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Shares of Roblox closed down more than 21% Wednesday after the company reported second-quarter results that missed analysts’ expectations on top and bottom lines.
Here’s how the company did:
- Loss per share: 46 cents loss vs. 45 cents loss per share expected, according to a Refinitiv survey of analysts.
- Revenue (bookings): $781 million vs. $785 million expected, according to Refinitiv.
The revenue figure is what Roblox calls bookings, a category that includes sales recognized during the quarter and deferred revenue. Bookings rose by 22% year over year. Roblox reported $639.9 million in bookings in the year-ago quarter. The company generates revenue from sales of its virtual currency called Robux, which players use to dress up their avatars and buy other premium in-game features.
Roblox reported 65.5 million average daily active users, up 25% from a year earlier. Users spent more than 14 billion hours engaged in Roblox during the second quarter, up 24% year over year.
The company’s platform has historically been popular with younger children, but Roblox has been working to expand usage across all age groups. In June, Roblox announced eligible creators can build experiences featuring mature content like some forms of violence, romantic themes and moderately crude humor for users ages 17 and older.
In a letter to shareholders Wednesday, the company said it saw growth in daily active users across all age groups and geographies.
“Around the world, [users aged] 17 through 24, and our 25-and-up cohorts, consistently show higher bookings-per-hour than other age cohorts,” Roblox CEO David Baszucki said during the company’s quarterly call with investors Wednesday.
The company reported a net loss of $282.8 million for the quarter, which ended June 30. Roblox reported a net loss of $176.4 million for the same period in 2022. It said net losses increased over the year-ago quarter due to “higher levels of expense required to support the growth of the business,” such as corporate overhead, developer exchange fees, infrastructure and personnel costs, according to the letter.
Roblox added that it expects to continue to report losses for the “foreseeable future.”
Baszucki shared a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, earlier this month claiming that the company has seen “well over” one million downloads via Meta‘s virtual reality headsets, just five days after launching in a beta capacity. During the conference call Wednesday, Baszucki said the company has prioritized performance and human interaction so that users can find familiar experiences across different platforms.
“We’re already pretty good at build once, run everywhere,” he said, adding that he believes there’s significant opportunity for “immersiveness on VR and more platforms.”
The company said average bookings per daily active user was $11.92, down 3% year over year.