Earnings Results: Roku stock falls after earnings as supply-chain issues weigh on holiday forecast

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Roku Inc. reported strong profit growth for the third quarter but shares of the connected-television company skidded in after-hours trading Wednesday, after the company forecast a weaker-than-expected holiday quarter due to the impacts of supply-chain disruptions.

Shares were off more than 8% in aftermarket trading.

The company posted net income of $69 million, or 48 cents a share, up from $13 million, or 9 cents a share, in the year-prior quarter. Analysts tracked by FactSet were modeling 6 cents a share in GAAP earnings.

Roku
ROKU,
+0.08%

grew revenue to $680 million from $452 million, whereas analysts had been modeling $684 million.

While others in the digital advertising industry have reported challenges due to privacy-related changes by Apple
AAPL,
+0.98%

concerning identifiers for advertising (IDFA), Roku Chief Financial Officer Steve Louden said on a call with reporters that Roku has been “less impacted” by IDFA issues because it’s a first-party platform with direct-customer relationships. These relationships give the company its own “data stream,” Louden said.

The company had 56.4 million active accounts as of the third quarter, up from 55.1 million as of the second quarter. Users streamed 18.0 billion hours of content in the quarter, up from 17.4 billion in the second quarter.

Roku noted that its active-account growth slowed in the quarter, which the company attributed largely to supply-chain disruptions that impacted television sales. “Specifically, overall U.S. TV sales in Q3 fell below pre-COVID 2019 level,” the company said in its shareholder letter, and some of Roku’s TV partners “were hit particularly hard with inventory challenges.”

Roku’s average revenue per user on a trailing 12-month basis increased to $40.10 from $36.46 in the second quarter of this year and $27.00 in the third quarter of 2020. This marked the first quarter in which Roku topped $40 on the metric.

For the fourth quarter, Roku anticipates revenue of $885 million to $900 million and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) of $65 million to $75 million. Analysts were modeling $946 million in fourth-quarter revenue and $86 million in adjusted Ebitda.

“Looking ahead, our business fundamentals remain strong but we are mindful that the challenges created by the global supply-chain disruptions will likely continue into 2022,” the company noted in its shareholder letter. “These headwinds may have a broad impact on the holiday season in terms of consumer confidence, product pricing and availability, and advertising spend levels.”

Louden added on the call with reporters that it’s “hard to tell what the exact path to normalcy is,” but that Roku expects the issues to be temporary.

Shares of Roku have declined about 26% over the past three months as the S&P 500
SPX,
+0.65%

has added roughly 5%.

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