• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, March 13, 2023

Roku, AcuityAds and Roblox are among the tech companies whose assets were covered by the swift action of government regulators following Friday’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) — which, with more than $200 billion in assets, was the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history, after 2008’s Washington Mutual collapse.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) took over SVB, transferred all its deposits to another bank, and guaranteed that all depositors — including those whose assets are uninsured by the FDIC because they exceed $250,000 — would lose no money and would have access to their funds as of Monday morning. Also, this morning, the regulators moved to take over a second bank, New York-based Signature Bank, and cover depositors’ assets. Shareholders and some unsecured debtholders will not be protected by the government interventions. (Read the joint statement by the Treasury Department, FDIC and Federal Reserve here.)

All stock indices fell on Friday, including a 3.83% loss for the Nasdaq, 1.45% for the S&P 500, and 1.07% for the Dow.

Roku, among the companies with the largest exposure at SVB, saw its stock fall 0.88%, to $59.99, on Friday. The company’s shares had gained 10% over the past month. Its average price for the past 52 weeks was $74.15, and its all-time high was $479.50 on July 26, 2021.

The streaming equipment and services giant had about $487 million, or 26% of its total cash and cash equivalents of $1.9 billion deposited at SVB on a “largely uninsured” basis, according to its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.  

Roku stated that it “continues to believe that its existing cash and cash equivalents balance and cash flow from operations will be sufficient to meet its working capital, capital expenditures, and material cash requirements from known contractual obligations for the next twelve months and beyond.”

Last week, Roku announced that it had tapped former Stitch Fix executive Dan Jedda to succeed Steve Louden as CFO as of May 1. Louden, who announced his intention to exit the company last year, will stay on until August to assist in the transition.

Also last week, Roku revealed that it will work with Best Buy to match the retailer's first-party data with its streaming app-distributor platform data for use by brands advertising on the Roku platform and Best Buy's retail media network. 

Dozens of other tech companies were also affected by the SVB collapse, including Canadian ad-tech firm AcuityAds, which reported having about $55 million in deposits at the bank and $4.8 million at other banks.

This morning, AcuityAds announced that given regulators' actions, steps it took over the last two days to ensure that its operations can rely solely on its other banking relationships, and the cash it has on deposit with other financial institutions, it "expects that its cash situation will be resolved without any interruption to its ordinary course operations and without it incurring any financial losses."  

Video game maker Roblox had 5%, or $150 million, of its $3 billion cash and securities in SVB as of Feb. 2.   

Vox Media had a "substantial concentration of cash" at SVB, but it did not expect any disruption as a result, The New York Times reported.

FuboTV, Netflix, AirBnB, Expedia and Lyft were among the companies that declared they had no direct exposure to SVB. Google, Amazon, Meta and eBay said they were "not concerned with direct exposure," but recognize that some of their advertisers, customers and partners likely do have exposure. Those stating that their exposure is small or immaterial include Vimeo, which said its SVB balance totaled under $250,000, and Juniper Networks, which said its SVB deposits represent less than 1% of its total cash. 

SVB, which provided venture loans as well as banking, reported banking 44% of venture-backed tech and health care IPOs in 2022, and 55% in 2021, according to Axios.

Signature Bank had a number of crypto clients.

These were not the first two tech-sector banks to fail. Last week, California-based Silvergate Bank, which made loans to cryptocurrency companies, announced that it would cease operations and liquidate its assets.