Key Takeaways after ROKU announces Q4 '21 & Full Year '21 results

Full Year '21:

Q4 '21:

Total net revenue up 33% y/y to $865.3m
Platform revenue up 49% y/y to $703.6m
Gross profit up 24% y/y to $379.6m
- Lower than revenue growth of 33% partially due to player gross margin was -28.4%
- Player gross margin for Q2 '21 was -5.9% and Q3 '21 was -15.0%. That's because account acquisition will remain a priority & ROKU intends to continue to insulate customers from elevated costs in the player business, which will continue to cause negative player gross margins until supply chain conditions normalize. Basically want to get as many accounts as possible so they can monetize them on the platform side
Active Accounts up 3.7m from the prior quarter to 60.1m

Key notes from the shareholder letter:

No. 1 TV streaming platform in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico by hours streamed despite competition from big tech like Amazon, Google, Apple, et al
Roku’s U.S. active account base (most of the 60.1m accounts) surpassed the U.S. video subscribers of all of the cable companies combined
Similar to Q3, overall U.S. TV unit sales in Q4 fell below pre-COVID 2019 levels & impacts ROKU's TV OEM partners like TCL. But, ROKU players (those sticks you connect your TV to) remained above pre-COVID 2019 levels and down only 4% y/y compared to the '20 COVID surge
According to Nielsen, in Q4 adults aged 18- 49 spent 45% of their TV time streaming, up from 40% in the prior year. Yet it is estimated that advertisers spent just 18% of their U.S. TV budgets on streaming in 2021
With the launch of HBO Max, Paramount+, and Discovery+ in 2021, almost every major media company now has a flagship service and has reoriented their business around streaming.

FY '22 Guidance:

Total net revenue up 35% y/y to $3,733m
ROKU stock down 21% in AH or $115/share. Last two times at $115/share: May '20 (start of the COVID pandemic) & Sep '19 (way before the COVID pandemic)

Key Takeaways after ROKU announces Q4 ’21 & Full Year ’21 results