Roblox (RBLX) earnings report Q1 2023

Roblox shares rose around 6% in Wednesday morning after the video game company reported fiscal first-quarter results.

Here’s how the company did:

• Loss per share: 44 cent loss vs. 40 cent loss per share expected, according to a Refinitiv survey of analysts.
• Revenue (bookings): $774 million vs. $766 million expected, according to Refinitiv.

The revenue figure is what Roblox calls bookings. It includes sales recognized during the quarter and deferred revenue.

Average daily active users, or DAUs, reached 66 million, up 22% year-over-year. Engagement hours totaled 14.5 billion, also up 23% year-over-year. Both DAU and engagement growth saw the largest increases among Roblox’s international and 13-and-older segments. Both those numbers are all-time highs for Roblox.

On an analyst call following the earnings report, CEO and founder David Baszucki attributed the bookings growth to “eight quarters of innovation and awesome engineering.”

“And while users of all ages are also growing, older users continue to contribute the most, with those between the ages of 17-24 growing by 35% in Q1 2023 over Q1 2022,” the company said in its earnings release.

The company reported a net loss of $268 million for the quarter, or a loss of 44 cents per share, compared to a net loss of $160.2 million, or a loss of 27 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Amid a broader downturn in tech spending and hiring, the company signaled that it was comfortable with present headcount and compensation levels, given “the momentum we see in bookings.” Roblox saw its adjusted revenue, or bookings, grow 23% year-over-year.

“We can now begin to slow our year-over-year increases in headcount and compensation expenses,” the company said in its earnings release, with bookings growth expected to exceed compensation growth beginning in the first fiscal quarter of 2024 and onwards.