I'm starting to think Roku might be the Tesla of television. Let me tell you why.
First off, Cathie Wood just loaded up on Roku stock, ticker symbol R O K U. Let's take a
quick look at ARK Invest's most recent trading data. Here's a table of ARK Invest's positions
inside ARKW, their fund themed around the next generation of internet applications. Each row
in this table is one stock, the rows are ordered by the size of that stock's position in this fund,
and each position is colored according to its change over the two most recent trading days.
Yesterday alone, Cathie Wood increased Roku's share count in ARKW by over 22% percent,
making it the 11th biggest position in the fund. ROKU's share count also increased by
almost 12% percent in ARKK, ARK Invest's massive $23 billion dollar flagship innovation fund,
making it the third biggest position, with over $1.3 billion dollars in it If we look at the
same table but for all of ARK's funds combined, Cathie Wood is holding 13% percent more ROKU
shares today than she was just one day ago, making Roku ARK Invest's 5th biggest position overall
with over one and a half billion dollars in it. Also note that this increase in Rokus position
is bigger than Cathie Wood's increases in Tesla, Teladoc, Square, and Shopify COMBINED. So, what
happened? Well, I did a little digging and in this episode, I'll share a few key facts about ROKU,
why I think Cathie Wood is buying Roku's stock so aggressively, and what I think the future
holds for Roku's quickly growing market. Also, stick around to the end of the episode and I'll
tell you what I'm investing in as a result. Your time is valuable, so let's stream right into it.
A lot of people don't realize this, but in 2007, Netflix almost launched a device called
The Netflix Player, a box that subscribers would hook up to their televisions to stream movies
and TV shows from the web. Netflix executives knew it could fundamentally change how the company
delivered content to its customers, who back then had to wait about 3 days for DVDs to arrive by
mail. Can you imagine? At the end of 2007, right as the Netflix Player was ready to launch, their
CEO realized that if Netflix started shipping its own hardware, it would complicate any potential
for partnerships with other hardware makers like Apple. Shelving their player and staying
hardware agnostic was a great move by Netflix that allowed them to become the dominant player
in subscription streaming video. So, Netflix spun the Netflix Player project and team out as a
separate company, instead. That company is Roku, which is still lead by their CEO Anthony Wood,
a former VP that left Netflix in 2007 when they formed Roku as a separate company. About a year
later, Roku's first player launched. It was called the Netflix Player. Pretty cool, right? My point
here is, Roku was founded by people who really understand the present and future of television
and streaming and came out of a company that is still dominating that landscape.
So let's talk about that landscape next. The global television market is massive. Today,
there are well over a billion households with televisions, most of which have some form of
paid subscription, whether it's a cable package or streaming service. The main way the average
person consumes media is still through linear TV, which is TV you have to tune in at a specific
time for or else you'll miss your show. Linear TV still represents something like 75% percent
of total TV time today, with streaming reprenting the other 25% percent, but that trend is moving
further away from linear TV each year. More and more households are cutting the cord the pandemic
has only accelerated that shift. I don't think anyone who cut the cord in the last few years is
in a rush to resubscribe to cable TV once things "return to normal", whatever that new normal looks
like. In fact, Roku believes that all television will eventually be streamed and that every TV will
have to run some form of operating system, kind of like how every smartphone does today. In my
opinion, this is a no-brainer long-term trend to bet on. Roku is trying to become "the streaming
platform that connects the entire TV ecosystem of viewers, content publishers, and advertisers".
The Roku operating system is purpose-built for TV and designed to run on less powerful hardware,
meaning TV makers who decide to go with Roku's operating system can get away
with less powerful chips and less memory. That means they can sell a smart TV for less money
than if they went with one of Roku's competitors, like Samsung's operating system. As people
keep moving to smart TVs and their overall entertainment budgets continue to shrink,
Roku has become the number one operating system in that space. In fact, about half of ALL
streaming hours on connected TVs are on a Roku device. That's around 70% percent more than
their next biggest competitor, which is Amazon's Fire TV, and around FIVE TIMES more than Apple TV.
Almost 4 in 10 TVs in the US today are shipped with Roku built into them.
Another company that used this tactic to great success back in the day was Microsoft,
who used to ship computers with Windows already installed on them at no extra cost. Video game
consoles are also often sold at a loss, because Sony and Microsoft know they're going to make it
up with high-margin digital offerings over time. TVs with Roku's OS installed on them are following
that same kind of model. In fact, in their most recent shareholder letter, which was published on
August 4th, 2021, they said the chip shortage and pandemic-related shipping constraints continued
to increase costs faster than expected across all consumer electronics categories. As a result,
Roku insulated consumers from increased costs for Roku players, which resulted in Player gross
margin turning negative in the quarter. My point here is, selling your hardware at zero profits,
or even at a loss, to get into more households really isn't that crazy.
While I'm on the shareholder letter, let's talk about their Q2 numbers. Consumers sought
increased out-of-home entertainment activities (such as dining and travel)
in Q2 as a result of pent-up demand and the loosening of pandemic restrictions,
which led to a broader decline in overall TV viewing hours. On a year-over-year basis,
Roku significantly outperformed the industry, with Roku’s streaming hours increasing nearly 19%
globally, compared to a nearly 19% decline in traditional TV consumption and a nearly 2% decline
in TV streaming across all platforms. So, just like Tesla, ARK Invest's biggest position,
Roku is growing at time when most of their competitors are shrinking. And also like Tesla,
Roku actually saw some insane growth. Total net revenue grew 81% percent
year over year. Platform revenue increased by 117% percent year over year. Gross profit is up
130% percent year over year. Average revenue per user grew by 46% percent year over year.
Here's where things get a little hairy. Active accounts grew by 1.5 million from the
previous quarter. A quarter ago, their active accounts grew by 2.4 million, so growth in active
accounts slowed by 60% percent this quarter. Streaming hours also decreased by a billion hours,
or about 6% percent from the previous quarter, but are still up about 16% percent from Q2 of last
year. And, of course, since they're insulating customers from those increased Roku player costs,
they player revenue only went up by 1% percent year over year. If we take a look at Roku's
streaming hours on Hypercharts, we can can see that this has happened before; their streaming
hours in Quarter 2 of 2019 shrank from Quarter 1, just like this past quarter. If we look at
their revenue segments though, we can see a clear increasing trend, with the biggest gains being
made in Quarter 4 of each year, when the weather prevents people from doing too much stuff outside
AND new Roku players and smart TVs get bought for the holidays. Overall, Roku's year over
year numbers are fantastic, so, this little dip in hours streamed is unconcerning to me,
especially considering the rest of the streaming industry is seeing the same kind of trends, if not
worse. As a result, I think this slide in Roku's stock price is presenting a solid buy opportunity,
which is why ARK Invest bought so heavy. Speaking of ARK Invest, let me quickly share
my five year future outlook for this industry and then tell you what I'm buying as a result.
In my opinion, the next generation of all streaming video on demand will be about
content aggregation and cross-channel and cross-service recommendation. Right now,
YouTube kind of does this within its own channels. When you watch a video by Ticker Symbol: YOU,
YouTube recommends other videos from within this channel. If you thumbs up this video,
YouTube will also recommend you videos from other channels based on how similar their content might
be to the content you just watched on mine. Feel free to try that out for yourself right
now. Likewise, if you thumbs it down, YouTube will recommend you LESS content like this,
even from other channels, over time. That's already pretty different from traditional linear
TV channels, which only show you content from their own channels or direct partner channels,
with no input from you. Let's take that one step further. Google owns YouTube,
and if you go to Google TV, it recommends you content from across all your different apps,
not just the channels within them. In this example, because a user liked Westworld on HBO,
Google TV is recommending content from Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video, and HBO Max, so it's
making cross-service recommendations. You can also imagine Google showing you a recommendation
from a service you don't have. Hey, if you subscribed to Netflix, you'd also be able
to watch Altered Carbon, which we think you'd like because you liked Westworld. Click this
card to sign up for a free trial of Netflix and start watching Altered Carbon right away.
This also opens doors like letting users build cross-service watch lists. So instead of having
one on Netflix and one on Amazon Prime and one on Disney, you manage one playlist on Google and
Google takes care of the rest. Obviously, every service should want to be part of that ecosystem
and as a result, Google wins from having mountains of data on everyone's preferences, leading to
better recommendations, better revenues, and more channels wanting to join the ecosystem.
It's a powerful network effect. Here's the thing. In my opinion, this shift from forcing you to
search within each individual app to offering a cross-service ecosystem will be the end of Linear
TV and the winners will be these aggregator apps that people log into to manage content across
everything a person subscribes to. While the best aggregators for premium services like Netflix and
Disney Plus might be Google or Amazon, the best version of this for TV specifically is
going to be Roku, with The Roku Channel. The Roku Channel actually launched back in 2017,
giving Roku a big first mover-advantage here, kind of like Tesla has with electric vehicles.
The Roku channel gives users free access to tons of on-demand content, premium subscriptions,
personalized recommendations, one-click subscription functionality, and a unified
billing system to manage it all from your TV or mobile app. The Roku Channel has an app for
both android and iPhone and is also on Amazon Fire TV. The channel allows Roku to increase the amount
of monetizable inventory on the platformbecause it has full control over what is shown on the channel
and it gets a 50% take rate on the advertising revenues generated from it. The Roku channel
is now one of the top 5 channels on Roku and remember, Roku devices are responsible
for half of all hours streamed. This is a winner-takes-all market because the platform
with the biggest number of users and the most data can offer the best rates on ads and make
the best recommendations, so over time, only a few streaming services will be able get away without
being listed on The Roku Channel if they want to compete on TVs. So, just like Tesla enjoys a huge
data advantage for training its full-self driving algorithms, Roku is enjoying a huge data advantage
for training cross-service content recommendation algorithms at the individual level. As a result,
my opinion is that Roku will ultimately be a company focused on TV content curation and The
Roku Channel will become one of the apps people go to as their one-stop shop for TV content.
Comment below with whether or not you've even heard of the Roku channel before this episode.
If you haven't, I think that goes to show just how much room this part of Roku has to grow,
even though it's already massive. Also, let me know what you think about this idea
of cross-service content aggregation and if you want me to cover it more in-depth.
I think this is a trend we'll see in a lot of other areas, like finance,
travel, music, video games, and more. So, here's what I'm doing about it.
I'm opening small position in Roku and I plan on slowly dollar-cost averaging in over time.
Nothing crazy, a few shares here and there. Because I believe the market for cross-service
content curation has lots of tailwinds and will be massive, I want to own as many of the big
players as I can. The other big competitors in this space are Amazon, Apple, and Google,
which are all amazing companies to own for a wide variety of reasons,
so it turns out I can own this entire space in only a few stocks. I'm a big believer in trying
to find the 2 or 3 companies that dominate a given market instead of making a big bet on one. So,
I'm also picking up a couple shares of Amazon as well, which is down about 10% percent right now.
That way, I own over 75% percent of the market, by world-wide streaming hours,
in just 2 stocks I'm absolutely comfortable holding for a decade and averaging down over time.
My reason for making this video was because my custom dashboards alerted me to this MASSIVE jump
in ARK Invest's holdings in ROKU. If you're interested in having
access to my dashboards 24/7 instead of waiting for me to make a video, they're available to my
disruptor and insider level patrons on patreon and channel members right here on YouTube.
These dashboards capture the daily changes inside each individual ARK Invest fund as
well as their combined positions, and I'm always trying to find new ways to add value with them.
Speaking of adding value, I hope this episode helped you understand
a little more about Roku, how it could be the Tesla of television,
and how the streaming industry will be dominated by the best content curators,
not just creators. If it did, let me know by investing in the like button and subscribing
to the channel with all notifications turned on. That's a great way to keep up to date with
ARK Invest's highest conviction trades AND invest in the channel that invests in you.
Until next time, this is ticker symbol you, my name is alex, reminding you,
that the best investment you can make is in you.