April 30 - Roku on Thursday raised its full-year platform revenue outlook, a move that reflected management's confidence that advertisers will continue allocating spend to its streaming environment. The announcement pushed Roku shares up about 10% in extended trading.
Roku is positioned to benefit from the expanding role of streaming media as more households adopt connected TV - or CTV - devices as their main way to watch video. Advertisers are shifting dollars away from traditional linear television toward streaming, attracted by the tighter audience targeting and measurement that CTV enables.
Earlier in April, Roku disclosed that it had surpassed 100 million streaming households globally, a milestone the company said corresponds with the larger change in how viewers consume content. The company pointed to its Platform segment as a key growth engine. That segment includes advertising on The Roku Channel, which is free and ad-supported, as well as revenue-sharing arrangements with third-party content services that distribute on Roku's platform.
Roku reported that Platform revenue rose 28% in the first quarter to $1.13 billion, outpacing an estimate of $1.01 billion compiled by LSEG. Building on that performance, the company updated its 2026 outlook for platform revenue, now calling for growth of 21% to $5.0 billion. That is higher than its prior guidance, which forecast an 18% increase to $4.89 billion.
On the devices side, Roku acknowledged a headwind from increasing memory costs that is expected to depress device margins in the second half of the year. The company noted, however, that its Roku TV OS typically needs significantly less dynamic memory (DRAM) and storage memory (Flash) than alternative platforms, which may moderate some cost pressure. Devices revenue for the quarter was $118 million, a 16% decline from the same quarter a year earlier.
The combined results highlight the differing dynamics across Roku's business lines: robust advertising and platform monetization on one hand, and hardware revenue and margin sensitivity to component costs on the other.
Market implications
Roku's upward revision to platform revenue and the strong Platform segment showing underscore how shifts in ad budgets toward streaming are influencing media and advertising markets. At the same time, the company flagging higher memory costs points to ongoing supply-cost considerations in consumer electronics and device manufacturing.