Roku Q4 Revenue Rises 49%, Active Accounts Hit 37 Million

Roku boosted its fourth-quarter 2019 revenues by 49% to total $411 million — and expects similar strong business to continue in 2020.

Roku’s 2019 revenues totaled $1.1 billion for the year; it projects rising to $1.6 billion in 2020. The stock market appreciated the financial release -- boosting Roku's after-market stock price nearly 10% to $151.80.

The highly watched active account data also showed major gains for the streaming set-top-box/smart TV platform company. It was up 36% over fourth-quarter 2018 to 36.9 million active accounts at the end of 2019 -- much better than analysts expected.

Roku was up 14% (4.6 million) subscribers from 32.3 million active accounts in the third-quarter 2019.

Overall, Roku added 9.8 million incremental active accounts in 2019.

Streaming hours also hiked up 16.3 billion hours over last year, rising 68% year-over-year to hit a record 40.3 billion in 2019.

Roku says nearly one in three smart TVs now include the Roku platform app. Roku adds that platform revenue grew 71% to $259.6 million in the fourth quarter. It had 22% revenue growth from its set-top-box sales to $151.6 million.

Roku dipped to a net loss from operations of $17.4 million from net income of $5.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2018. Gross profit grew 44% to $161.6 million.

Although the company says it more than doubled video ad impressions in 2019, it did not provide specific financial details concerning advertising revenues — an area the company has long said it will focus on for future growth.

Roku did say its average revenue per user/month on its platform -- which factors in advertising revenue -- grew 29% to $23.14.

One estimate from eMarketer said Roku would reach $433 million in ad revenues in 2019.

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