Roku - Q4 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the fourth quarter 2023 Roku earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to the Vice President of Investor Relations, Conrad Grodd.

Conrad Grodd (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and welcome to Roku's fourth quarter and year-ended 2023 earnings call. I'm joined today by Anthony Wood, Roku's founder and CEO, and Dan Jedda, our CFO. Also in today's call for Q&A are Charlie Collier, President, Roku Media, and Mustafa Ozgen, President, Devices. Full details of our results and additional management commentary are available in our shareholder letter, which can be found on our investor relations website at roku.com/investor. Our comments and responses to your questions on this call reflect management's views as of today only, and we disclaim any obligation to update this information. On this call, we'll make forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events, such as statements regarding our financial outlook, future market conditions, and the macroeconomic environment. These statements are based on our current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions, and involve risks and uncertainties.

Please refer to our shareholder letter and our periodic SEC filings for information on factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. We'll also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in our shareholder letter. Finally, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons on this call will be against our results for the comparable period of 2022. Now, I'd like to hand the call over to Anthony.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Thanks, Conrad. Looking back at 2023, I'm proud of our execution. We delivered positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow a year ahead of schedule by focusing on operational improvements and platform revenue growth, which we grew double digits. We also drove record growth in our scale and engagement. A large share of my management team's attention in 2023 was spent on OpEx reduction and internal operational improvements. This year, we will be redirecting much of our attention to platform growth and innovation, where I see lots of opportunity. A core strategy for us is to take better advantage of our position as the programmer of the home screen for our 80 million active accounts globally. We use this to grow ad reach, which correlates to ad revenue, as well as to grow our streaming service distribution activities.

For example, Roku City is popular for the way it seamlessly integrates iconic brand imagery like McDonald's Golden Arches, as well as movies and TV show promotions, in ways that are delightful for viewers. Newer examples include our All Things Food and All Things Home viewer experiences, which aggregate the best culinary and home and garden content on the Roku platform, or the Roku Sports experience, which aggregates sporting events in a single central location. These are some early examples, and we are focused on improving these early efforts, as well as new experiences to engage viewers and help them find content across the streaming universe in ways that also drive monetization. Thinking about the state of the industry, I see two trends that are particularly important for us. One is the enormous volume of streaming content.

As I just mentioned, helping our viewers easily navigate and find what they want to watch is a big opportunity for Roku. Second, the industry has increased its focus now more than ever on building thriving and sustainable businesses. This means more ad-supported streaming service tiers, which will further accelerate the overall shift of ad dollars from traditional TV to streaming. Roku has the tools and expertise to help streaming services grow engagement, which is critical in an ad-supported environment. We expect strong demand for ad-supported tiers on Roku as many users seek value-priced streaming options. With our platform advantages, beloved brand, first-party relationships with 80 million active accounts, and deep user engagement, we are well-positioned to accelerate revenue growth in future years. Now, I'll turn it over to Dan to discuss our results.

Dan Jedda (CFO)

Thanks, Anthony. In Q4, we grew active accounts by 4.2 million, ending 2023 with 80 million. Full-year net adds of 10 million were above 2019 and similar to 2022 levels, driven primarily by the Roku TV program in the U.S. and international markets. We're also growing engagement on our platform, with 2023 streaming hours up 18.6 billion year-over-year to a record 106 billion hours. We grew both Q4 and full-year streaming hours 21% year-over-year. Average streaming hours per active account per day were 4.1 hours in Q4 2023, up from 3.8 hours in Q4 2022 and 3.6 hours in Q4 2021. Average viewing time on traditional TV is 7.5 hours per day in the U.S., providing significant opportunity for us to continue to grow our engagement. In Q4, total net revenue grew 14% year-over-year to $984 million.

Platform revenue was $829 million, up 13% year-over-year, driven by both streaming services distribution and video advertising activities, offset by M&E. Streaming services distribution activities grew faster than overall platform revenue, benefiting from increased subscription signups along with recent price increases from SVOD partners. However, the year-over-year growth rate of streaming services distribution in Q4 was lower than the year-over-year growth rate in Q3 due to tougher comps in Q4. Devices revenue increased 15% year-over-year in Q4, driven by Roku branded TVs, which launched in March 2023. ARPU was $39.92 in Q4 on a trailing 12-month basis, down 4% year-over-year, reflecting an increasing share of active accounts in international markets, where we are currently focused on growing scale and engagement. Q4 total gross margin was 44%.

Q4 platform gross margin of 55% was stable year-over-year and sequentially when excluding the $62 million restructuring charge in Q3 related to the removal of select licensed and produced content from the Roku Channel. Q4 devices margin was -13%, which was up roughly 19 points year-over-year as a result of improved supply chain costs and limited promotional discounts. Q4 adjusted EBITDA was $48 million, which was $38 million above our outlook. The better-than-expected performance was driven by our platform segment along with improvements to our operating expense profile. Please note that a one-time charge of $42 million, primarily related to lease impairments and workforce reductions, was added back to adjusted EBITDA. Free cash flow was $176 million on a trailing 12-month basis, and we ended the quarter with over $2 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Let me turn to our outlook for the first quarter.

We anticipate total net revenue of $850 million, gross profit of $370 million with gross margin of 43.5%, and break-even adjusted EBITDA. While we remain mindful of the challenging macro environment and uneven ad market recovery, we plan to increase revenue and free cash flow and achieve profitability over time. For total net revenue, we anticipate a seasonal percentage decline in line with Q1 2023. We will face difficult year-over-year growth rate comparison in streaming services distribution and a challenging M&E environment for the rest of this year. We expect to maintain our Q4 2023 year-over-year platform growth rate of 13% in Q1. We expect a continued mix shift away from M&E activities, which will compress platform margins in the near term. For Q1, we expect platform margin to be similar to Q1 of last year of roughly 52%.

On the devices side, we expect margins to improve from -13% in Q4 to negative mid-single digits in Q1. Our outlook for this sequential improvement reflects a lighter retail promotional period in Q1. Turning to OpEx, we anticipate Q1 year-over-year growth rate to negative low to mid-teens, a significant improvement from OpEx year-over-year growth of approximately 40% in Q1 2023. We'll continue to operate our business with discipline, with a focus on driving increasingly positive free cash flow over time. After achieving positive adjusted EBITDA for full year 2023, we expect to deliver further improvements for full year 2024. As we've stated previously, we will balance this commitment with reinvestment to continue to expand our scale, engagement, and monetization. With that, let's take questions. Operator?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, simply press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw the question, press star one one again. Our first question comes from the line of Shyam Patil with Susquehanna International Group. Please proceed.

Shyam Patil (Senior Equity Analyst)

Hey, guys. Nice job on the execution. I had a couple of questions. The first one, what are the biggest priorities for Roku this year, Anthony? And then just to follow up on Amazon, how are you guys thinking about the Prime AVOD launch? Is this a threat? Is this an opportunity? Maybe if you could talk about that a little bit. Thank you.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Hey, Shyam. Thanks for that. This is Anthony. Well, like I just mentioned in my prepared remarks, last year, 2023, as a management team, we were very focused on improving our operational effectiveness, efficiencies, right-sizing OpEx, and we made a lot of progress in that area, achieving positive EBITDA for the full year, a year ahead of our target. So we're very happy with that. I mean, obviously, we're going to continue this year to push on operational efficiencies, but we'll have a lot more time this year as a management team to focus on innovation and growth. And that's where I'll be spending a lot of my time, is just driving some of the fun or improving and adding things to our platform that will drive more growth over the long term. So that's the big focus for us in 2024, is innovation and growth.

Maybe I could just give a couple of examples of the kinds of things that we're doing there just to give you a flavor for it. I mean, there's a lot of things. There's a lot of opportunity in this area. One example is I made some organizational changes recently. One of the changes is that I tasked one of our most strategic executives who reports to me to focus on driving our subscription business. We have a large subscription business, both Roku Channel premium subscriptions as well as building and driving subscriptions for our streaming service partners. So it's not something that's new to us, but it's something that could be a lot larger and is a big opportunity for us. We're consolidating all the activities under one leader who reports to me. We're going to increase resources there.

I just think it's something that we can make a lot of good progress on. That's one example. Another example is one of our core strategies in monetization is to take advantage of the fact that 80 million households, approximately 80 million households, turn on their TV and start their streaming experience with Roku. The first thing they see when they turn on their TV is the Roku home screen. It's the place where they start to decide what do they want to watch? What are they going to watch? One of the things that we do is we build viewer experiences that engage viewers that are entertaining and that help them decide which app do they want to run, watch TV show, what TV shows they want to watch. You can see that in things.

Just for example, there are features that we've already launched to do this. So for example, we have the Sports Zone. Sports is an area that's particularly challenging for viewers because it's so fragmented. It's hard for them to figure out where the game that they want to watch is playing. Changes by day of week, changes based on the league. It's just very complex. And so our Sports Zone helps viewers find games, figure out where they're playing, learn more about sports on the platform. That's one example. Things we've launched more recently, All Things Food, which helps, where we curate the best food content across our platform, what to watch. These are the kinds of experiences we're working on. We call this programming our home screen, and it's a core strategy for us. It's a big area of focus.

It's basically a key strategy for us to engage with our viewers while they're trying to decide what to watch and use that to drive viewing in both our owned and operated apps, but also in third-party apps. So it drives monetization. At the same time, it helps solve a big problem viewers have, which is trying to decide what to watch across all the content in the streaming universe. Those are just two examples, but big focus on innovation and growth for my management team this year. And then I think your second question was about AVOD launches. So maybe what I'll say there, just kind of taking it up a level, one of the trends that's happening right now in the streaming world is that the streaming industry is maturing.

If you take AVOD, for example, I mean, a couple of years ago, all the streaming services were just very focused on driving subscribers at almost any cost. Now the industry is very focused on building sustainable, thriving businesses. One of the tools that's being used is to add entry-level ad-supported tiers to streaming services. The mainstream solution is something that's been the industry has done since the beginning for television. So it's not new. But for me, it's a sign that the industry is really starting to mature. I think the streaming industry. And I think if you another example of, I think, evidence that the streaming industry is starting to mature is sports. I mean, we're seeing new sports services launched. It used to be that you couldn't get access to sports content without having a subscription to traditional pay TV. That's really changed.

Almost all sports, if not all sports, are now available on lots of different channels on streaming. It's very fragmented. It's hard for viewers to figure out where to watch it, but it's there. And it's an opportunity for us. I think both of these examples, more sports coming to streaming, the rise of AVOD tiers in streaming, are examples of the industry maturing. And I think what that means is that we're going to see even more viewers moving to streaming and, in particular, more ad dollars moving to streaming. So for example, I mean, in the U.S. alone, the TV ad business is over $60 billion. But there's still this really large gap between viewership and ad spend.

Approximately 60% of streaming hours. I'm sorry, approximately 60% of TV viewing hours are on streaming versus traditional pay TV, but only about 30% of the ad dollars are on connected TV. That's a huge gap that, as the industry matures, will start to close. I guess that's one aspect I think of AVOD is just maturing of the industry. And I don't think it'll accelerate cord cutting, and it'll accelerate the shift of ad dollars moving to streaming. The other thing, I guess, I would say is, as the programmer at the home screen for 80 million active accounts, we're good at and well-positioned to help drive viewing across our platform. And we do that to promote our own owned and operated services, like I mentioned.

We also do it regularly to promote third-party services across our platform. And in particular, ad-supported services are very reliant on engagement. Engagement highly correlates to revenue if you have ads. We're in a great position to help drive ad-supported engagement across our platform. So we expect it to continue to be a good business and growing for us to do that. So that's just a couple of examples.

Shyam Patil (Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you, Anthony, for all the color.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. It is from the line of Justin Patterson with KeyBanc. Please proceed.

Justin Patterson (Managing Director)

Great. Thank you very much, and good afternoon. Two, if I can. First, Anthony, I was hoping you could elaborate just on some of the progress you've made with third-party partnerships on the ad tech side and retail media networks over the past year. What have you learned from those initial integrations, and how should we think about that as just a bigger part of the business going forward? And then perhaps for Dan, I appreciate your commentary on EBITDA being profitable over the course of the year. How should we think about just the puts and takes of what really drives the overall margin expansion and potentially how you might be reinvesting some strength you might see back in driving innovation and future platform growth? Thank you.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Hey, Justin. Thanks for that. I'll let Charlie take the third-party partnership question.

Charlie Collier (President of Roku Media)

Thanks. Thanks, Anthony, and thanks, Justin, for the question. When I think about our focus on demand diversification, which continues to be a huge priority for us, and our embrace of third-party relationships, underlying both of them are a focus on expanding upon the many ways we build our partners' businesses. We're opening up new ways to prove the unique value of Roku, and we'll continue to do that in whichever ways are best for our clients to execute their marketing and advertising campaigns. So in 2023, we did make real progress expanding our relationships with third-party platforms, Justin, including retail media networks, DSPs, and other strategic partners. As a result, we've increased our roster of advertisers. Programmatic ad spend continues to grow on the platform, and ad investment through third-party DSPs is also growing well.

Our strategies really have allowed us to tap into new budgets from existing advertisers while also growing and diversifying the number of new advertisers on Roku. We've built tech and enhanced relationships that actually make it easier for small and medium-sized businesses, easier than ever before, to access the Roku platform. Many of these are small, but they have the potential to grow into large advertisers for us. So to name some names for you, over the past year, we formed partnerships with a broad variety of third parties. Actually, you mentioned retail platforms. We had DoorDash, Instacart, Cox, and Best Buy. We've expanded third-party DSP relationships now to really participate with all the major DSPs and SSPs. And we're partnering also with new measurement partners like iSpot and Comscore.

Overall, Justin, we are serving more partners and advertisers, and we really continue to improve and expand on the performance and measurement capabilities that Roku is providing for them. So on a third-party overall, I'm very pleased with our third-party partnerships, both in terms of our progress and our growth.

Dan Jedda (CFO)

I'll take the next question. Hi, Justin. It's Dan. Thanks for the question. On your question on EBITDA and some of the puts and takes, let me just talk a little bit about Q1 in the full year. As we mentioned earlier, streaming services distribution performed very well in FY 2023 with very strong year-over-year growth rates. Video advertising really rebounded well in the second half of 2023. We expect both those areas to continue to grow in 2024. We did comment on the M&E challenges that we faced in FY 2023 and that we expect the M&E markets to continue to be challenged this year. This will ultimately result in a difficult year-over-year comp on the platform side because of the strong growth in SSD and the challenging M&E environment.

If we see M&E accelerate from its current levels, it will have a positive impact on margins and our EBITDA. Both on if we see it on the SVOD and the AVOD side, we'll grow subscribers and engagement across the platform, and that will have a positive impact for us. On the margin side, we guided platform margin in Q1 to 52%, which was similar to Q1 of last year. We're not providing guidance going forward, but I would anticipate that our gross margin to improve on the platform side slightly from the Q1 levels as our volume of revenue grows. We do have some fixed costs up in platform margins, and I would expect us to see some sequential improvement in gross margin going forward.

Then lastly, on the OpEx side, we ended Q4 at just over $500 million in OpEx if you adjust for our Q4 impairment and restructuring charge. We talked a little bit about this in last quarter. It's similar this quarter. If you annualize that out and apply a mid-single-digit growth rate, that's the way I'm thinking of OpEx for 2024. As we've stated previously, we do expect to see further improvements in 2024 in adjusted EBITDA. We had a very strong free cash flow year in 2023. We expect to be positive on free cash flow in 2024. Lastly, to where you see the reinvestment, Anthony touched on this in the earlier question. We have multiple areas on the monetization side that we'll reinvest in, specifically on our subscriptions business as we look to expand that and accelerate that.

We have a lot of other initiatives on ad product and the monetization side that we'll continue to reinvest as we look forward to accelerating growth in the years to come.

Justin Patterson (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. It's from Shweta Khajuria with Evercore ISI. Please proceed.

Shweta Khajuria (Managing Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Let me try two, please. One is on just the overall ad demand trends that you saw in Q4 and into Q1 so far, and specifically as it relates to certain key verticals that you could comment on or just the scatter market health and the caution or the lack of or the improvement of sentiment among brand advertisers. That's question one. Just a quick follow-up on how should we be thinking about political impact this year for you? Thank you.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Hi, Shweta. Thanks. This is Anthony, but Charlie will take those questions.

Charlie Collier (President of Roku Media)

Thank you. Hey, good to hear from you, Shweta. Thanks for the questions. We continue to see, actually, a really solid rebound in video advertising in fourth quarter. I'm really pleased with the way video advertising has strengthened in general, offsetting what has been and remains a challenging M&E marketplace. Now, all that's said about M&E, it remains a really important category for Roku, and we are a unique and effective platform for driving engagement for our partners. Building our partners' businesses and driving engagement will always be core to Roku's success. When that grows, we'll grow well. However, by all accounts, the M&E category went through a period of spending at unsustainably high levels. We're working with our partners now even more to help them figure out their shift to a greater ad-supported focus and success.

Again, engagement is something Roku is best suited to help them with. So that's a good transition. Now, overall in the market, to your question about categories, we're executing well, and I do expect the year-on-year growth rate of video advertising in first quarter to be similar to what we saw in fourth quarter. There are ups and downs by verticals. Since you asked to name a few specific categories, CPG, health and wellness, and telecom are growing nicely. Categories like financial services and insurance are not recovering as quickly. So Shweta, overall, I feel really good heading into the new upfronts, the upfront, and 2025. We'll continue to build upon our market-leading scale and platform advantages, and we'll continue to elevate Roku's powerful ad products and tech offerings, all with a focus on diversifying demand and continuing to scale our ad-supported businesses.

I think your second question was about political. Political is growing for us. Our tools and our tech make Roku a strategic platform for political advertising, both for those, by the way, targeting scale and also those looking for specificity. I will point out that in 2024, we expect political to grow, but it'll likely remain a relatively small contributor as a percentage of our whole really diverse ad business. We know political, obviously, is a big opportunity and a big market. As this category, like others, shifts from linear to CTV, we'll be well-positioned. We have some product updates that'll help us tap into these budgets more and more in the future. We're making those updates to our platform as well as other refinements that we'll make moving forward. So overall, Shweta, we expect political to grow over time.

For now, it'll grow, but it'll remain a relatively modest part of the overall ad mix at Roku.

Shweta Khajuria (Managing Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst)

That's very helpful. Thank you.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Thanks. This is Anthony. I'll just add a quick comment on M&E. Although we've talked a lot about M&E being pressured, I will say that one of the things it's still a big opportunity for us. We're very good at it. It's something that I expect to bounce back over time and be a growth area over time. This year, it'll probably continue to be pressured, we project. But the other thing we're doing is we're taking a lot of inventory and creating new inventory that we used to sell exclusively for M&E, and we're using it now for brand advertisers. We're increasing the number of advertisers we will give access to that inventory. A good example of that, I think, is Roku City, which used to be entirely promotions for content, but we started selling buildings to McDonald's and companies like that.

That's gone extremely well for us. Viewers love it. It's tapped into new revenue sources. We're going to continue to diversify the advertising in our home screen that we used to use exclusively just for M&E. We're going to start using that for brand advertisers as well.

Shweta Khajuria (Managing Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thanks, Anthony. Appreciate it. Thanks, Charlie.

Operator (participant)

Thanks. One moment for our next question, please. Comes from the line of Laura Martin with Needham. Please proceed.

Laura Martin (Senior Analyst in Entertainment and Internet)

Hi there. Great numbers, you guys. Congratulations. My first question is on the Roku branded TVs. I know that we've been really worried about channel conflicts. So you were invested by exclusively. Now you're announcing you're going into Costco and Amazon. Can you tell us what your 30 OEMs are saying about you expanding, and what's the ultimate strategy? Are you going to have these Roku branded TVs in every channel outlet? Can you help us look forward on the future of this product?

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Hey, Laura. It's nice to hear from you. This is Anthony.

Laura Martin (Senior Analyst in Entertainment and Internet)

Hi, Anthony.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

I'll let Mustafa talk about it.

Laura Martin (Senior Analyst in Entertainment and Internet)

Okay.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Mustafa will talk about our branded TVs.

Mustafa Ozgen (President of Devices, Products, and Technology)

Hi, Laura. Thank you for the question. Look, as we announced the product and we explained then, Roku branded TVs are basically a complementary program to our existing Roku TV program. We use the Roku TVs as a way to innovate in a hardware-software combination. Historically, we focused on software only in the Roku TV context. Now we are able to do more innovation using the hardware as well as the software and build much better products that can then be given to consumers. Also, we are sharing that with our 30+ licensing partners. We are very open about that. Then some of the improvements and innovations that we have already developed as part of the initial launch of the program is already being fed into our Roku TV ecosystem. Our partners are already benefiting from those improvements.

Some of them are cost improvements, being able to further lower the cost of the hardware. Some of them are performance improvements. Both of these types of improvements have been shared with our partners, and we'll continue to do so. In terms of distribution, definitely to make this program successful and then for us to operate as a program, we need to scale it a little bit more. Therefore, we are expanding our distribution because customers love the product. We are receiving great reviews every day. We want to be able to offer these products to the customers and get their feedback. Then that will be, again, used as a way for us to further improve and add new capabilities. We'll share with our Roku TV ecosystem partners.

Laura Martin (Senior Analyst in Entertainment and Internet)

Super helpful. Then my second and last question is, when we think about the user interface, I think one of the things I know you really love this whole City thing, but I think it's really ironic that you have a CTV business and there's no video on the homepage. And it feels like if you had some kind of carousel, you could not only put in cross-promoting your stuff instead of a still image, but also you could sort of get more money from video postage stamps on page one. I know, Anthony, you said you're focusing on the homepage more. That's one of your tactical focuses in 2024. Can you talk about, other than just adding more brands to City, are we going to see anything more? I'm going to use the word engaging for consumers from the Roku homepage in 2024?

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Hey, Laura. This is Anthony. Absolutely. I mean, it's a big area of focus for us. We mentioned our food zone, All Things Food. I mean, that's something that's gotten a great reception from our viewers. Just an example of building out an experience that's accessed from our home screen that integrates promotion, both static display promotion as well as it promotes video as well. And it's just a small example of the kinds of things that we're going to be doing. So it's not Roku City is one example, but there's lots of ways across the platform that we can drive we can create experiences that will engage viewers, that will provide monetization opportunities, and that will drive more engagement across our platform.

In terms of putting video directly on the home screen, it's not, of course, something that we've thought about, and it's something that we're thinking about testing, but it's not an area that we've made any decisions on. But I'll just say, I guess, the big picture is there's a long list of ideas of how we can create viewer experiences that engage and entertain on our platform around the home screen. I know a lot of those do include video, but video is something on the home screen that you have to approach carefully. There's always this concern that it might alienate some viewers, but some viewers love it. So it's just something that we'll keep looking at and testing. But overall.

Laura Martin (Senior Analyst in Entertainment and Internet)

Thank you very much.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

There's a long list of great things we can do to add to our home screens to drive engagement.

Laura Martin (Senior Analyst in Entertainment and Internet)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. It comes from the line of Vasily Karasyov with Cannonball Research. Please proceed.

Vasily Karasyov (Founder and Senior Analyst)

Thank you. Good afternoon. Charlie, I have a question for you and wanted to ask you to talk about how you price your scatter inventory. Maybe help us triangulate your logic here in terms of how you do it relative to the upfront pricing relative to your competition. I mean, we understand how it's done on linear TV. Is it the same? Because with the new entrance into the AVOD space, there is a lot of discussion what will happen to your pricing. There are industry press reports about where your CPMs are relative to your competitors. So can you tell us how you price your scatter inventory and what kind of thinking goes into that and what factors will make you raise your prices, drop your prices, and so on? Just help us understand directionally how to think about that. Thank you.

Charlie Collier (President of Roku Media)

Hey, Vasily. Thank you so much for the question. Actually, I was looking at something yesterday. The first thing you look at, as you said, in linear television also holds true in CTV, which is you want to see your upfront advertisers who come in early and make large commitments early. You want to see that pricing actually be less than what is occurring in scatter. Sure enough, that's happening. Our scatter rates have been very solid and continue to be so. I know there's been a lot of talk today about my beloved Roku City and All Things Food and some of those integrations. What's remarkable about these integrations, besides the fact that they're so immersive and engaging in their broad reach, is that they're also scarce. We look at what scarcity does to drive pricing.

Anthony's last answer about the opportunities that we see not just on the home screen, but throughout the entire streamer's journey, so many of the sponsorships that, as we said, used to be M&E only are now both M&E and non-endemic advertisers. What's terrific about that, not only does it open up that scarcity to new bidding and new advertisers, but it's also driving pricing. I would say the upfront we look at, and those who have committed to us early have been rewarded. Those coming in as scatter seem to be responding to our changes toward opening up the sponsorships, as Anthony mentioned, and the pricing has grown in tandem with that. We feel like that's working, and it seems to be so both in fourth and continuing now.

Vasily Karasyov (Founder and Senior Analyst)

Do you feel that for advertisers, pricing is an important factor when they decide between, let's say, the Roku Channel and other streaming opportunities?

Charlie Collier (President of Roku Media)

Well, look, obviously, price is something that they need to look at when they purchase. Our value has been great. We're also a performance platform. One of the things that are unmatched scale, the direct relationships with 80 million active accounts. What's great about it is we get the opportunity to be both top of the funnel and bottom of the funnel. So we see people, obviously, they look at us and compare us on price, and we're very competitively priced. But we also have the opportunity of being performant. The fact that we can be broad reach at the top of the funnel and also, in certain categories, truly lead in this way, we're priced well and we're effective, which is what I think has people coming back.

Then when we build these sponsorships on top of it, we are a creative solution for them as well. That's right. Pricing matters, of course. We're competitively priced, but we also have some unique opportunities that are actually growing in demand and therefore pricing as well.

Vasily Karasyov (Founder and Senior Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. It comes from the line of Nicholas Zangler with Stephens. Please proceed.

Nicholas Zangler (Equity Research Analyst in Advertising Technology and Ecommerce)

Hey, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Given the headlines and the new competition arising, I'm curious what you could tell us about your current relationship with Walmart, both in regard to overall retail distribution and then placement within the Onn brand TV and just if there's any risk of any material changes in this relationship in the foreseeable future?

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Hey, Nick. This is Anthony. I assume you're referring to the article in the Wall Street Journal. I mean, we obviously can't comment on that. That's a rumor. But I'll just say a few comments in general. First of all, we're the industry leader with 80 million active accounts and growing. One of the things one of the primary reasons that we're the leader in streaming platforms is that viewers love our products. They love our brand. They love the delight and simplicity of our operating system. One of the results of that is many of our viewers have multiple Roku devices in their home. We've been the number one selling TV OS in the U.S. for the past five years, and we're installed in almost half of all broadband households in the United States. And of course, we have a lot of international penetration as well.

We have strong resale relationships. We have a great relationship with Walmart. We have a great relationship with relationships with lots of retailers. We have strong distribution both inside and outside the United States. We have a large engaged customer base. They love our brand. They ask for our brand. They have multiple products, multiple Roku products in their house. You take that and you think about our leading technology, our innovation in the industry, our singular focus on streaming, our lower hardware costs. We have lower hardware costs than any other TV manufacturer that I'm aware of. All of this gives me a lot of confidence that we're going to keep growing our distribution. We added 10 million net active accounts last year, and we're going to add a lot more active accounts this year as well.

Nicholas Zangler (Equity Research Analyst in Advertising Technology and Ecommerce)

Got it. I appreciate your willingness to answer that. And then just for the second question, you talked about M&E spend continuing to be pressured. I'm just wondering if you'd expect that vertical to potentially improve meaningfully in at least the second half of 2024. Obviously, in that period, you'd be lapping some easier comps. I would think new releases by that time maybe come to market, but maybe in your view, the release slate is just too light, and that's why you're calling for M&E to remain pressured for the duration of the year. But maybe just as you think about second half 2024, do you see potential for an inflection there, or maybe you could just parse out the commentary on M&E being pressured throughout the duration of the full year? Thanks.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Yeah, Charlie will take that.

Charlie Collier (President of Roku Media)

Great. Thanks for the question, Nick. Look, M&E is a really important category for us. I want to tell you that what we really focus on is helping them right now as they shift their focus toward engagement. It's really interesting to me to watch as they do so. I think in the second half of the year, as they not just have to get people to subscribe, but God, people need to have people watch their shows and watch the commercials, that we are probably their best partner in helping them do so on the platform. When they're back, we're ready for them. I would say one of the things we're doing to make sure we're offering opportunities not just for M&E advertisers, but for other categories is to diversify in the way that Anthony said.

We've been doing a lot of work to make sure our ad offerings are places where M&E can advertise, but then have opened it up to the other categories. So that pivot to engagement will be successful for us and will be ready for them when they return. Also, I think we'll be able to offer those opportunities to a lot of different categories.

Nicholas Zangler (Equity Research Analyst in Advertising Technology and Ecommerce)

Great. Thank you so much[crosstalk]. Go ahead.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Sorry. I'll just add a couple of comments, I guess, since there seems to be a lot of interest in M&E. I'll just say that, like we said, it was pressured. It will continue to be pressured for a while. But despite that, our platform revenue grew 13%. And then in Q4, the year-over-year growth of the video ads on our platform outperformed both the streaming industry overall as well as, obviously, the traditional TV industry. I mean, what's going on with M&E is pretty straightforward. We're a great platform for M&E spend. We have the most advanced tools in the industry. We are very good at it. We're good at helping streaming services build subscribers and increase engagement. And they spent a lot of money on M&E in the go-go years of the COVID pandemic. Now that they're retrenching and focusing on a sustainable business, that spending has normalized.

It's normalized down a little bit, but it's going to continue to pick back up, and over time, it'll be a growth business for us.

Nicholas Zangler (Equity Research Analyst in Advertising Technology and Ecommerce)

Great. I agree. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. It's from the line of Jason Bazinet with Citi. Jason, please go ahead.

Jason Bazinet (Managing Director and Sr Equity Analyst in Media, Entertainment, and Internet)

I just had a quick question for Anthony. Given your focus on growth that you talked about and less on cost, what sort of your aspiration, in other words, what metric do you think is most important to focus on given all the metrics you disclose? And what do you think is a reasonable aspiration where you would say, "We've been successful in our effort to reinvigorate the top line and get growth"?

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

I think, so first of all, just on cost. I mean, cost is obviously a big issue. We're not saying. I'm not saying that we're not focused on cost. I mean, as a company, we take operational discipline very seriously. We just made a lot of progress last quarter and I mean, sorry, last year. And so this year, we have more time to work on some other initiatives, and growth is one of those big initiatives. For us, for me anyway, there's just so many opportunities across our platform to drive, in particular, monetization growth that we've worked on historically, but we've never put a huge amount of effort, a major focus in terms of monetization growth. And so it's a renewed area for us. It's a renewed area of focus. Success, to me, means reaccelerating platform growth rates beyond what we're seeing this year.

Jason Bazinet (Managing Director and Sr Equity Analyst in Media, Entertainment, and Internet)

Just in dollars, dollars per hour, is there any sort of metric that you think is more important?

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Let me just add on to that. When we look at both the current year and out years, we are very focused on absolute free cash flow. We're going to get that through acceleration of growth rate on the platform business. So again, when we look at investments, we ask ourselves, "How does this, of course, impact in a positive way the streaming experience, and what's the ROI on this?" That second component is really how we evaluate what we invest in. So again, we see tremendous opportunity to monetize our platform. We're really just getting started. We're doing a good job. 2023 was very strong, but there's a lot of opportunity as we've grown to these 80 million actives. But when we think about it, again, it's not we don't focus so much on a margin percent or an EBITDA.

We're focused on absolute free cash flow and free cash flow per share and driving that up over time.

Jason Bazinet (Managing Director and Sr Equity Analyst in Media, Entertainment, and Internet)

Thank you.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

My focus in that is also just the fundamental drivers. What are the features, and what are the areas of the product? What's the strategy that will fundamentally just drive increased platform revenue growth.

Jason Bazinet (Managing Director and Sr Equity Analyst in Media, Entertainment, and Internet)

Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. It's from the line of Barton Crockett with Rosenblatt. Please proceed.

Barton Crockett (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Thanks for taking the question. I was curious about international in terms of your active account growth. Can you give us any sense of the contribution of international to the over four million active account growth in the fourth quarter and the 10 million over the year? Is it a minority of the net increase or a majority, or is there any kind of sense you can give us of that contribution to growth? That's the first question. Then the second question is just to drill into this idea of your market share, you as the leading platform smart TV OS in the U.S. and some other markets. I understand you've kept a number one ranking for a number of years in the U.S.

As your absolute market share, has that also been steady, or has there been any change up or down in your market share of smart TV OS in the U.S.?

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Hey, Barton. I'll start with – this is Anthony with kind of some high-level thoughts on international, and then Dan has some thoughts. Just in general, I think overall, we're pleased with our progress internationally. We're number one in Mexico as well as the U.S. We're doing extremely well in Canada. We're doing well in all of Latin America. We're making great progress in Brazil. We don't break out our active accounts by region, but a lot of them are international at this point. We're making good progress. We're also doing well in the U.K. So, Dan, did you want to add something about international?

Dan Jedda (CFO)

Yeah. I'll just comment. I just think it's important to note that as we talk about the 80 million actives, we are growing in both the U.S. and international.

While international, of course, just given maturity of the markets are growing faster, the U.S. continues to grow very well for us on net new accounts. And as part of that, a significant part of that is those 10 million net adds that we have. And we expect both markets, both our international and our U.S., to continue to grow on actives. One comment, just as it relates to the platform revenue in ARPU, we've talked that we stated our ARPU was down 4% due to the fact that international is growing so fast. That is true. But in the U.S., we are actually seeing ARPU flat to up. We don't break it out, but we are seeing year-over-year growth rates in ARPU. And it's really the mix. It's all the mix that's causing that slight contraction in ARPU.

It just shows you and we're at a different stage, obviously, in the monetization of our international accounts. But those will monetize over time. We're in that scale phase, that engagement phase, and in that monetization phase depending on the international markets. We feel very good about the growth rate of both the U.S. and international.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

This is Anthony again. Just on your question about market share and has it been steady or up or down in the U.S., well, I'll just take that question. So globally, if you look at regions outside the U.S., let's say outside the U.S. and Canada, which are more mature for us, you've seen strong and steady upper trends of market share growth rates. In the U.S., also, we launched Roku TV 10 years ago. And since that launch, we've seen steady increases in market share growth rate.

We've seen it bounces around quarter-to-quarter. Sometimes it goes up. Sometimes it goes down. But in general, on average, it's been going up steadily since we launched Roku TV. I actually think there's still quite a bit of room to grow our market share, even in the United States, because there will continue to be consolidation. There's still a lot of TVs sold that run on proprietary TV OSs. I've always said and still believe strongly that we're going to see consolidation to a small number of licensed TV OSs. They just have bigger economies of scale. They just have a big head start in terms of user experience. We're the leading licensed TV OS, and we expect to be a beneficiary of that. I think that sort of the trends in market share for TVs are in our favor.

In the United States, I expect over time, growth rates to continue to climb, although, like I said, they do bounce around quarter-to-quarter.

Barton Crockett (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And our last question. One moment, please. Comes from the line of Jason Helfstein with Oppenheimer. Please proceed.

Jason Helfstein (Managing Director and Head of Internet Research)

Thanks for getting me in there. So two questions. Do you expect media and entertainment revenue to start growing again in the second quarter? And then on the 3P ad platforms, you gave obviously some color in the note, and there's been questions or comments, questions about that. What would it take to see a material increase in participation from major DSPs such as Trade Desk and DV360 in your ecosystem? Thanks.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Hey, Jason. This is Anthony. So I think Dan will take that first question, and then Charlie can talk about DSPs.

Charlie Collier (President of Roku Media)

Sure.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

You want to go?

Dan Jedda (CFO)

Sure. We talked about M&E and that we do think it was challenged in 2023 and will be challenged going forward. I'm not going to break out what the growth rates that we're expecting of M&E. We do think it could grow year-over-year, but it's going to be growing less than our overall platform business most likely. That's what we're anticipating. And that's all the work that Charlie's doing on diversification and what he talked about is what we're focused on. But we'll update you more on M&E as we get into the second half, Q2, and in H2. But we're actually not. We don't break that specific activity out in our advertising business.

Charlie Collier (President of Roku Media)

Jason, I like the way we say we have one more question. So you have two questions. That's good. I'll take the second one on DSPs. We are now actually in relationships with all the major DSPs and SSPs. And the way I look at it is this. We went and prioritized demand diversification.

We've done a good job because we're balancing the direct relationships we have, some of whom wish to execute their transactions on the DSPs. Then there's the opening up of demand to smaller accounts that has really grown in the thousands for us. A lot of those smaller accounts will become bigger and bigger over time. So we've built those relationships. I feel good about the growth both in dollars and active accounts. Then I think you'll see the small and medium-sized businesses really have good results and become, I hope, medium and large-sized businesses. But we think the strategy is solid and that we're executing well.

Jason Helfstein (Managing Director and Head of Internet Research)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

Charlie Collier (President of Roku Media)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

With that, ladies and gentlemen, we conclude the Q&A session. I will turn it back to Anthony Wood for final comments.

Anthony Wood (Founder and CEO)

Thank you, everyone, for joining. Thanks to our employees, customers, content partners, and advertisers. I look forward to an exciting year of TV streaming.

Operator (participant)

Thank you all for participating.