledEBITDAbecause the early life stages of a company will often include a lot of financing and capital expenditures, which makes it hard to compare quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year operational profitability and efficiency.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7e6ec5f480a07e1dced7f84cf0a91285\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"349\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nRoblox adjusted EBITDA dropped to $135.7 million from a year-ago $161 million, which is an indication that this company is very much in investment mode to build out the Metaverse, which has been a very hot theme in the market lately.\nBalance Sheet\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8de3420f79c56ccc0ea168bd56ee1f53\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"377\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Q3 2021 Earnings Release\nBalance sheet had $1.93 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments at the end of the quarter. There is no long-term debt on the balance sheet. The company has payables of $178.65 million.\nCash from operations, which is the amount of money a company brings in from its ongoing, regular business activities was $181.2 million.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/012749693a07ac1706fd87d2b92e83f8\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"358\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nRoblox's Free Cash Flow, which is the amount of cash generated that is free and clear of all internal or external obligations, increased 7% over Q3 2020 to $170.6 million.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/84cda0945dd6cdcd2bd934e63c578531\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"358\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nRoblox currently has a very solid balance sheet, positive cash flows, and the company has the ability to fund its growth initiatives.\nAnalyst Price Targets\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4f165ca6edc5354bb00f0ec49f8c4af0\" tg-width=\"480\" tg-height=\"416\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Yahoo Finance\nThe above is based on 10 Wall Street analysts offering 12-month price targets for Roblox in the last 3 months. The average price target is $114.40 with a high forecast of $150.00 and a low forecast of $70.00. The average price target represents a 17% decrease from the last price of $134.72.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e21a864bc21a4c71e07dd8e4b52fac31\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"417\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">\nRisks\nShort Term Risks: Roblox now trades at a Price to Sales of 40, which is near the upper range of where it has traded since its IPO. This is a highly valued stock and if the company fails to execute and/or investors get nervous because of macroeconomic risks like rising interest rates, supply chain woes or potential war concerns over Taiwan, the stock could drop very rapidly.\nAnother risk that has been a big knock on the stock of Roblox this year is that with lockdowns and school closures ending, it could affect engagement on the Roblox platform because the age demographics that currently use Roblox are mostly school age. Roblox's Q3 results has taken a lot of the wind out of the sails of that theory, as engagement is still healthy.\nAlso, I don't think it is any accident that Roblox has announced a lot of education initiatives at its investor day. If Roblox is successful in getting educators to use Roblox in school systems around the country, then concerns that the school system will lower engagement from kids aged 7 to 18 will only go lower over time.\nLong Term Risk: Roblox is a speculative stock. What investors are speculating on is that the concept of the Metaverse becomes popular and that Roblox will become one of the leading players in the Metaverse. If the Metaverse fails to reach the level of popularity that investors expect or Roblox fails to establish itself as one of the leading players in the Metaverse, then the stock will fall.\nRoblox will also have fierce competition in the Metaverse arena, including Meta, formerly known as Facebook and they will also have to face other large players like Nvidia's(NASDAQ:NVDA)&nbsp;Omniverse. Roblox currently has first mover advantages over most Metaverse players, as well as having the advantage of building the Roblox platform with trust and security in mind. This mindset is very different than Facebook, which sacrificed trust and security, in the name of growth on the Facebook platform. Roblox, on the other hand, took trust and security far more seriously very early on, probably after observing many of Facebook's mistakes in building a social network.\nBecause of Roblox branding itself as safe and secure, any breach in that safety and security can damage the brand long term. Roblox has already had problems with its security, with some developers having found&nbsp;ways around restrictions&nbsp;around sexual content and dating, that Roblox wound up having to patch.\nAnother concern is Roblox addiction. There is a fine line between driving more engagement and making children so addicted to the platform that they fail to develop real life social skills. Any adverse publicity on the topic of Roblox addiction where it is found that too much time in the Metaverse hurts people's mental health could hurt the company's long-term goal of raising engagement levels.\nLast but not least. Up until now, Roblox has been mostly for kids. Long-term, Roblox's business depends on its demographics spreading to adults. If Roblox fails in expanding its demographics, the stock will likely have far less upside than investors are currently enthusiastically pricing in.\nConclusion\nRoblox stock is a buy for very aggressive investors willing to speculate on the upside of the Metaverse. This stock is selling at a high valuation, so less aggressive investors might want to wait for the stock to pull back.","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>Roblox: Buying A Piece Of The Metaverse</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; 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}\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\">\nRoblox: Buying A Piece Of The Metaverse\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-11-22 11:55 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4471068-roblox-stock-buy-aggressive-investors-speculate-upside-metaverse>Seeking Alpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nThe stock of Roblox has pretty much stagnated since its IPO in March due to worries that the reopening of schools would cause engagement to fall on the platform.\nRoblox Q3 earnings release ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4471068-roblox-stock-buy-aggressive-investors-speculate-upside-metaverse\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"RBLX":"Roblox Corporation"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4471068-roblox-stock-buy-aggressive-investors-speculate-upside-metaverse","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1165702862","content_text":"Summary\n\nThe stock of Roblox has pretty much stagnated since its IPO in March due to worries that the reopening of schools would cause engagement to fall on the platform.\nRoblox Q3 earnings release busted the thesis that COVID recovery would decrease engagement and slow growth, as all metrics pointed to a very healthy platform.\nIn Q3, Roblox attracted an average of 47.3 million daily active users, which was 31% higher than in Q3 of 2020 and was 2.6x larger than in Q3 of 2019.\nThe strategic roadmap for growth includes expanding international reach, broadening age demographics, expanding platform experiences, and improving monetization.\nWhile the valuation is high with the stock selling at 40 times sales, aggressive investors can buy right now, while more cautious investors might want to wait for a pullback.\n\nLeon Neal/Getty Images News\nRoblox(NYSE:RBLX)came public on March 10 of this year at an initial IPO price of $64.25, while ending the day up $5 at 69.50. The stock traded as high as $103.87 intraday in early June because of investor excitement over the possibility that Roblox could evolve into one of the first Metaverse companies.\nHowever, on June 15, Roblox released its May 2021 Key Metrics and the stock dropped 8% because of the perception that growth was slowing. The stock essentially stagnated by bouncing around between $70 and $90 until November 9th when the stock shot up 42% after reporting very strong Q3 earnings. Roblox was further propelled upwards by excitement over the company's future initiatives after the Roblox Investor Day on November 16.\n\nAfter such a massive move, that now has the stock back to trading at 40 times sales, investors might be wondering whether or not to chase the stock higher after such a huge move in a short period of time.\nData by YCharts\nReasons Why Roblox is Still a Buy\nRoblox started off simply as a platform where users could play games created by other users and share their own game creations to be played by others. However, if that was all there was to Roblox, then it would not likely be trading at a PS ratio of 40.\nSource: Roblox Presentation\nRoblox was designed almost from the beginning to be a human co-experience platform, which is now being more commonly called the Metaverse. The company's end goal is to have all human experiences that can be imagined to be available to be experienced with friends and family on the Roblox platform.\n\n Roblox's mission is to build a human co-experience platform that enables billions of users to come together to play, learn, communicate, explore and expand their friendships.\n\n\n Source:Roblox Corporate Overview\n\nThe concept of the Metaverse or a human co-experience platform is still a very speculative idea but if Roblox successfully gets a Metaverse platform up and running worldwide, it will stand to gain significant first mover advantages and could totally replace today's major social networks like Facebook. The upside in Roblox is potentially being larger than Facebook is today, if the company is successful. In fact, at least part of the reason that I think Facebook(NASDAQ:FB) changed its name to Meta and branded itself a Metaverse company is because I think Mark Zuckerberg sees the potential of Facebook getting disrupted by Roblox.\nWhat is the business model?\nLet me give a brief explanation on how the Roblox is monetized. Roblox uses a freemium model, where games are free to play but advanced features and customizations are only unlocked through paying with an in-game currency called Robux, which can be purchased either through gift cards, ala carte or through subscription.\nSource: Roblox Investor Day Presentation\nGrowth on the Roblox platform is largely organic and largely operates through word-of-mouth. There are two viral growth network effects associated with the platform, with one loop centered around content and the other loop centered around a social network.\nIn the content loop, developers and creators are the prime engine of growth by creating the content that powers the platform. The content attracts players which pay for the content, which allows developers to both make a living and reinvest the money they make into building better experiences. The better experiences result in even more players, higher engagement and more spend, which in turn attracts new developers and creators, while incentivizing existing creators and developers to create even more and higher quality experiences.\nIn Roblox's social network loop, players will play games with their friends, then invite even more of their friends to play the games which drives organic growth. The value of the Roblox platform increases to an individual when more of their friends play together. More friends and better experiences drive even more players to join.\nThis social network loop aspect of Roblox is also a huge competitive advantage for the company, as players want to play the games that they create with their friends, and it tends to make Roblox very sticky. This competitive advantage will also likely at some point turn into a powerful Network Effect Moat, if enough users join the platform.\nThe Key Factor\nThe key factor that drives monetization on the platform is engagement. The more engagement there is, the healthier the platform.\n\n Engagement is our north star. We're very pleased that during the third quarter, people of all ages from across the globe chose to spend over 11 billion hours on Roblox\n\n\n Source: Roblox CEO David Baszucki - Roblox Q3 2021 Shareholder Letter\n\nRoblox measures engagement through two metrics which are Daily Active Users (\"DAUs\") and hours engaged. In Q3, Roblox attracted an average of 47.3 million daily active users (DAUs) which was 31% higher than in Q3 of 2020 and was 2.6x larger than in Q3 of 2019. Users spent 11.2 billion hours engaged on the Roblox platform in Q3 of 2021, up 28% from Q3 in 2020 and up 3x over Q3 of 2019. From these increasing engagement numbers, Roblox is able to support its developer community, who earned over $130 million in the quarter and is on pace to earn well over $500 million this year.\nRoblox experienced severe headwinds in late October this year, as the company experienced a platform outage that shut everything down for three days. Prior to the outage, daily active users in October were 50.5 million, up 43% year-over-year. Hours of engagement in October were 3.2 billion, up 41% year-over-year. These numbers are an indication that Q4 numbers are likely to be strong when they get reported.\nWhat are the growth drivers Moving Forward?\nSource: Roblox Presentation\nThe four growth drivers that the company self-identified as a priority moving forward are:\n\nExtend International reach\nBroaden age demographics\nExpand how people use platform with new use cases\nGrow how engagement is monetized on platform\n\nInternational Expansion\nOf the four growth drivers, Roblox considers international expansion the most advanced. Currently, the rest of the world (\"ROW\") is growing faster than the USA and Canada together, which is currently at only 25% of the traffic on the platform. International Growth, like the US, occurs primarily through strong organic word of mouth in both users and developers.\nRoblox has also been developing powerful machine translation infrastructure, soon to be complete, that should be a big driver for international growth. This translation infrastructure will have the capability of doing translation into all supported languages, which is currently sitting at 11 different languages. In prior years, Roblox experiences had to be manually translated by the developer.\nBroaden Age Demographics\nUp until now, Roblox has shown great success reaching the 13 and under audience. However, for Roblox to reach its goals, the platform will have to broaden its demographics into a brand that appeals to all ages. The company plans to do this in several ways:\n\nEnable developers to build more polished experiences that will appeal to a wider range of users. Roblox is already giving tools to its developers to begin offering deeply immersive experiences through dynamic simulation, faster loading, and more sophisticated rendering.\nRapidly evolve avatar technology to be more realistic. Roblox management considers avatars important because it was discovered that they promote loyalty, engagement and an investment by the user in their virtual identity. Roblox plans on giving users a wider range of identity options, as well as giving users more options in clothing. Another area that Roblox needed improvement was facial animation. In December 2020, Roblox acquired facial tracking and animation company Loom.ai in a bid to make avatars more lifelike by doing things like giving them the ability to smile and make eye gestures.\nCreate better User Matching through better personalized recommendations based upon age, geography, and social graphing skill level. Roblox has also been working on content ratings based upon age. Since launching personalized search and discovery, there has been increased engagement from users as well as a wider distribution of engagement across all experiences which helps expand demographics through core network effects.\n\nUltimately, as the technology on the Roblox platform improves, the ability to create content for older users will improve and as more content for older ages appears, it should attract older users. Roblox is still in the very early stages of expanding the age demographics, yet is already seeing better usage in ages above 13. The 17-24 years old segment is currently growing very rapidly. Measuring by DAUs, approximately 50.4% of users are over the age of 13 this year, compared to 44.5% last year and 51.2% of engagement was from users over the age of 13, up from 40.8% two years ago.\nExpanding How People Use the Platform\nExpanding how people use platform should greatly enhance both DAUs and engagement hours. The Roblox platform is essentially a medium of shared experiences and Roblox is currently in the process of expanding the range of those shared experiences beyond simply playing games to things like education, shared music experiences (concerts), virtual shopping, to maybe even one day working in virtual environments.\nRoblox recently held an Investor Day, in which the company announced they were setting up a \"Roblox Education\" division that aims \"to support 100 million students learning on the Roblox platform by 2030\". Roblox plans to do this by building dynamic learning environments that educators can use to create educational content and to teach people how to code on the Roblox platform.\nRoblox is also creating a $10 million fund dedicated \"to bringing high-quality educational experiences to Roblox and to support educators in using Roblox Studio in their classrooms\". The company has major plans to use Roblox Studio to help teach \"computer science, design, and development courses\" to millions of children.\nThe stock has continued rising after its initial 42% jump after earnings and that is largely due to excitement over the news of Roblox expanding outside of games. Investors are just now becoming aware of the possibilities of the platform.\nGrowing The Roblox Economy\nRoblox plans on expanding the whole economic system that was built around gaming into other economic activities like \"high quality immersive brand advertising that is native and authentic\". Advertising is only the start because ultimately shopping in virtual stores could make its way on to the Roblox platform.\nThe basic building blocks to improving economic activity on the Roblox platform identified by the company include:\n\nRemoving friction in purchasing Robux on the platform. One example of Robux friction removal is the introduction of the Roblox premium subscription offering. Roblox premium offers two things for subscribers which are providing premium subscribers with a stipend of recurring Robux at a discounted rate and also providing premium features like a VIP pass that enables subscribers to get access to premium only features or items only available for purchase with a premium subscription. What this does for Roblox is turn the platform into more of a subscription offering, which increases the stability of Roblox bookings.\nMaking the process of purchasing the avatar and gear associated with the avatar, much easier. Also, improving how merchandise is created and sold on the platform. Roblox has long ago made the decision to make a move to a 100% user-generated content (\"UGC\") avatar marketplace. Prior to 2020, the avatar marketplace was primarily populated by Roblox designed items. Roblox is still relatively early in this transition to UGC.\nTesting ways to have select brands participate in the Roblox economy and engage with users in a way that enhances the user experience, which includes working with brands to sell branded merchandise in a catalogue. There are several examples of branding. One is with Disney(NYSE:DIS)having Avengers: Endgame themed collectibles available to be won in a game, another is Roblox teaming up with the NFL for a Superbowl promotion.Other examples of brands working with Roblox are entertainment brands working with Roblox to help them debut new content using interactive experiences like Ready Player One, Avengers and Aquaman. Roblox has even held concerts online and worked with artists like Ava Max on launching a single that attracted 1 million users. Various brands have also become interested in establishing their own presence on Roblox and Roblox calls these Branded Worlds. The first Branded World was launched with DC comics and today it has received millions of visitors. In an announcement made just recently, Nike(NYSE:NKE)teamed up with Roblox on building a 'Nikeland' virtual space.\n\nLet's now look at the earnings report that sent Roblox's stock up 42% in one day.\nRoblox Q3 2021 Earnings Report\nBefore getting into the revenues, I thought the following graphic from the Q3 2021 Supplemental materials would be very informative in describing how Roblox recognizes GAAP revenues:\nSource: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nRoblox Q3 2021 bookings grew 28% to $637.8 million compared to $496.5 million last year. For Roblox, booking growth is more important than revenue growth because bookings is actually recorded when people purchase Robux, but revenues are only recognized as users spend the Robux on the platform.\nThe company has also estimated October bookings between $177 million and $179 million, up 30% to 34% year-over-year, which is an indication that Q4 could also outperform.\nSource: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nAverage bookings per daily active user (ABPDAU) was $13.49 in Q3 2021, compared to $13.73 last year. The small decline was due to a shift in the geographic mix of the user base. ABPDAU is defined as bookings in a given period divided by the DAUs for such period. The metric ABPDAU is used to understand monetization trends across active users when they buy virtual currency and subscriptions. This number is also sort of a proxy for the value of the platform to Daily Active Users.\nSource: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nThe following graphic reconciles revenues to bookings and gives an investor a better idea of the relationship between revenues, deferred revenues and bookings.\nSource: Roblox Q3 2021 Earnings Release\nSource: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nRevenue in Q3 2021 was $509.3 million, an increase of 102% over Q3 2020. Cost of revenue totaled $130.0 million, up 98% year over year. Gross Profits were $379 million and Gross Margins were 74.47%.\nSource: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nData by YCharts\nRoblox has additional Operating Expenses to the normal R&D, S&M, and G&A expenses, which are labelled by the company as Developer Exchange Fees and Infrastructure & Trust and Safety. The Developer Exchange Fee is the payout that developers can elect to receive by converting Robux back into real world cash, which Roblox reports as an expense. Infrastructure and Trust & Safety are the costs associated with running Roblox cloud and the costs of operating the platform with security, safety and trust in mind.\nSource: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nRoblox is still heavily in investment mode, so operating expenses far exceed GAAP Gross Profit, resulting in an operating loss in Q3 2021 of $77.45 million compared to an operating loss of $51.52 million from the prior year.\nNet loss attributable to common stockholders, which includes a portion of the net loss attributable to the Luobu subsidiary, was $74.0 million, compared to a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $48.6 million last year. Net losses increased due to the higher levels of expense required to support the growth of the business and the fact that Roblox defers a significant amount of revenue to later periods.\nRoblox anticipates reporting net losses in the near and medium term, while also generating positive cash from operations. This occurs because deferred revenues are not included on the income statement, since deferred revenues are not considered revenue until they are earned, while, deferred revenues are included in the statement of cash flows.\nRoblox Q3 GAAP EPS of -$0.13 beats estimates by $0.01.\nYoung companies that are scaling often use a metric calledEBITDAbecause the early life stages of a company will often include a lot of financing and capital expenditures, which makes it hard to compare quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year operational profitability and efficiency.\nSource: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nRoblox adjusted EBITDA dropped to $135.7 million from a year-ago $161 million, which is an indication that this company is very much in investment mode to build out the Metaverse, which has been a very hot theme in the market lately.\nBalance Sheet\nSource: Roblox Q3 2021 Earnings Release\nBalance sheet had $1.93 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments at the end of the quarter. There is no long-term debt on the balance sheet. The company has payables of $178.65 million.\nCash from operations, which is the amount of money a company brings in from its ongoing, regular business activities was $181.2 million.\nSource: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nRoblox's Free Cash Flow, which is the amount of cash generated that is free and clear of all internal or external obligations, increased 7% over Q3 2020 to $170.6 million.\nSource: Roblox Q3 2021 Supplemental materials\nRoblox currently has a very solid balance sheet, positive cash flows, and the company has the ability to fund its growth initiatives.\nAnalyst Price Targets\nSource: Yahoo Finance\nThe above is based on 10 Wall Street analysts offering 12-month price targets for Roblox in the last 3 months. The average price target is $114.40 with a high forecast of $150.00 and a low forecast of $70.00. The average price target represents a 17% decrease from the last price of $134.72.\n\nRisks\nShort Term Risks: Roblox now trades at a Price to Sales of 40, which is near the upper range of where it has traded since its IPO. This is a highly valued stock and if the company fails to execute and/or investors get nervous because of macroeconomic risks like rising interest rates, supply chain woes or potential war concerns over Taiwan, the stock could drop very rapidly.\nAnother risk that has been a big knock on the stock of Roblox this year is that with lockdowns and school closures ending, it could affect engagement on the Roblox platform because the age demographics that currently use Roblox are mostly school age. Roblox's Q3 results has taken a lot of the wind out of the sails of that theory, as engagement is still healthy.\nAlso, I don't think it is any accident that Roblox has announced a lot of education initiatives at its investor day. If Roblox is successful in getting educators to use Roblox in school systems around the country, then concerns that the school system will lower engagement from kids aged 7 to 18 will only go lower over time.\nLong Term Risk: Roblox is a speculative stock. What investors are speculating on is that the concept of the Metaverse becomes popular and that Roblox will become one of the leading players in the Metaverse. If the Metaverse fails to reach the level of popularity that investors expect or Roblox fails to establish itself as one of the leading players in the Metaverse, then the stock will fall.\nRoblox will also have fierce competition in the Metaverse arena, including Meta, formerly known as Facebook and they will also have to face other large players like Nvidia's(NASDAQ:NVDA) Omniverse. Roblox currently has first mover advantages over most Metaverse players, as well as having the advantage of building the Roblox platform with trust and security in mind. This mindset is very different than Facebook, which sacrificed trust and security, in the name of growth on the Facebook platform. Roblox, on the other hand, took trust and security far more seriously very early on, probably after observing many of Facebook's mistakes in building a social network.\nBecause of Roblox branding itself as safe and secure, any breach in that safety and security can damage the brand long term. Roblox has already had problems with its security, with some developers having found ways around restrictions around sexual content and dating, that Roblox wound up having to patch.\nAnother concern is Roblox addiction. There is a fine line between driving more engagement and making children so addicted to the platform that they fail to develop real life social skills. Any adverse publicity on the topic of Roblox addiction where it is found that too much time in the Metaverse hurts people's mental health could hurt the company's long-term goal of raising engagement levels.\nLast but not least. Up until now, Roblox has been mostly for kids. Long-term, Roblox's business depends on its demographics spreading to adults. If Roblox fails in expanding its demographics, the stock will likely have far less upside than investors are currently enthusiastically pricing in.\nConclusion\nRoblox stock is a buy for very aggressive investors willing to speculate on the upside of the Metaverse. This stock is selling at a high valuation, so less aggressive investors might want to wait for the stock to pull back.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":1193,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"CN","currentLanguage":"CN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":59,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ZH_CN"},"commentList":[],"hasMoreComment":false,"orderType":2}