Roblox Quarterly Report Showed Even Gamers Are Inflation-Weary But Gaming Platform Continues To Expand Its Footprint

Last Wednesday, Roblox Corporation RBLX shares tanked 21% after it missed top and bottom-line estimates with its second-quarter results. But with its partnerships, including the one with Meta Platforms META, Spotify Technology SPOT and H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB HNNMY, Roblox has over 200 brand activations on its platforms and therefore, atleast expects to make revenue this year in advertising.

Second Quarter Highlights

For the quarter that ended on June 30th, Roblox generated $781 million in revenue which it calls bookings, coming in below the $785 million that Refinitiv expected. Be selling its virtual currency Roblux to players who use it to buy in-game features, Roblox made a net loss of $282.8 million which is worse than $176.4 million it lost during last year’s comparable quarter. The 46 cents loss was slightly worse than the 45 cents loss that Refinitiv expected. Roblox management attributed the greater loss to increased expenses that come with growth, including corporate overhead and personnel costs, developer exchange fees along with infrastructure costs.

Average daily active users rose 25% YoY as they amounted to 65.5 million. Users also increased their engagement as hours rose 24% YoY with 14 billion hours spent in Roblox. Roblox has a long-term goal to gather 1 billion daily users.

Meta Virtual Headset Entry Was A Success

Earlier in August, CEO David Baszucki tweeted that only five days after being launched in a beta capacity, Roblox experiences had more than one million downloads through virtual reality headsets made by Meta. By becoming available on Meta, more precisely, its Quest VR headsets, Roblox developer community got the opportunity to optimize their games for Quest and build new ones for the VR community through previous input and feedback from Meta and its Quest community. As for Roblox, it’s good to gain another presence, along with the one it has in the Microsoft Corporation MSFT universe, or more precisely, its Xbox.

Even Gamers Are Inflation-wary But Roblox Is Diversifying Its Revenue Sources

Although it was initially more popular with youngsters, Roblox is working to attract all categories and it reported to have observed growth in daily active users across the planet and of all age groups. But Roblox is still expected to operate at a loss for the foreseeable future as growth comes at a cost. Shares tumbled as its report reflected the consequences of slowing demand in online gaming and a crowded landscape, but the online gaming platform has jumped on the AI band-wagon with a robust pipeline of promising innovations for the years ahead and with 200 brand activations, it will be making money from advertising as it continues to expand its virtual footprint. 

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