Investors who want to bet on the future of streaming TV may soon have a new opportunity to do so: Roku is weighing an IPO that could value the company at $1 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The firm — best known for its internet connected players that funnel video streams to TV sets — is said to have hired Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Allen & Co. to underwrite an offering that it might initially file privately.
Investors might be a little skittish. Snap has lost nearly 36% of its market value since it went public in March, and now trades below its IPO price. And Blue April is down 26% since it went public last month.
Still, internet video is a fast-growing business. Roku had 15 million monthly active users at the end of June, an increase of 43% vs last year. It said early this year that 13% of all smart TV shipments in the U.S. were Roku-equipped sets from makers including Hisense, Hitachi, Insignia, Sharp and TCL.
Roku and its competitors, including Apple TV and Google Chromecast, accounted for 11.4% of all viewing for 18-to-49 year olds in May, up from 7.1% the same month in 2016 and 4.2% in 2015, Pivotal Research Group’s Brian Wieser reports.
Roku also sells targeted display and video ads.
The company, founded in 2002, has raised $208.6 million from 13 investors in nine funding rounds, Crunchbase says. Backers include Fox Networks Group, Hearst Communications, Netflix, Sky, and Viacom.
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