"Roku lost money in the fourth quarter and as they did for the year, but they were able to halve the loss from the quarter a year ago, so it was an improvement of 58%," he said. "Their revenues were up, and they signed up a tremendous amount of new activations, which differs from a monthly active user for a FAST channel. Activation in the household means someone's turning on a Roku TV set, so that's an impressive number. They got into the devices business differently, in a big way, with their own connected televisions at the beginning of last year, and it seems to be working incredibly well for them."
He noted that Roku's device sales are about a third of their overall revenue, and he said they also had a very good second half of the year from an advertising standpoint, which may indicate that the advertising economy is bouncing back in CTV and digital video.
However, since Roku’s market is limited mostly to North America and Latin America, compared to the much wider scope of their competitors, “Expansion really has to come in the US, and if they can't continue to conquer this market and improve their bottom line at the same time, their share is going to be under attack by some of the largest companies in the history of corporate America,” he said, considering the direct competition in CTV from the likes of Amazon and Google, along with the recent announcement that Walmart may buy Vizio. “I think that offers yet another huge potential competitor in the space and that probably explains some of their market performance.”
Comcast might be looking good, but it's complicated
While Comcast had a good quarter relative to the whole, their net income reveals some interesting issues. Shapiro said that while their net income rose by 7.8%, much of that was driven by the write-down of their Sky acquisition. Because of this, he said, their adjusted net income is only in the 2% range.
“What you see is Comcast's major issue,” he said. “Now, their entertainment division is doing okay, and Peacock is cutting its losses and increasing its subscribers, but the real issue here is in the core Comcast business itself, the total customer base for Comcast is down year on year. Their video subscriptions shed 13% last year, which is just massive, but crucially, broadband homes shrank in 2023 for Comcast. Their revenues were flat, and their net income is not growing at a pace that you'd want to see.”
However, Shapiro noted that Comcast still holds a tremendous amount of advantages. “They have 30 million broadband homes in the US, the most valuable homes in most of the media ecosystem. Secondarily, a year ago, they got into a joint venture with Charter around their Xumo platform, and it does look like this is yet another competitor for the connected television pie.”
Additionally, Shapiro said that Comcast and Charter are the two fastest-growing mobile providers in the US. “They are reconstituting the triple play that is very quickly disintegrating the protective shell around media and entertainment in the home over the last 30 years. They're rebuilding it, replacing the telephone with mobile and replacing the pay-TV ecosystem with a streaming TV bundle of services. Xumo and mobile promise that new kind of triple play which Comcast and Charter both really desperately need to work.”
Charter’s Pyrrhic victory over Disney
Shapiro said that while Charter may have fought a massive yet ultimately victorious battle with Disney at the end of last year, the costs of the endeavor may have done them more harm than good.
“Spectrum Cable, which Charter owns, went dark with all the Disney channels, including ESPN during the US Open, and baseball season, and the start of football season, and college football season,” he said. “Charter won this battle. I think it's safe to argue they came out with the things they needed to continue as a going video concern from one of the most significant video providers in the commercial pay-TV business. On the other hand, it really hurt their subscriber numbers, and their overall business is facing some major headwinds. They actually were growing broadband homes through the first half of last year, and then they hit a wall, and they, like Comcast, are experiencing not a slowdown but the beginning of the loss of broadband homes.”
Shapiro’s chart ("Charter: FY 2023") displays Charter’s shaky position and vulnerability around its need to maintain its growing mobile business to counterbalance its other issues. “You can see their total customer homes are down for the year, and their video homes are falling, not as fast as Comcast, but dramatically down,” he said. “And then you can see that their mobile business is growing like a weed and is incredibly successful in keeping home customers around retention of new signups, but they need that business not just to continue to grow but really wrap around the Xumo business to help their bottom line, which was not a good story for the full year 2023. They're at a 52-week low in market capitalization, and I think this chart pretty much explains why that is.”
Stay tuned for Part Two of our highlights from Evan Shapiro's Streaming Media Connect keynote presentation.
Watch full sessions from the February Streaming Media Connect here.
We'll be back in person for Streaming Media NYC on May 20-22, 2024, with Evan Shapiro hosting and presenting his closing keynote, "Next Is Now: The State Of The Streaming Media Industry." Click here to see the full program and to register.
All infographics courtesy of ESHAP.