• by Wayne Friedman , November 10, 2023

Looking to accelerate its connected TV footprint, Vizio Holdings -- the smart TV set maker/platform -- is pursuing partnerships with other TV set manufacturers through licensing its CTV operating system.

The company wants to increase its total market share from its current 11% to 12% share of TV sets, comprising some 40 million TV units in the marketplace.

Of the company’s total addressable market of 40 million TV sets, Vizios’s SmartCast CTV platform now has 17.9 million accounts -- up 300,000 year-over-year and slightly under analysts' estimates. 

During the period, Vizio's “device” revenue -- sales of its TV sets -- dropped 12.1% year-over-year in the third quarter, with total TV shipments down 8% to 1.1 million.

“Vizio’s stock has been in a funk but strong advertising growth, monetization upside and expansion of its operation system to partner TVs could break it out” says Steven Cahall, media analyst of Wells Fargo Securities.

As of early Friday morning, the stock price of Vizio Holdings Corp. was up 25%.

In its most recent third quarter period, its advertising revenue from its smart TV platform on its TV sets -- grew 27% to $122.9 million. This was a slight deceleration from the second quarter’s 35%. 

Advertising revenue is 79% of overall "platform+" revenue, which amounted to $156.2 million. Non-advertising revenue was up 8% to $33.3 million.

Vizio’s SmartCast average revenue per user (ARPU) grew 14% to $31.55. The company says  its summer upfront deal-making with advertisers in the summer grew versus $200 million upfront revenues in 2022.

Fourth-quarter Smartcast accounts is estimated to grow to around 18.5 million.

Vizio now has 290 free ad-supported streaming channels under its WatchFree+ service. It launched nine new apps in the period including ESPN and the NFL.