Roblox hits Q1 bookings of $652.3 million, up 161%, in first report as public co...

Roblox hits Q1 bookings of $652.3 million, up 161%, in first report as public company

Roblox, the platform for Lego-like user-generated games, reported its earnings for the first time as a publicly traded company. This met analysts’ expectations. Bookings for the first quarter ended March 31 were $652.3 million, up 161% from the same quarter a year ago.

Roblox has done well among its target audience of children and teens during the pandemic, as players turned to it for remote, socially distanced play with their friends at a time when they couldn’t meet in-person.

Roblox previously raised $520 million at a $29.5 billion valuation in a financing round ahead of its direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange as a public company. It opened on March 10 at a valuation of $41.9 billion a share and has hovered around that value. Investors greeted the results positively, with Roblox trading up 5% at $67.18 a share in after-hours trading.

Q1 results

Analysts expected a loss of 21 cents a share on bookings of $568.6 million. Most video game companies emphasize non-GAAP bookings, or the total value of virtual currency purchases by players during the quarter, instead of revenues, which under accounting rules are limited to those purchases that are expected to be fully resolved within a certain time period. For instance, a player may buy Robux currency in the first quarter, but spend it over 10 months. That revenue has to be recognized over time, as it is spent inside the platform’s games.

Roblox’s quarterly revenue came in at $387 million, up 140% from a year earlier. The GAAP net loss for the quarter was $134.2 million, or 46 cents a share. But operating cash flow as positive, and so that means cash is coming into the business, said chief business officer Craig Donata in an interview with GamesBeat.

“We had a strong quarter in terms of bookings, revenue, and operating cash flow, and more important, in terms of daily active user growth and time spent by players,” Donato said.

Roblox gets a 30% cut from the bookings generated by sales of Robux, the virtual currency used by players to play user-generated games, the company’s bookings for 2020 were $1.9 billion, double what they were the year before. Roblox’s games have become so popular that people have played the best ones billions of times. For the year 2020, on average, 32.6 million people came to Roblox every day. More than 1.25 million creators have made money in Roblox. In the year ended December 31, 2020, users spent 30.6 billion hours engaged on the platform, an average of 2.6 hours per daily active user each day.

Net cash provided by operating activities increased nearly four times in Q1 2021 over Q1 2020 to $164.5 million (including one-time direct listing expenses of $51.9 million). Exclusive of one-time expenses related to the direct listing, net cash provided by operating activities would have been $216.4 million.

Free cash flow increased 4.1 times over Q1 2020 to $142.1 million. Average daily active users (DAUs) were 42.1 million, an increase of 79% year over year driven by 87% growth in DAUs outside of the U.S. and Canada and 111% growth in DAUs over the age of 13.

Hours engaged were 9.7 billion, an increase of 98% year over year primarily driven by 104% growth in engagement in markets outside of the U.S. and Canada, and 128% growth from users over the age of 13. Average bookings per DAU (ABPDAU) was $15.48, an increase of 46% year over year.

April results

Rather than make forecasts about how its upcoming quarter is expected to go, Roblox is not making a forecast. Rather, it is disclosing the actual results for the month of April, which is part of the second quarter.

For the month of April alone, daily active users were 43.3 million, up 37% from April of last year and up sequentially from 42.3 million in the month of March 2021. Hours engaged in April were 3.2 billion, up 18% year over year and flat sequentially from March 2021.

Bookings were between $242 million and $245 million, up 59% to 61% year over year and up sequentially 7% to 9% from March 2021 when bookings were $225.3 million.

Average bookings per DAU were between $5.59 to $5.66, up 16% to 17% year over year and 5% to 6% sequentially from March 2021. April revenue was $143 million to $145 million, up 136% to 140% year over year and 5% to 7% sequentially from March 2021.

“Our first quarter 2021 results enabled us to continue investing aggressively in the key areas that we believe will drive long term growth and value, specifically hiring talented engineering and product professionals and growing the earnings for our developer community,” said chief financial officer of Roblox Michael Guthrie,  in a statement. “We believe we must continue to innovate and so remain focused on building great technology to make progress on our key growth vectors, primarily international expansion and expanding the age demographic of our users.”

The company closed the March quarter with 1,054 employees, up from 651 a year earlier.