Roku, Inc. (NASDAQ:ROKU) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Charlie Collier : Sure. Thanks, Cory. Look, we have many broad and successful relationships that we’re fortifying. So generally speaking, we’re developing relationships with all sorts of third-party platforms from retail media to third-party DSTs. My overall goal is to make sure basically that every marketer feels the impact of Roku inventory and data, so we’re making it easier for marketers to accelerate through this evolution. . The philosophy is to meet marketers where they’re currently transacting programmatically, to both increased demand and simply breadth in the relationships for Roku in the marketplace. We think there is a day coming soon when all media plans begin with streaming. And while Roku will remain the best place to buy and optimize Roku and its many special opportunities, again, we’re going to meet our partners and marketers where they currently wish to transact.

So our first party and ACR data along with our specialized ad products like the Roku Brand Studio, those will continue to be accessible only on their Roku advertising platform. So broadly, it’s not just ESPs, we have partnerships with Walmart Connect, DoorDash, Kroger and many more. So these are early days and we’ll adapt to the market as we see fit.

Operator: Our next question will be coming from Steve Cahall of Wells Fargo.

Steven Cahall : Maybe first, I was just wondering if you could discuss the net adds and if there was a significant contribution from your international expansion. Just as we think about net adds going forward, trying to get a better sense of the domestic versus the international piece? And then related to that, 1 of the things we like to do is subtract streaming hours growth from platform revenue growth as kind of a proxy for how monetization is trending. Looks like it was down about 19% year-on-year in the fourth quarter. And I think your guidance implies that, that doesn’t really improve or maybe even gets a bit worse in the first quarter. So I was just wondering if that’s maybe more of the international mix shift and its impact on ARPU? Or if it just reflects that the macro is kind of still going to be challenged as we get into Q1.

Anthony Wood: I’ll take the first question and then Steve can take your second question. So yes, we had — I mean, we had a great year last year in active accounts, adding almost 10 million new net adds, new active accounts to land the year at 70 million active accounts. And a big picture, why is that happening? Well, it’s because streaming is really actually super popular right now. And Roku is the leading streaming platform. So that’s obviously helping. We have a great brand. We’re focused on building products that are super delightful, incredibly simple and unmatched value. And that generates a lot of word of mouth for our products. So there was a report recently by Morning Consult saying that Roku is the fastest-growing brand among Gen Zs, which is cool.

So the brand is great. The product is great. People love streaming. So there’s just a lot of things that I think that are helping us. In terms of your question about where are those accounts coming from, in terms of devices, we sell streaming players and we have the Roku TV program, both are super successful. As time has progressed, the Roku TV program is becoming increasingly important active accounts and is now the majority of new active accounts. And then domestic versus international, both sources of accounts are important for us. We’re doing well internationally. But of course, we’re doing well in the U.S. as well. I mean we’re the U.S. We’re the #1 streaming platform in the U.S. We had I think it was 38% market share in Q4, which is the higher market share than Samsung and LG combined for TV operating systems.

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