Techcrunch reports, Roku, the digital media player often overlooked because of giants like Apple TV and Amazon Fire, said it plans to rake in $1B in 2019.
The company beat analyst estimates and reported strong growth in active users (jumping 40% YoY) and streaming hours (reaching 7.3B), with revenues of $276m compared to a projected $262m.
Not cord-cutting, but ‘cord-shaving’
Roku increased active accounts by 1m, 6m, and 8m respectively over the past 3 years. It also quadrupled the size of its platform revenue from just over $100m in 2016 to over $400m in 2018.
The company estimates that 1 in 5 US TV households now uses the Roku platform for a portion of their TV watching.
So what’s contributing to the growth? While cord cutting is a contributor, CEO Anthony Wood credits “cord shavers” — pay TV subscribers who have started to dabble in streaming services — AKA, everyone’s parents.
Now it wants to build its international presence
With the streaming landscape poised to evolve this year thanks to the arrival of new services from AT&T, Disney, Viacom, and NBC, Roku plans to invest more internationally to continue expanding its reach.
Today, Roku has more than 27m active global accounts, and the company only began investing heavily in international markets in 2018.
