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Is this the year it finally happens? Resurgent Roku rides 20% share gains on reports of sale talks
Roku has dealt with rumors about its imminent sale before, just like the seminal streaming company has seen a $21.22 billion valuation a couple of times already, passing that road marker coming up and going down.
But you have to go back to February 2022 to find a moment during which Roku was trading this high — shares spiked 20% Friday after it was reported that Roku is in talks with an undisclosed media company about selling itself. It was also reported by Reuters that publicly traded Roku is looking to possibly sell all or some of itself to private equity.
These rumors seem a bit less desperate than prior iterations. Roku, founded in Netflix’s basement as CEO Anthony Wood’s after-hours project 18 years ago, might finally get sold.
As analyst Dan Rayburn noted, “Roku's done a great job of growing its advertising revenue, cleaning up its balance sheet, and ending Q1 with $2.38 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand, with zero long-term debt.”
Of course, despite Roku’s makeover, the same limits apply — it has no market position in Europe and Asia, and it remains vulnerable to competition from Google, Amazon and Walmart.
Still, at least in North America, Roku remains “streaming’s gatekeeper,” notes another analyst, Lightshed’s Rich Greenfield.
“Roku sits in 100 million households as the front door to streaming, controlling distribution, advertising, and the home screen itself. Whoever owns that position owns the modern-day equivalent of the cable box,” Greenfield writes.
