Roblox revenues increase to $801m in Q1

gamesindustry.biz:

Roblox has released its first quarter financial results for 2024, demonstrating a significant boost in the company's revenue and bookings.

Roblox highlighted an increase in the number of its daily active users (DAU), up 17% year-on-year to 77.7 million. The firm noted that its growth in DAU was particularly strong in the Asia Pacific region.

As for hours engaged, it reported an increase of 15% year-on-year to 16.7 billion, which also saw strong growth in the same region.

While it did note an "unseasonable decline" in engagement during the beginning of the first quarter, the company experimented with changes to its algorithm and reintroduced events to help drive growth and improve the quality of Roblox.

"Our teams have been hard at work identifying opportunities to drive DAUs, hours, and bookings growth rates back to 20% year-on-year," said Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki.

"Based on the results since the middle of April, we believe that these steps are yielding positive results."

Chief financial officer Michael Guthrie said as a whole, Roblox has been "operating more efficiently" over the past three quarters.

"We have reduced certain infrastructure and trust and safety expenditures, and we have reduced the growth rate of personnel costs (excluding stock-based compensation expense) by holding headcount flat," said Guthrie.

Last September, around 30 employees from Roblox's talent acquisition team were let go to "better align with [its] growth goals."

Looking ahead, the games firm has predicted revenue of between $855 million and $880 million for the second quarter of 2024, while bookings are estimated to be between $870 million and $900 million.

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