Roku soundly beat equity analysts forecasts in first-quarter revenue, bringing in $741 million in total sales, up 1% year over year, vs. expectations of only $711.5 million.
The streaming company also added 1.6 million active accounts in Q1, a 17% year-over-year surge, ending up with 71.6 million as of the end of March.
Roku stock momentarily surged in after-hours trading, then retrenched -- on brand for a streaming company that's become fairly used to receiving shade from Wall Street.
But certainly, Roku's first-quarter performance metrics were nuanced. (You can see all of the data in Roku's Q1 letter to shareholders.)
The hardware side of the business, which has suffered for the past several years under the weight of the global supply chain crisis, finally swung back to narrow profitability for the first time in two years, registering a gain of $3.6 million. Device revenue was up 18% to $106.4 million, with some of that money coming from Roku's introduction of its own smart TV product line.
But the platform side of the business continues to grapple with a sour ad market. Platform revenue was off 1% in Q1 to $634.1 million.
Meanwhile, platform engagement was up by 4.2 billion hours to 25.1 billion.
Here's the metric that'll probably ring Wall Street's bell (and not in a good way for Roku): The company reported a $69.1 million adjusted EBITDA loss vs. a gain of $57.6 million in the first quarter last year. It also reported a $175 million net loss.
On Wednesday, Roku also announced a new partnership with Instacart to help consumer-packaged goods advertisers measure whether consumers are purchasing products on Instacart after seeing an ad on the Roku platform.
"Across select pilot partners, results showed that on average, people who saw an ad on the Roku platform purchased more of the advertised products on Instacart versus the average customer," Roku said in its shareholders letter. "These partnerships allow us to enhance targeting, attribution, and measurement for our shared ad customers, which further differentiates our ad offering from those without a direct relationship with the consumer. In Q1, advertiser spend leveraging first- and third-party data continued to grow YoY."
