Roku, Inc. (ROKU)

Jan 27 (Reuters) - Comcast Corp is ramping up spending on its Peacock streaming service, executives said on Thursday, aiming to catch up to big media rivals in the global battle for viewers.

Unlike the majority of its rivals, Peacock offers a free, ad-supported version and two paid options: a $5-per-month tier with “light ads” and an ad-free version costing $10 per month.
In a call with investors on Thursday, Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts said the “vast majority” of Peacock’s paid subscribers choose the $5 tier over the $10 tier. Going forward, the company will focus its strategy around the ad-supported tiers.
It is doubling Peacock content spend to $3 billion in 2022 and plans to increase domestic content spend for Peacock to $5 billion over the next couple of years, an additional investment that will result in an earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) loss of roughly $2.5 billion. It plans to fund that investment out of NBCUniversal’s cash flows.
In the fourth quarter, Comcast brought in $778 million in revenue and lost $1.7 billion in adjusted EBITDA related to Peacock, over double the $663 million in adjusted EBITDA it lost in 2020.
The company had previously committed to spending $2 billion on Peacock content in the streaming service’s first two years.
Comcast reported that Peacock had 24.5 million monthly active U.S. accounts at the end of the year, up from over 20 million at the end of July, 9 million of which are paid subscribers. Comcast defines that metric as the number of households that watched content on Peacock during the month.

Bodes well for Roku!!

9:00a ET 1/27/2022 - BusinessWire
Roku is Canada's #1 TV Streaming Platform
Mentioned:
ROKU
Roku, Inc. today announced that it is the #1 TV streaming platform in Canada, based on hours streamed, according to a recent study conducted by the Hypothesis Group. The news of Roku's top position for Canadian TV streamers follows a 2021 that included the successful expansion of the company's original content lineup and the release of new streaming players and Roku TV models, with a focus on ease of use for consumers.

The higher interest rate argument as it relates to ROKU is a bit humorous. For the consumer, cutting the cord SAVES money and provides more flexibility to pay for the content you want vs. what's in your cable package. For advertisers, the better user/demographic information provides advertisers a better return on their ad spend. In summary, both consumers and advertisers win in this model. A shift to higher interest rates incents both groups to move to streaming. As for ROKU itself, the company has little debt so higher interest rates are a bit irrelevant. On second thought, the company will be better able to generate some interest income on its net cash balances.

Of course the market punishes all highly valued tech stocks because a discounted cash flow model shows lower values when you discount the cash flows at a higher interest rate. However, the reality is that higher interest rates will not have an adverse impact on ROKU's operations. This is just more noise. ROKU will continue to grow profitably and long term investors will wait through a recession until the fed cuts interest rates again and those large sales/earnings multiples will be applied to much larger numbers coming out of ROKU.

I find it so humorous that every positive post for ROKU is IMMEDIATELY followed by another extremely negative retort. It is as if there is a concerted effort to beat down anything positive sentiment regarding this company. You will not get a morsel of anything resembling understanding or compromise from this group. The dissenters are well known by name and likely post under different alias'. They include CS, David, Steven, Steve Nash, Magabillies are crying, and Right Wing Gestapo. I would strongly encourage all longs to mute this group. You cannot get one iota of positive thought from these posters. Believe me, you will be much happier.
Cheers!

From Motley Fool: Roku has been steadily investing in its own original programming. this effort started with launching the Roku Channel, an ad-supported free streaming service built within the Roku platform. The early content was licensed, but Roku has now begun bolstering it with original programming. The company bought content from failed streaming service Quibi and is now producing shows and movies, and recently signed a massive 240,000-square-foot building lease in New York City for content production purposes.
Roku had to wait until the right time to attempt this. If it were to try this too soon and alienate existing streaming platforms, they might leave Roku, hurting Roku's appeal to users. However, Roku's skirmishes with companies like AT&T and Alphabet over contract negotiations have shown that it's become large enough to have leverage via its user base, and the time was right to evolve. In other words, Roku has started thinking: "These streaming companies need me, so I'm not too worried anymore about stepping on their toes.” Streaming is about maintaining engagement on the platform. But monetizing those streaming eyeballs can be done in different ways. Netflix has always been ad-free, charging its viewers for the right to access the platform.
Roku is taking a different approach, becoming an advertising business underneath its streaming service. In other words, rather than generating revenue from consumer pockets, Roku is tapping advertisers. A recent Pixelate report estimated that a whopping 45% of ads on connected TV (devices that support video streaming) went to Roku devices in the first half of 2021. The report also stated that ad spending grew 50% year over year, so Roku is capturing a large chunk of this revenue pie that keeps getting bigger.

Just a note about other great companies, a post from another site, very interesting when your talking about share price movements for no reasonable reason. Dead on!!

Amazon post!!
Since you're a genius, do you mind telling me what happened to Amazon in 2000? It stayed at all time highs right?

No. The stock fell over 90% that year while the fundamentals of the company continued to improve. This created an amazing buying opportunity for investors who could see through the smoke.

Amazing comparison!! Just thought I would share!!