Main Highlights:
- Roblox raised $520 million in a funding round before its public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, valuing the company at $29.5 billion.
- Craig Donato, CEO of the company, told GamesBeat that he and his team are pretty happy with the company’s recent advancements.
- A virtual world like Snow Crash or Ready Player One that is linked to other virtual worlds is the purpose of Roblox.
A year ago, Roblox, a platform for user-generated games similar to Lego, announced bookings of $637.8 million, a 28% increase over the same period the previous year. There were losses of $74 million, yet the San Mateo company’s revenues increased by 102 percent in the third quarter.
Players went to Roblox for socially distant play with their pals during the pandemic because they couldn’t meet face-to-face due to Exchange; Roblox raised $520 million at a $29.5 billion valuation in a financing round before its direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange. When it went public on March 10, the company was valued at $41.9 billion per share.
It was stated in a statement by Roblox CEO David Baszucki that engagement is their guiding light. People from all over the world spent over 11 billion hours on Roblox in the third quarter, and the developer community earned more than $130 million in the quarter and is on track to make more than $500 million this year. Continue to invest in cutting-edge technologies that will allow developers to construct and create as they end 2021 and proceed into 2022.
Roblox’s results during the third quarter
Shareholders were forecast to suffer a loss of 14 cents a share on $636.5 million in bookings. It’s common for video game companies to report non-GAAP bookings rather than sales, which are confined to transactions scheduled to be completed within a specific time frame under accounting laws. Robux currency can be purchased in the first quarter but spent over ten months. Profits from the platform’s games must be acknowledged over time.
During an interview, Craig Donato, the company’s CEO, remarked that he and his team are pleased with the company’s recent progress. For starters, it’s compared to last year’s record-breaking rise. They also tend to be back-to-school-themed. So, for them, an increase in bookings of 28% in the fall is encouraging.
74% of Roblox’s users are located outside of the United States and Canada, according to Donato. As a result, the firm is experiencing significant growth outside of the United States and Canada. As a result, Roblox’s demographics are maturing, with more substantial users currently over 13. Roblox’s top 1,000 experiences are also becoming more geared toward older players, and more material is being created to appeal to this demographic.
There was a 102% increase in Roblox’s quarterly revenue from last year to $509.3 million. GAAP net losses were $74 million, or 13 cents a share, in the third quarter. There was $181.2 million in operating cash on hand. Roblox aims to create the metaverse, a virtual environment connected to other virtual worlds, like Snow Crash or Ready Player One.
Players who purchase Robux, the virtual currency used to play user-generated games, give Roblox a 30 percent cut of the bookings they produce. Roblox’s bookings in 2020 were $1.9 billion, more than double what they were in 2019. It’s estimated that billions of individuals have played the most popular Roblox games.
There were 47.3 million average daily active users (DAU) in the third quarter, up 31% from a year ago and up from 43 million in the second quarter. As a result of a shift in the company’s demographic user base, hours worked increased by 28% to 11.2 billion, although average bookings per DAU dropped from $13.73 to $13.49 during this period.
Roblox estimates that 32.6 million users will visit the platform daily by the year 2020. To date, more than 1.25 million Roblox developers have earned a living through their work on the forum. The average daily active user spent 2.6 hours on the site each day in the year that concluded on December 31, 2020.
There were 1,234 employees at Roblox in the last quarter. At this point last year, the company had 865 employees, a 66% increase. Engineers and product designers still play a vital role.
Outcome from October
One billion dollars in 3.875 percent senior unsecured notes were issued by Roblox in October. The company’s day-to-day operations will benefit from the net proceeds. As Donato put it, the goal was to enhance the war fund of the corporation.
According to the indenture for our 3.875 percent senior unsecured notes due 2030, adjusted EBITDA was $135.7 million in the third quarter of 2021, down from $161.0 million in the third quarter of 2020. Instead of predicting how the upcoming quarter will turn out, Roblox has decided not to make a prognosis. For October, it’s revealing the actual results of the fourth quarter. There was a widespread outage on Roblox from October 28 to October 31.
Donato said the company has figured out what caused the outage and would release a postmortem soon. He said that the downtime would be reimbursed to both developers and customers. DAUs averaged 50.5 million for the first 27 days of October before the power outage, an increase of 43% over the same time in 2020.
As a result of the interruption, full-month average DAUs for October were reduced to 47.1 million. There were 3.2 billion total hours of involvement in the first 27 days of October, an increase of 41% over the same time in 2020. For the entire month of October, there were 3.4 billion actual hours of participation. Bookings totaled $177 to $179 million in the first 27 days of October, up 30 to 34 percent over the same time in 2020. Estimated October bookings ranged from $189 million to $192 million.
According to Roblox, Vans and a Roblox developer produced a branded experience that has attracted over 40 million visitors. Additionally, live music events like concerts and music festivals continue to draw large crowds. Then there are places like the Vans experience that are always there. A year ago, 40% of Robux was spent on the top ten experiences on Roblox, compared to 50% today.
