Earnings Call Transcript - ROKU Q4 2023

Operator, Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2023 Roku Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to the Vice President of Investor Relations, Conrad Grodd.

Conrad Grodd, Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and welcome to Roku's fourth quarter and year ended 2023 earnings call. I'm joined today by Anthony Wood, Roku's founder and CEO and Dan Jedda, our CFO. Also in today's call for Q&A are Charlie Collier, President Roku Media and Mustafa Ozgen, President Devices. Full details of our results and additional management commentary are available in our shareholder letter, which can be found on our investor relations website at roku.com/investor. Our comments and responses to your questions on this call reflect management's views as of today only and we disclaim any obligation to update this information. On this call, we'll make forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events, such as statements regarding our financial outlook, future market conditions and the macroeconomic environment. These statements are based on our current expectations, forecasts and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our shareholder letter and our periodic SEC filings for information on factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. We'll also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in our shareholder letter. Finally, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons on this call will be against the results for the comparable period of 2022. Now, I'd like to hand the call over to Anthony.

Anthony Wood, CEO

Thanks Conrad. Looking back at 2023, I'm proud of our execution. We delivered positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow a year ahead of schedule by focusing on operational improvements and platform revenue growth, which we grew double digits. We also drove record growth in our scale and engagement. A large share of my management team's attention in 2023 was spent on OpEx reduction and internal operational improvements. This year, we will be redirecting much of our attention to platform growth and innovation, where I see lots of opportunity. A core strategy for us is to take better advantage of our position as the programmer of the home screen for our 80 million active accounts globally. We use this to grow ad reach, which correlates to ad revenue, as well as to grow our streaming service distribution activities. For example, Roku City is popular for the way it seamlessly integrates iconic brand imagery like McDonald's golden arches, as well as movies and TV show promotions in ways that are delightful for viewers. Newer examples include our 'All Things Food' and 'All Things Home' viewer experiences, which aggregate the best culinary and home and garden content on the Roku platform, or the Roku sports experience, which aggregates sporting events in a single central location. These are some early examples, and we are focused on improving these early efforts, as well as new experiences to engage viewers and help them find content across the streaming universe in ways that also drive monetization. Thinking about the state of the industry, I see two trends that are particularly important for us. One is the enormous volume of streaming content. As I just mentioned, helping our viewers easily navigate and find what they want to watch is a big opportunity for Roku. Second, the industry has increased its focus, now more than ever, on building thriving and sustainable businesses. This means more ad-supported streaming service tiers, which will further accelerate the overall shift of ad dollars from traditional TV to streaming. Roku has the tools and expertise to help streaming services grow engagement, which is critical in an ad-supported environment. We expect strong demand for ad-supported tiers on Roku, as many users seek value-priced streaming options. With our platform advantages, well-loved brand, first-party relationships with 80 million active accounts, and deep user engagement, we're well positioned to accelerate revenue growth in future years. Now I'll turn it over to Dan to discuss our results.

Dan Jedda, CFO

Thanks, Anthony. In Q4, we grew active accounts by 4.2 million and ended 2023 with 80 million. Full year net additions of 10 million were above 2019 and similar to 2022 levels, driven primarily by the Roku TV program in the U.S. and international markets. We're also growing engagement on our platform with 2023 streaming hours of 18.6 billion year-over-year to a record 106 billion hours. We grew both Q4 and full year streaming hours by 21% year-over-year. Average streaming hours per active account per day were 4.1 hours in Q4, 2023, up from 3.8 hours in Q4, 2022 and 3.6 hours in Q4, 2021. Average viewing time on traditional TV is 7.5 hours per day in the U.S., providing significant opportunity for us to continue to grow our engagement. In Q4, total net revenue grew 14% year-over-year to $984 million. Platform revenue was $829 million, a 13% year-over-year growth, driven by both streaming services distribution and video advertising activities, offset by M&E. Streaming services distribution activities grew faster than overall platform revenue, benefiting from increased subscription signups along with recent price increases from SVOD partners. However, the year-over-year growth rate of streaming services distribution in Q4 was lower than the year-over-year growth rate in Q3 due to tougher comparisons in Q4. Devices revenue increased 15% year-over-year in Q4, driven by Roku branded TVs, which launched in March 2023. ARPU was $39.92 in Q4 on a trailing 12-month basis, down 4% year-over-year, reflecting an increasing share of active accounts in international markets, where we are currently focused on growing scale and engagement. Q4 total gross margin was 44%. Q4 platform gross margin of 55% was stable year-over-year and sequentially when excluding the $62 million restructuring charge in Q3, related to the removal of select licensed and produced content from the Roku channel. Q4 devices margin was negative 13%, which was up roughly 19 points year-over-year as a result of improved supply chain costs and limited promotional discounts. Q4 adjusted EBITDA was $48 million, which was $38 million above our outlook. The better-than-expected performance was driven by our platform segment, along with improvements to our operating expense profile. Please note that a one-time charge of $42 million, primarily related to lease impairments and workforce reductions, was added back to adjusted EBITDA. Free cash flow was $176 million on a trailing 12-month basis. And we ended the quarter with over $2 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Let me turn to our outlook for the first quarter. We anticipate total net revenue of $850 million, gross profit of $370 million with gross margin of 43.5% and breakeven adjusted EBITDA. While we remain mindful of the challenging macro environment and uneven ad market recovery, we plan to increase revenue and free cash flow and achieve profitability over time. For total net revenue, we anticipate a seasonal percentage decline in line with Q1 2023. We will face difficult year-over-year growth rate comparisons in streaming services distribution and a challenging M&E environment for the rest of this year. We expect to maintain our Q4, 2023 year-over-year platform growth rate of 13% in Q1. We expect a continued mix shift away from M&E activities, which will compress platform margins in the near term. For Q1, we expect platform margin to be similar to Q1 of last year of roughly 52%. On the devices side, we expect margins to improve from negative 13% in Q4 to negative mid-single digits in Q1. Our outlook for the sequential improvement reflects a lighter retail promotional period in Q1. Turning to OpEx, we anticipate Q1 year-over-year growth rate to be in the negative low to mid-teens, a significant improvement from OpEx year-over-year growth of approximately 40% in Q1 2023. We'll continue to operate our business with discipline with a focus on driving increasingly positive free cash flow over time. After achieving positive adjusted EBITDA for full year 2023, we expect to deliver further improvements for full year 2024. As we stated previously, we will balance this commitment with reinvestment to continue to expand our scale, engagement, and monetization. With that, let's take questions.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Shyam Patil with Susquehanna International Group. Please proceed.

Shyam Patil, Analyst

Hey, guys. Nice job on the execution. I had a couple of questions. The first one, what are the biggest priorities for Roku this year, Anthony? And then just to follow up on Amazon, how are you guys thinking about the Prime AVOD launch? Is this a threat? Is this an opportunity? Maybe you can talk about that a little bit. Thank you.

Anthony Wood, CEO

Hey, Shyam. Thanks for that. This is Anthony. Well, like I just mentioned in my prepared remarks, last year, 2023, as a management team, we were very focused on improving our operational effectiveness and efficiencies, right-sizing operations. And we made a lot of progress in that area, achieving positive EBITDA for the full year, a year ahead of our target. So we're very happy with that. I mean, obviously, we're going to continue this year to push on operational efficiencies, but we'll have a lot more time this year as a management team to focus on innovation and growth. And that's where I'll be spending a lot of my time: just driving some of the fun or improving and adding things to our platform that will drive more growth over the long term. So that's the big focus for us in 2024: innovation and growth. And maybe I could just give a couple of examples of the kinds of things that we're doing there just to give you a flavor for it. I mean, there's a lot of things. There's a lot of opportunities in this area. But so one example is I made some organizational changes recently. And one of the changes is that I tasked one of our most strategic executives who reports to me to focus on driving our subscription business. And we have a large subscription business, both Roku Channel premium subscriptions as well as building and driving subscriptions for our streaming service partners. So it's not something that's new to us, but it's something that could be a lot larger and is a big opportunity for us. And so we're consolidating all the activities under one leader who reports to me. We're going to increase resources there. And I just think it's something that we can make a lot of good progress on. So that's one example. Another example is one of our core strategies in monetization is to take advantage of the fact that 80 million households, approximately 80 million households turn on their TV and start their streaming experience with Roku. The first thing they see when they turn on their TV is the Roku home screen. And it's the place where they start to decide which app they want to run, what TV shows they are going to watch. And you can see that in things like, just for example, there are features that we've already launched. So for example, we have the sports zone. Sports is an area that's particularly challenging for viewers because it's so fragmented. It's hard for them to figure out where the game that they want to watch is playing. It changes by day of week. It changes based on the league. It's just very complex. And so our sports zone helps viewers find games, figure out where they're playing, learn more about sports on the platform. That's one example. The things we've launched more recently, 'All Things Food,' which is where we curate the best food content across our platform. What to watch. So these are the kinds of experiences we're working on. We call this programming our home screen. And it's a core strategy for us. It's a big area of focus. And it's basically a key strategy for us to engage with our viewers while they're trying to decide what to watch and use that to drive viewing in both our owned and operated apps, but also in third-party apps. So it drives monetization. At the same time, it helps solve the big problem viewers have, which is trying to decide what to watch across all the content in the streaming universe. So those are just two examples. But big focus on innovation and growth for our management team this year. And then I think your second question was about AVOD launches. So maybe what I'll say there, just kind of taking it up a level. One of the trends that's happening right now in the streaming world is that the streaming industry is maturing. So if you take AVOD, for example, I mean, a couple of years ago, all the streaming services were just very focused on driving subscribers at almost any cost. Now, the industry is very focused on building sustainable, thriving businesses. And one of the tools that's being used is to add ad-supported, entry-level ad-supported tiers to the streaming service. It's a mainstream solution. It's something that's been done since the beginning for television, so it's not new. But for me, it's a sign that the industry is really starting to mature. And I think if you, another example of evidence that the streaming industry is starting to mature is sports. I mean, we're seeing new sports services launched. It used to be that you couldn't get access to sports content without having a subscription to traditional pay TV. That's really changed. Almost all sports, if not all sports, are now available on lots of different channels on streaming. It's very fragmented. It's hard for viewers to figure out where to watch it, but it's there, and it's an opportunity for us. So I think both of these examples, more sports coming to streaming and the rise of AVOD tiers in streaming, are examples of the industry maturing. And I think what that means is that we're going to see even more viewers moving to streaming, and in particular, more ad dollars moving to streaming. So, for example, I mean, in the U.S. alone, the TV ad business is over $60 billion, but there's still this really large gap between viewership and ad spend. Approximately 60% of TV viewing hours are on streaming versus traditional pay TV, but only about 30% of the ad dollars are on connected TV. So that's a huge gap that as the industry matures, we'll start to close. So, and I guess that's one aspect of AVOD is just maturing at the industry, and I don't think it'll accelerate cord cutting, and it'll accelerate the shift of ad dollars moving to streaming. The other thing, I guess, I would say is, as the programmer at the home screen for 80 million active accounts, we're good at and well-positioned to help drive viewing across our platform. And we do that to promote our owned and operated services, like I mentioned, but we also do it regularly to promote third-party services across our platform. And in particular, ad-supported services are very reliant on engagement. Engagement is highly correlated to revenue if you have ads, and we're in a great position to help drive ad-supported engagement across our platform. So we expect it to continue to be a good business and grow for us to do that. So that's just a couple of examples.

Shyam Patil, Analyst

Thank you, Anthony, for all the colors.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. And it's from the line of Justin Patterson with KeyBanc. Please proceed.

Justin Patterson, Analyst

Great, thank you very much, and good afternoon. Two, if I can. First, Anthony, I was hoping you could elaborate just on some of the progress you've made with third-party partnerships on the ad tech side and retail media networks over the past year. What have you learned from those initial integrations and how should we think about that as just a bigger part of the business going forward? And then perhaps for Dan, I appreciate your commentary on EBITDA being profitable over the course of the year. How should we think about just the puts and takes of what really drives the overall margin expansion and potentially how you might be reinvesting some strength you might see back at driving innovation and future platform growth? Thank you.

Anthony Wood, CEO

Hey, Justin, thanks for that. I'll let Charlie take the third-party partnership question.

Charlie Collier, President Roku Media

Thanks, Anthony, and thanks, Justin, for the question. When I think about our focus on demand diversification, which continues to be a huge priority for us and our embrace of third-party relationships, underlying both of them is a focus on expanding upon the many ways we build our partners' businesses. We're opening up new ways to prove the unique value of Roku, and we'll continue to do that in whichever ways are best for our clients to execute their marketing and advertising campaigns. So in 2023, we did make real progress expanding our relationships with third-party platforms, including retail media networks, DSPs, and other strategic partners. And as a result, we've increased our roster of advertisers, programmatic ad spend continues to grow on the platform, and ad investment through third-party DSPs is also growing well. Our strategies really have allowed us to tap into new budgets from existing advertisers while also growing and diversifying the number of new advertisers on Roku. We've built tech and enhanced relationships that actually make it easier for small and medium-sized businesses, easier than ever before to access the Roku platform. And many of these are small, but they have the potential to grow into large advertisers for us. So, to name some names for you, over the past year, we formed partnerships with a broad variety of third parties, including retail platforms. We had DoorDash, Instacart, Cox, and Best Buy. We've expanded third-party DSP relationships now to really participate with all the major DSPs and SSPs. And we're partnering also with new measurement partners like iSpot and Comscore. So overall, Justin, we are serving more partners and advertisers, and we really continue to improve and expand on the performance and measurement capabilities that Roku's providing for them. So on a third-party, overall, I'm very pleased with our third-party partnerships, both in terms of our progress and our growth.

Dan Jedda, CFO

I'll take the next question. Hi, Justin, it's Dan. Thanks for the question. On your question on EBITDA and some of the puts and takes, let me just talk a little bit about Q1 and the full year. As we mentioned earlier, streaming services distribution performed very well in FY23 with very strong year-over-year growth rates. Video advertising really rebounded well in the second half of 2023. And we expect both those areas to continue to grow in 2024. We did comment on the M&E challenges that we faced in FY23 and that we expect the M&E markets to continue to be challenged this year. So this will ultimately result in a difficult year-over-year comp on the platform side because of the strong growth in SSD and the challenging M&E environment. If we see M&E accelerate from its current levels, it will have a positive impact on margins and our EBITDA, both if we see it on the SVOD and the AVOD side. We'll grow subscribers and engagement across the platform, and that will have a positive impact for us. On the margin side, we guided platform margin in Q1 to 52%, which was similar to Q1 of last year. We're not providing guidance going forward, but I would anticipate that our gross margin to improve on the platform side slightly from the Q1 levels as our volume of revenue grows. We do have some fixed costs up in platform margins, and I would expect to see some sequential improvement in gross margin going forward. Lastly, on the OpEx side, we ended Q4 at just over $500 million in OpEx. If you adjust for our Q4 impairment and restructuring charge, we talked a little bit about this in last quarter. It's similar this quarter. If you annualize that out and apply a mid-single-digit growth rate, that's the way I'm thinking of OpEx for 2024. And as we've stated previously, we do expect to see further improvements in 2024 in adjusted EBITDA. We had a very strong free cash flow year in 2023. We expect to be positive on free cash flow in 2024. And lastly, to where you see the reinvestment, Anthony touched on this in the earlier question. We have multiple areas on the monetization side that we'll reinvest in, specifically on our subscriptions business as we look to expand that and accelerate that. And we have a lot of other initiatives on ad product and the monetization side that we'll continue to reinvest as we look forward to accelerating growth in the years to come.

Justin Patterson, Analyst

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. And it's from Shweta Khajuria with Evercore ISI. Shweta, please proceed.

Shweta Khajuria, Analyst

Okay, thanks a lot for taking my questions. Let me try two, please. One is on just the overall ad demand trends that you saw in Q4 and into Q1 so far. And specifically, as it relates to certain key verticals that you could comment on, or just the scatter market health and the caution or the lack of among or the improvement of sentiment among brand advertisers. That's question one. And just a quick follow-up on how are you, how should we be thinking about political impact this year for you? Thank you.

Anthony Wood, CEO

Hi, Shweta, thanks. This is Anthony, but Charlie will take questions.

Charlie Collier, President Roku Media

Thank you. Hey, good to hear from you, Shweta. Thanks for the questions. We continue to see actually a really solid rebound in video advertising in fourth quarter. I'm really pleased with the way video advertising has strengthened in general, offsetting what has been and remains a challenging M&E marketplace. Now, all that's said about M&E, it remains a really important category for Roku, and we are a unique and effective platform for driving engagement for our partners and building our partners' businesses, and driving engagement will always be core to Roku's success. So when that grows, we'll grow well. However, by all accounts, the M&E category went through a period of spending at unsustainably high levels, and we're working with our partners now even more to help them figure out their shift to a greater ad-supported focus and success. Again, the engagement is something Roku is best suited to help them with. So that's a good transition. Now, overall in the market, to your question about categories, we're executing well, and I do expect the year-on-year growth rate of video advertising in the first quarter to be similar to what we saw in the fourth quarter. There are ups and downs by verticals since you asked to name a few specific categories. CPG, health and wellness, and telecom are growing nicely. Categories like financial services and insurance are not recovering as quickly. So, Shweta, overall, I feel really good heading into the new fronts, the upfront, and we will continue to build upon our market-leading scale and platform advantages and will continue to elevate Roku's powerful ad products and tech offerings, all with a focus on diversifying demand and continuing to scale our ad-supported businesses. I think your second question was about political. Political is growing for us. Our tools and our tech make Roku a strategic platform for political advertising, both for those targeting scale and also those looking for specificity. I will point out that in 2024, we expect political to grow, but it'll likely remain a relatively small contributor as a percentage of our whole really diverse ad business. We know political obviously is a big opportunity and a big market, and as this category, like others, shifts from linear to CTV, we will be well-positioned. We have some product updates that will help us tap into these budgets more and more in the future. We're making those updates to our platform as well as other refinements that we'll make moving forward. So, overall, Shweta, we expect political to grow over time. For now, it'll grow, but it'll remain a relatively modest part of the overall ad mix at Roku.

Shweta Khajuria, Analyst

That's very helpful. Thank you.

Anthony Wood, CEO

Thanks. This is Anthony. I'll just add a comment on M&E. Although we've talked a lot about M&E being pressured, I will say that one of the things, it's still a big opportunity for us. We're very good at it. It's something that I expect to bounce back over time and be a growth area over time. This year, it'll probably continue to be pressured, but the other thing we're doing is we're taking a lot of inventory and creating new inventory that we used to sell exclusively for M&E and we're using it now for brand advertisers. A good example of that, I think, is Roku's City, which used to be entirely promotions for content. But we've started selling buildings to McDonald's and companies like that and that's gone extremely well for us. Viewers love it. It's tapped into new revenue sources. So, we're going to continue to diversify the advertising in our home screen that we used to use exclusively just for M&E. We're going to start using that for brand advertisers as well.

Shweta Khajuria, Analyst

Okay. Thanks, Anthony. Appreciate it. Thanks, Charlie.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. It comes from the line of Laura Martin with Needham. Please proceed.

Laura Martin, Analyst

Hi there. Great numbers, you guys. Congratulations. My first question is on the Roku-branded TVs. I know that we've been really worried about channel conflicts. So, you were in Best Buy exclusively. Now, you're announcing you're going into Costco and Amazon. Can you tell us what your 30 OEMs are saying about you expanding and what's the ultimate strategy? Are you going to have these Roku-branded TVs in every channel outlet? Can you help us look forward on the future of this product?

Anthony Wood, CEO

Hey, Laura. It's nice to hear from you. This is Anthony. I'll let Mustafa talk about it.

Mustafa Ozgen, President Devices

Hi, Laura. Thanks for the question. Look, as we announced the product and we explained then, Roku-branded TVs are basically a complementary program to our existing Roku TV program. We use the Roku TVs as a way to innovate in a hardware-software combination. Historically, we focused on software only in the Roku TV context. Now, we are able to do more innovation using the hardware as well as the software and build much better products that can then be given to consumers. And also we are sharing that with our 30 plus licensing partners. And we are very open about that. Some of the improvements and innovations that we have already developed as part of the initial launch of the program are already being fed into our Roku TV ecosystem. Our partners are already benefiting from those improvements. Some of them are cost improvements, being able to further lower the cost of the hardware. Some of them are performance improvements. So both of these types of improvements have been shared with our partners and we'll continue to do so. In terms of distribution, definitely to make this program successful and for us to operate as a program, we need to scale it a little bit more. And therefore we are expanding our distribution because customers love the product. We are receiving great reviews every day. And we want to be able to offer these products to the customers and get their feedback. That feedback will be used to further improve and add new capabilities that we'll share with our Roku TV ecosystem partners.

Laura Martin, Analyst

Super helpful. And then my second and last question is when we think about the user interface, I think one of the things I know you really love this whole city thing, but I think it's really ironic that you have a CTV business and there's no video on the homepage. And it feels like if you had some kind of carousel, you could not only put in cross-promoting your stuff instead of a still image, but also you could sort of get more money from video postage stamps on page one. I know Anthony, you said you're focusing on the homepage more. That's one of your tactical focuses in 2024. Can you talk about other than just adding more brands to the city, are we going to see anything more? I'm going to use the word engaging for consumers from the Roku homepage in 2024?

Anthony Wood, CEO

Hey Laura, this is Anthony. Absolutely. I mean, it's a big area of focus for us. We mentioned our food zone, 'All Things Food.' I mean, that's something that's been, it's gotten a great reception from our viewers. It's an example of building out an experience. This access from our home screen integrates promotion, both static display promotion as well as it promotes video as well. And it's just a small example of the kinds of things that we're going to be doing. So, Roku City is one example, but there are lots of ways across the platform that we can drive. We can create experiences that will engage viewers, that will provide monetization opportunities, and that will drive more engagement across our platform. So, in terms of putting video directly on the home screen, it's not something that we've thought about, and it's something that we're thinking about testing, but it's not an area that we've made any decisions on. And I'll just say, I guess the big picture is there's a long list of ideas of how we can create viewer experiences that engage and entertain on our platform around the home screen. A lot of those do include video, but video is something on the home screen that you have to approach carefully. There's always this concern that it might alienate some viewers, but some viewers love it. So, it's just something that we will keep looking at and testing. Overall, there's a long list of great things we can do to add to our home screen to drive engagement.

Laura Martin, Analyst

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And it comes from the line of Vasily Karasyov with Cannonball Research. Please proceed.

Vasily Karasyov, Analyst

Thank you. Good afternoon. Charlie, I have a question for you and wanted to ask you to talk about how you price your scatter inventory. Maybe help us triangulate your logic here in terms of how you do it relative to the upfront pricing relative to your competition. I mean, we understand how it's done on linear TV. Is it the same? Because with the new entrance into the AVOD space, there is a lot of discussion about what will happen to your pricing. There are industry press reports about where your CPMs are relative to your competitors. So can you tell us how you price your scatter inventory and what kind of thinking goes into that and what factors will make you raise your prices, drop your prices and so on? Just help us understand directionally how to think about that. Thank you.

Charlie Collier, President Roku Media

Hey, Vasily, thank you so much for the question. Actually, I was looking at something yesterday, and the first thing you look at, as you said, in linear television, also holds true in CTV, which is you want to see your upfront advertisers who come in early and make large commitments early. You want to see that pricing actually be less than what is occurring in scatter, and sure enough, that's happening. Our scatter rates have been very solid and continue to be so, and I know there's been a lot of talk today about my beloved Roku City and all things food and some of those integrations. What's remarkable about these integrations, besides the fact that they're so immersive and engaging in their broad reach, is that they're also scarce. So we look at what scarcity does to drive pricing, and Anthony's last answer about the opportunities that we see, not just on the home screen, but throughout the entire streamer's journey. So many of the sponsorships that, as we said, used to be M&E only are now both M&E and non-endemic advertisers, and what's terrific about that, not only does it open up that scarcity to new bidding and new advertisers, but it's also driving pricing. So I would say the upfront we look at, and those who have committed to us early have been rewarded, and those coming in as scatter seem to be responding to our changes toward opening up the sponsorships, as Anthony mentioned, and the pricing has grown in tandem with that. We feel like that's working, and it seems to be so, both in fourth and continuing now.

Vasily Karasyov, Analyst

Do you feel that for advertisers, pricing is an important factor when they decide between, let's say, the Roku channel and other streaming opportunities?

Charlie Collier, President Roku Media

Well, look, obviously price is something that they need to look at when they purchase. Our value has been great. We're also a performance platform. One of the things that are unmatched scale, the direct relationships with 80 million active accounts, what's great about it is we get the opportunity to be both top of the funnel and bottom of the funnel. So we see people, obviously, they look at us and compare us on price, and we're very competitively priced. But we also have the opportunity of being performant. And so the fact that we can be broad reach at the top of the funnel and also, in certain categories, truly lead in this way, we're priced well and we're effective, which is what I think has people coming back. Then when we build these sponsorships on top of it, we are a creative solution for them as well. So that's right. Pricing matters, of course. We're competitively priced, but we also have some unique opportunities that are actually growing in demand and therefore pricing as well.

Vasily Karasyov, Analyst

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And it comes from the line of Nicholas Zangler with Stephens. Please proceed.

Nicholas Zangler, Analyst

Hey, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Given the headlines and the new competition arising, I'm curious what you could tell us about your current relationship with Walmart. Both in regard to overall retail distribution and then placement within the on-brand TV and just if there's any risk of any material changes in this relationship in the foreseeable future.

Anthony Wood, CEO

Hey, Nick. This is Anthony. I see you're referring to the article in the Wall Street Journal. I mean, we can't, obviously can't comment on that. That's a rumor. But I'll just say a few comments in general. First of all, we're the industry leader with 80 million active accounts and growing. One of the primary reasons that we're the leader in streaming platforms is that viewers love our products. They love our brand. They love the delight and simplicity of our operating system. One of the results of that is many of our viewers have multiple Roku devices in their home. So we've been the number one selling TV OS in the U.S. for the past five years. We're installed in almost half of all broadband households in the United States. Of course, we have a lot of international penetration as well. We have strong retail relationships. We have great relationship with Walmart. We have great relationships with lots of retailers. We have strong distribution both inside and outside the United States. We have a large, engaged customer base. They love our brand. They ask for our brand. They have multiple Roku products in their house. You take that and you think about our leading technology, our innovation in the industry, our singular focus on streaming. Our lower hardware costs. We have lower hardware costs than any other TV manufacturer I'm aware of. All of this gives me a lot of confidence that we're going to keep growing our distribution. We added 10 million net active accounts last year, and we're going to add a lot more active accounts this year as well.

Nicholas Zangler, Analyst

Got it. I appreciate your willingness to answer that. And then, just for the second question, you talked about M&E spend continuing to be pressured. I'm just wondering if you'd expect that vertical to potentially improve meaningfully in at least the second half of 2024. Obviously, in that period, you'd be lapping some easier comps. I would think new releases by that time maybe come to market, but maybe in your view, the release plate is just too light, and that’s why you're calling for M&E to remain pressured for the duration of the year. But maybe just as you think about the second half of 2024, do you see potential for an inflection there? Or maybe you could just parse out the commentary on M&E being pressured throughout the duration of the full year? Thanks.

Anthony Wood, CEO

Charlie will take that.

Charlie Collier, President Roku Media

Great. Thanks for the question, Nick. Look, M&E is a really important category for us, and I want to tell you that what we really focus on is helping them right now as they shift their focus toward engagement. It's really interesting to me to watch as they do so, and I think in the second half of the year, as they not just have to get people to subscribe, but they need to have people watch their shows and commercials, that we are probably their best partner in helping them do so on the platform. So when they're back, we're ready for them. I would say one of the things we're doing to make sure we're offering opportunities not just for M&E advertisers, but for other categories is to diversify in the way that Anthony said. We've been doing a lot of work to make sure our ad offerings are places where M&E can advertise, but then have opened it up to the other categories. So that pivot to engagement will be successful for us, and we'll be ready for them when they return. Also, I think we'll be able to offer those opportunities to a lot of different categories.

Nicholas Zangler, Analyst

Great. Thanks. Go ahead, sorry.

Anthony Wood, CEO

I'll just add a couple of comments. There seems to be a lot of interest in Media and Entertainment. As we mentioned, this sector has faced pressure and will continue to do so for a while. However, despite that, our platform revenue grew by 13%. In the fourth quarter, the year-over-year growth in video ads on our platform surpassed not only the overall streaming industry but also the traditional TV sector. The situation in Media and Entertainment is quite clear. We provide a robust platform for advertising in this sector, equipped with the most advanced tools in the industry. We excel at assisting streaming services in acquiring subscribers and enhancing engagement. While spending on Media and Entertainment was high during the booming years of the pandemic, it has now normalized as businesses focus on sustainability. Nevertheless, we anticipate that this spending will rebound, and in the long term, it will become a growth area for us.

Nicholas Zangler, Analyst

Got it. I agree. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, guys.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. And it's from the line of Jason Bazinet with Citi. Jason, please go ahead.

Jason Bazinet, Analyst

I just had a quick question for Anthony. Given your focus on growth that you talked about and less on cost, what sort of your aspiration, in other words, what metric do you think is most important to focus on, given all the metrics you disclosed? And what do you think is a reasonable aspiration where you would say, we've been successful in our effort to reinvigorate the top line and get growth?

Anthony Wood, CEO

First of all, regarding costs, I want to emphasize that it is a significant concern for us. We take operational discipline very seriously. We made substantial progress last year, which gives us more time this year to focus on other initiatives, with growth being a key priority. There are numerous opportunities across our platform to enhance monetization growth, something we've previously worked on but haven't concentrated on heavily. This area is a renewed focus for us, and I see success as reaccelerating our platform growth rates beyond what we are currently experiencing this year.

Jason Bazinet, Analyst

Just in dollars, dollars per hour? Is there any sort of metric that you think is more important?

Anthony Wood, CEO

Let me add to that. When we consider both the current year and future years, we are highly focused on free cash flow, which we plan to achieve by accelerating the growth rate of our platform business. As we evaluate our investments, we assess how they positively impact the streaming experience and the return on investment. This second aspect is crucial in our decision-making process. We see significant opportunities to monetize our platform, and we are just beginning. Our performance in 2023 was strong, yet there remains a lot of potential as we have reached 80 million active users. However, our emphasis is not on margin percentages or EBITDA; rather, we are concentrating on free cash flow and increasing free cash flow per share over time.

Jason Bazinet, Analyst

Thank you very much.

Charlie Collier, President Roku Media

And my focus is also just the fundamental drivers. Like what are the features and what are the areas of the product, what's the strategy that will fundamentally just drive increased platform revenue growth.

Jason Bazinet, Analyst

Thank you very much.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. And it comes from the line of Barton Crockett with Rosenblatt. Please proceed.

Barton Crockett, Analyst

Thanks for taking the question. I was curious about international in terms of your active account growth. Can you give us any sense of the contribution of international to the over 4 million active account growth in the fourth quarter and the 10 million over the year? Is it a minority of the net increase or a majority? Or is there any kind of sense you can give us of that contribution to growth? That's the first question. And then the second question is just to drill into this idea of your market share, you as a leading platform, smart CDOS in the U.S. and some other markets. I understand you've kept a number 1 ranking for a number of years in the U.S. But as your absolute market share, has that also been steady? Or has been any change up or down in your market share of smart TV OS in the U.S.?

Anthony Wood, CEO

Barton, I’ll begin with some high-level thoughts on our international performance, and then Dan will share his insights. Overall, we are pleased with our progress internationally. We hold the number one position in both Mexico and the U.S., and we're performing well in Canada. In Brazil, we're making significant strides as well. While we don't disclose our active accounts by region, a substantial portion of them are international at this stage. We're also seeing good results in the U.K. Dan, would you like to add anything?

Dan Jedda, CFO

Yes, I'd like to point out that as we discuss the 80 million active users, we're seeing growth both in the U.S. and internationally. International markets, due to their maturity, are growing at a quicker pace. However, the U.S. is also performing well, particularly in terms of new accounts. This growth includes a significant portion of the 10 million ads we have. We anticipate continued growth in both international and U.S. markets regarding active users. Regarding platform revenue and ARPU, we mentioned that our ARPU decreased by 4% because of the rapid growth internationally. However, in the U.S., ARPU is remaining stable or even increasing. While we don’t provide specific breakdowns, we are observing year-over-year growth rates in ARPU, which are mixed and contribute to the slight decline. This indicates that we are at a different stage in monetizing our international accounts, which will improve over time. We are currently in a phase of scaling, engaging, and monetizing according to the different international markets. We feel optimistic about the growth rates in both the U.S. and international regions.

Anthony Wood, CEO

And this is Anthony again. Just on your question about market share and it's been steady or up or down in U.S. Well, I'll just take that question. So globally, if you look at regions outside the U.S. — let's say outside the U.S. and Canada, which are more mature for us, you've seen strong and steady upward trends of market share growth rates. In the U.S., also, we launched Roku TV 10 years ago, and since that launch, we've seen steady increases in market share growth rate. We've seen our bounces around quarter-to-quarter. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down. But in general, on average, it has been going up steadily since we launched Roku TV. I actually think there's still quite a bit of room to grow our market share even in the United States because there will continue to be consolidation. There's a lot of TVs sold that run on proprietary TVOS, and I've always said and still believe strongly that we're going to see consolidation to a small number of licensed TV OS. They just have bigger economy scale. They just have a bigger, in terms of user experience with a leading licensed OS. We expect to be a beneficiary of that. So I think that sort of the trends in market share for TVs are in our favor. In the United States, I expect over time the growth rate to continue to climb, although like I said, they do bounce around quarter-to-quarter.

Barton Crockett, Analyst

Okay, thank you very much.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. And our last question, one moment please, comes from the line of Jason Helfstein with Oppenheimer. Please proceed.

Jason Helfstein, Analyst

Hi, thanks for getting me in. So two questions. Do you expect media and entertainment revenue to start growing again in the second quarter? And then on the 3P ad platforms, you gave obviously some color on the note, and there's been questions or comments, questions about that. But what would it take to see a material increase in participation from major DSPs such as Trade Desk and DV360 in your ecosystem back? Thanks.

Anthony Wood, CEO

Jason, this is Anthony. So I think Dan will take that first question, and then Charlie can talk about DSP.

Dan Jedda, CFO

Sure. We talked about M&E and that we do think it was a challenge in 2023, and we'll be challenged going forward. I'm not going to break out what the growth rates that we're expecting of M&E, and we do think it could grow year-over-year, but it will likely be growing at less than our overall platform business most likely, and that's what we're anticipating. We'll update you more on M&E as we get into the second half of Q2 and in H2. However, we're not breaking that specific activity in our advertising.

Charlie Collier, President Roku Media

Jason, I like the way we say we have one more question. So you have two questions. That's good. And I'll take the second one on DSPs. We are now actually in relationships with all the major DSPs and SSPs. The way I look at it is this: we went and prioritized demand diversification. We've done a good job because we're balancing the direct relationships we have, some of whom wish to execute their transactions on the DSPs. Then, there is the opening up of demand to smaller accounts that has really grown in the thousands for us, and a lot of those smaller accounts will become bigger and bigger over time. So we've built those relationships. I feel good about the growth, both in dollars and active accounts. I think you'll see the small and medium-sized business, it's really a good result, and become, I hope, medium- and large-sized businesses. But we think the strategy is solid and that we're executing well.

Jason Helfstein, Analyst

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we conclude the Q&A session. I will turn it back to Anthony Wood for final comments.

Anthony Wood, CEO

Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining. And thanks to our employees, customers, content partners, and advertisers. I look forward to an exciting year of TV streaming.

Operator, Operator

And thank you all for participating.