TV viewers, especially in the United States of America, are well aware of Roku’s equipment. According to statistics, Roku TV sets are used by one in three households in the United States today.
The company offers a video player and TV product called Roku Streaming Player. With the vision of “making every TV show available for streaming” as the company’s vision, you can watch a wide range of programs from video services like Netflix and HBO to traditional TV channels.
The company’s unique name “Roku” comes from the Japanese word “roku”. The reason is that it was the sixth company founded by founder Anthony Wood.
Anthony Wood founded ReplayTV in 1997, and from 2007 to 2008 he served as “VP of Internet TV” at Netflix. Founded in 2002, Roku is by no means a new company, but it continues to grow to this day.
In 2022, there are 16.7 million active accounts, 3.8 billion watch hours and a revenue per user (ARPU) of $12.68. A simple calculation from this number means that each account averages about 2.5 hours per day of watching videos on Roku.
Quarterly sales in 2022 were $124 million (up 40% year on year). It’s just a huge growth rate.
The strength of Roku’s business model is that the more hardware it sells, the more platform revenue it generates, so in the medium to long term, platform revenue will accumulate.
Even at this point, operating losses are by no means a big deal, and it seems like it’s only a matter of time before the company turns a profit.
The cash flow also depends on the timing of the payment, so it is possible that it is temporary. Going forward, if Roku’s revenue-to-cost ratio improves, it’s likely that cash flow will improve as well, but that’s the future, so it’s hard to say. After all, it’s hard to judge growing companies based on cash flow alone.
However, the area of video streaming where Roku is growing its business is getting a lot of attention, Netflix being an example.
On the other hand, major companies such as Netflix and Amazon are working on the crude technique of “producing programs at enormous cost in-house”, but Roku “makes it possible to access all video services in one place”, trying to solve this problem and optimizing the accumulated experience.
While every media company is struggling to survive, creating a service that can collectively watch them is a simple yet powerful idea.
Today, one in three American families use Roku devices, if they believe in statistics that know everything and everyone. It is in the most promising North American market in the world that Roku has achieved the greatest success.
The Roku TV streaming ecosystem includes hardware (streaming devices) and software (Roku TV). Roku devices can be connected to TVs or exist as software on smart TVs with thousands of TV streaming web channels. Roku satisfies the needs of users to view streaming web content on the big screen, allowing content providers and advertisers to reach users in global markets.
