Roku Looks To Raise $100M In IPO To Fuel Growth Plans

Roku hopes to raise $100 million in a public stock offering, it said today in an SEC filing. The streaming video equipment company says it had about 13.3 million subscribers in the U.S. at the end of June and expects to grow as viewers increasingly look to the internet for programming.

The stock will trade on Nasdaq under the symbol ROKU.

“Our mission is to be the TV streaming platform that connects the entire TV ecosystem,” CEO Anthony Wood says in a letter in the filing. “We connect consumers with the content they love. We help content publishers find their audience and make money. We are pushing TV advertising out of the 1940s—when Bulova watches launched the first TV ad—and into the data-driven, machine learning, era of relevant and interactive TV ads. We partner with TV brands and service operators so they can thrive in this rapidly changing ad world.”

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.

Public shareholders may not have much of a say in how the company is run.  It will have two classes of stock: Ones sold to the public come with one vote apiece. Class B shares have 10 apiece, giving holders a majority of the votes.

Wood owns 28.4% of the Class B stock. That will give him “significant influence over our management and affairs and over all matters requiring stockholder approval, including election of directors and significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of Roku or our assets, for the foreseeable future,” the filing says.

Other large holders include Menlo Ventures (35.3% of the Class B stock), Fidelity (12.9%), and 21st Century Fox (7.0%).

Roku says that it lost $42.8 million last year, a 5.3% increase, on revenues of $398.6 million, up 24.6%. In the first six months of this year it lost $24.2 million, down 27.2% vs the period last year, on revenues of $199.7 million, up 23.1%.

Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Global Markets will be the lead bookrunners for the offering. Allen & Company and RBC Capital Markets will be book running managers. And Needham & Company, Oppenheimer & Co. and William Blair & Company will be co-managers.