Roku Inc

NASDAQ:ROKU

Earnings Call Analysis

Roku's Q3 2024: Strong Revenue Growth and Positive Outlook

In Q3 2024, Roku achieved over $1 billion in revenue, marking a 16% increase year-over-year. Platform revenue rose 15% to $908 million, helped by political advertising and improved integration with partners like Trade Desk. Streaming hours surged 20%, with the Roku Channel becoming the third most popular app. Looking ahead, Q4 revenue is projected at $1.14 billion, with platform revenue growing 14%. Gross margins are anticipated between 52% and 53%. The company aims for 100 million streaming households within 12-18 months, emphasizing ongoing growth and innovation in its ad products and international markets.

A Strong Quarter – A Milestone for Revenue

In Q3 2024, Roku achieved a significant milestone, surpassing $1 billion in total net revenue for the first time. This achievement reflects a 16% year-over-year growth, with platform revenue reaching $908 million, indicating a 15% increase, driven largely by advertising and subscription services distribution.

Growth and Engagement Trends

The company reported a 20% rise in streaming hours, with engagement per household increasing to an average of 4.1 hours per day, compared to 3.9 hours a year earlier. The Roku Channel also excelled, ranking as the third most popular app on the platform with a staggering 80% increase in streaming hours year-over-year.

Innovation and Strategic Focus

Roku is actively enhancing its platform through innovations such as the 'Roku Sport Zone', which aggregates sports content to elevate user engagement and drive ad revenues. This focus on improving viewer experience and integrating deeper with third-party platforms like Trade Desk is anticipated to bolster advertising demand.

Financial Performance and Insights

The gross profit in Q3 stood at $480 million, up 30% year-over-year, with a total gross margin of 45%. Roku's adjusted EBITDA was reported at $98 million for Q3, significantly exceeding expectations. The company ended the quarter with $2.1 billion in cash, enabled by a robust free cash flow of $157 million on a trailing twelve-month basis.

Looking Ahead: Q4 Guidance

For Q4, Roku has forecasted total net revenue of $1.14 billion, which would represent a 16% increase year-over-year. The platform revenue is expected to grow by 14%, while device revenue is projected to rise by 25%. Moreover, gross margin is anticipated to settle between 52% and 53%. Operating expenses are set to increase by 9% year-over-year in Q4, although annual OpEx is expected to slightly decline overall.

Long-Term Vision: Focus on International Expansion

Roku plans to achieve 100 million streaming households globally within the next 12 to 18 months, with continued investment in international markets like Mexico and Canada where there is substantial growth potential. The international segment is still in early stages of monetization but shows promising engagement metrics, positioning Roku for future revenue growth as scale improves.

Challenges and Market Dynamics

Despite strong overall performance, Roku faces challenges with monetization in the Media & Entertainment (M&E) sector, which is expected to become a smaller portion of overall platform revenue. The company is proactively diversifying its revenue streams through enhanced advertising capabilities and improving subscription services.

Outlook for 2025

While Roku anticipates growth in the coming years, management is cautious about acceleration in revenue growth rates due to various factors, including market challenges and compensating past high performance in political advertising. However, optimism remains high for robust growth potential entering 2025 as they maintain a strong path forward.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Good day, everyone. And thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Third Quarter 2024 Roku Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Now I will pass the call over to Conrad Grodd, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Conrad Grodd, executive]

Thanks, Carmen. Welcome to Roku's Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. On today's call are Anthony Wood, Roku's Founder and CEO; and Dan Jedda, our CFO, Charlie Collier, President Roku Media; and Mustafa Ozgen, President Devices.

Our full results and additional management commentary are available in our shareholder letter on our IR website at roku.com/investor. On this call, we'll make forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties, please refer to our shareholder letter and periodic SEC filings for risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. We'll also present GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in our shareholder letter. Unless otherwise stated, all comparisons will be against the results for the comparable 2023 period.

Now I'd like to hand the call over to Anthony.

[Anthony Wood, executive]

Thanks, Conrad. We delivered strong results in Q3, our first quarter of more than $1 billion in total net revenue. Roku continued to benefit from our platform's simplicity, value and delight. The Roku OS has been the #1 selling TV OS in the U.S. for more than 5 years, and it was again the #1 selling TV OS in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Q3 was also the third straight quarter that the Roku Channel was the #3 app on our platform by both reach and engagement with streaming hours up 80% year-over-year. A major driver of this growth is our position at the lead into TV, and we expect to build on this going forward. This year, we have been focused on our initiatives to grow platform revenue, which includes home screen innovation, growing ad demand through deeper third-party platform integrations such as DSPs and growing Roku build subscriptions.

In Q3, we continued to execute against these initiatives and grew platform revenue 15% year-over-year. On our home screen in Q3, the Roku Sport Zone organized games and events, including the MLB, the Olympics, and the NFL. These zones drove use and engagement and also helped to grow subscribers for our content partners.

Additionally, the sport zone and our other viewer experiences broadened sponsorship opportunities. We also continue to deepen our relationship with third-party platforms to better serve advertisers programmatic needs, and we are beginning to see positive impacts that we believe will drive incremental revenue over time. While still early, we feel good about our initiatives to grow platform revenue, and we will continue to balance our investment in growth and profitability.

Now I'll turn it over to Dan to discuss our results.

[Dan Jedda, executive]

Thanks, Anthony. We continue to drive strong growth and engagement with streaming hours up 20% year-over-year. We also grew engagement per account globally with streaming hours per streaming household per day of 4.1 hours in Q3, up from 3.9 hours in the year ago period.

In Q3, we grew total net revenue 16% year-over-year to $1.06 billion. Platform revenue was $908 million, up 15% year-over-year driven by both streaming services distribution and advertising activities. Within advertising, we saw outperformance from political advertising, along with early positive impacts from our deeper integration with the Trade Desk. Streaming services distribution activities grew faster than overall platform revenue, due primarily to subscription price increases.

Device revenue increased 23% year-over-year in Q3, driven by expansion of retail distribution of our Roku-branded TVs. While platform revenue was up 15% year-over-year, ARPU of $41.10 on a trailing 12-month basis was flat year-over-year. This reflects an increasing share of streaming households in international markets, while we are currently focused on growing scale and engagement. Additionally, each country is at a different stage of monetization and each has different economic characteristics.

In Q3, gross profit was $480 million, up 30% year-over-year. When excluding Q3 2023 restructuring charges, gross profit was up 10% year-over-year. Total gross margin of 45% was up 480 basis points year-over-year and platform gross margin of 54% was up 610 basis points year-over-year.

Device gross margin was negative 8%, which was down 10 basis points year-over-year. Excluding Q3 2023 restructuring charges, total gross margin was down 250 basis points year-over-year. Platform gross margin was down 190 basis points year-over-year and device gross margin was down 260 basis points year-over-year.

Q3 adjusted EBITDA was $98 million, which was significantly above our outlook. The better-than-expected performance was primarily driven by our Platform segment. Free cash flow was $157 million on a trailing 12-month basis. We ended the quarter with $2.1 billion of cash and recently closed a $300 million credit facility. We continue to see leverage in our operating model with our fifth straight quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow.

Let me turn to our outlook for the fourth quarter. We anticipate total net revenue of $1.14 billion, gross profit of $465 million with gross margin of 41% and adjusted EBITDA of $30 million.

Our outlook for total net revenue anticipates a 16% year-over-year increase. We expect Q4 platform revenue to grow 14% year-over-year and device revenue to grew 25% year-over-year. We expect platform gross margin to be between 52% and 53%, in line with the first half of 2024.

We expect device gross margin to be in the negative high teens due to continued investment in the Roku branded TV program and unseasonal promotional spend. For operating expenses, we expect sales and marketing to be more seasonal in 2024 than in the prior year.

As a result, we expect OpEx to be up 9% year-over-year in Q4. However, sales and marketing and total OpEx will be slightly down for the full year, reflecting our ongoing operational discipline. Our expectations for both Q4 and 2024 OpEx year-over-year growth rates exclude onetime restructuring charges from 2023. In early 2023, we made a commitment to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA for the full year 2024. Our Q4 outlook implies adjusted EBITDA of $213 million for the full year and we expect free cash flow to be in line with adjusted EBITDA.

This level of profitability is a result of the team's relentless focus on improving our cost structure while continuing to invest in our streaming experience and simultaneously improving platform monetization. We are confident in our ability to continue driving platform revenue and free cash flow growth.

With that, let's take questions. Operator?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will be coming from Cory Carpenter of JPMorgan.

[Cory Carpenter, analyst]

Wanted to see if you could expand on the drivers of the platform acceleration and the beat relative to your guide in 3Q? And then as a follow-up, could you talk about the change in the KPIs and the rationale for removing streaming households and ARPU?

[Anthony Wood, executive]

Corey, this is Anthony. Yes, we had a great quarter, strong quarter. Our first quarter over $1 billion in revenue. Platform revenue was up 15%, which we're very happy with year-over-year. In terms of what drove platform revenue? We said in Q4 -- on our Q4 call in February that platform revenue growth and profitability are very important priorities for us. And we've been focused on those, and that focus is showing results. .

In terms of some of the things that we've been doing in that area, one, we're deepening our integration with third-party platforms, which we've talked about before, but that's ongoing and going well. And we're seeing early positive impacts from Trade Desk and others. We continue to focus on improving the ways our home screen and UI can drive monetization. Our home stream is a very powerful asset for us, and we're focused on innovating there and as well as using it more effectively.

For example, we added a lot of new vertical ad categories to our home screen UI, including the sports zone in the quarter. Ad spend on our home screen for non-M&E brands has grown each of the last 3 quarters. So we're focused on deepening and improving our third-party partnerships to drive additional demand, add demand focused on growing the ways we use our home screen.

We're also focused on growing subscriptions. And one highlight in Q3 is that our Olympic zone helped to drive a substantial volume of Peacock sign-ups through Roku Pay, including many first-time subscribers. We also have a new content row on our home screen that we added recently, and that's also helping to drive subscriptions.

So our strategy to grow platform revenue is working. We're confident, focused and we're executing well. In terms of your your second question on our KPM changes. We're very focused on platform revenue growth and profitability. These are the most important or very important priorities for us. Yet the majority of our platform revenue is currently generated in the U.S., but a large portion of our streaming household growth is now in our international markets, which are in different stages of monetization and have different economics.

And so for these reasons, we don't believe streaming household growth is representative of platform revenue growth. We're going to continue to grow streaming households in multiple international markets as well as in the U.S. and will provide updates on our scale as we achieve certain milestones. For example, I'm confident we'll achieve 100 million streaming households in the next 12 to 18 months.

Dan, do you want to add?

[Dan Jedda, executive]

Yes. Thanks, Anthony, and thanks for the question, Cory. Let me just add a little bit to the second part of your question. So the industry and our business have grown and evolved since we established the streaming households as a KPM. As an example, at the time of our IPO, we had 15 million streaming households. We now have more than 85 million globally. And in the U.S., we are approaching half of all broadband households. And as Anthony mentioned, streaming household growth is just not representative of platform revenue growth.

And we see that when platform revenue was up 15% year-over-year, yet total ARPU was flat at $41.10. So as an example of how ARPU is obscured when looking -- when not looking beyond streaming household as a metric. Mexico is 1 of our fastest-growing countries, and we have significant penetration of broadband households there.

We're in the early stages of monetization in Mexico and the overall ad and SVOD markets in Mexico are quite different than they are in the U.S. So this results in ARPU in Mexico currently being a fraction of the ARPU in the U.S. But it all blends together when just looking at streaming households.

So while U.S. ARPU has continued to grow over the last several quarters, total ARPU has been flat due to the mix of streaming households internationally. And as we stated in the letter, we strongly believe the right KPMs for us are streaming hours, which is a great proxy for both engagement and viewer experience. And then platform revenue, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow, and we remain committed to growing all these metrics over time.

To add a little bit more to the first part of your question, Cory, our better-than-expected Q3 performance was primarily driven by our Platform segment in both revenue and gross profit Platform revenue of $908 million was driven by both streaming services, distribution and advertising.

SSD grew faster than platform revenue due primarily to subscription price increases. But we also saw a meaningful sequential increase in our advertising activities despite this challenged M&E market. Now some of that was due to the political environment, and we just performed very well in political spend. And as we mentioned, we're also seeing very positive impacts from our deeper integration with the Trade Desk.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And our next question will be coming from Justin Patterson of KeyBanc.

[Justin Patterson, analyst]

All right. Building off that last question, you've previously been talking about growth accelerating into 2025. So given just the momentum you have exiting this year, how should we think about just the ability to accelerate growth each quarter throughout 2025?

And then separately, I wanted to hit on OpEx. Given sales and marketing and total OpEx are slightly down this year, how are you thinking about the right level of investment to support that growth into 2025?

[Anthony Wood, executive]

Justin, Dan will take that question.

[Dan Jedda, executive]

Yes. Thanks for the question. So growth of platform revenue has exceeded our expectations in 2024 and specifically in H2 with our guide in 2024. We had stronger growth than expected, again, due to SSD from the price increases. We also, in a couple of quarters, did have 606 adjustments. We've seen strong contribution from political spend in Q3. And so we've seen an acceleration in platform revenue in Q3 versus Q2, and our Q4 guide implies a similar acceleration in Q4 versus Q2.

And while we continue to expect strong growth in 2025, I'm very optimistic about it. It may not accelerate from current run rates in all quarters, just given certain variables like comping price increases in SSD and strong political spend in Q3 and Q4. And again, we had some positive 606 adjustments in Q2 and Q3 of this year. We'll provide further guidance next quarter and during the year.

But overall, we feel very good going into 2025 on our growth trajectory. Let me talk -- let me briefly address your question on OpEx. as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we do expect operating expenses to grow in Q4 of this year by 9%, excluding impairment and restructuring charges. But for the full year, we expect OpEx to be slightly down year-over-year, excluding impairment and restructuring charges. The team has done a tremendous job not only in rightsizing our cost structure, but also in focusing our resources on the highest impact projects including the highest ROI projects, this work is ongoing.

We continue to evaluate capital allocation. So while I do expect some incremental increase in OpEx growth rates, as we likely add some headcount in FY '25, mostly in our low-cost locations, I expect the increase to be modest. And I expect this to get leverage in FY '25 and beyond. Again, we'll provide further guidance as the year progresses. But from an OpEx standpoint, is this going to be a modest increase in FY '25.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And our next question will be coming from Vasily Karasyov of Cannonball Research.

[Vasily Karasyov, analyst]

Wanted to ask, Charlie, question about next year, but a different angle. So out of these 2 major advertising revenue-related initiatives, the partnership with the Trade Desk, which you said is already providing a positive impact and the potential for home screen video advertising. First of all, which one do you think could be a bigger benefit next year? And can you tell us how you expect them to ramp throughout next year so that we can keep track of them?

[Dan Jedda, executive]

Thanks for the question. It's a good question. Starting with the Trade Desk, we began the Trade Desk integration, specifically UID2 in mid-August, and we are beginning to see the positive impact you mentioned. It's one of many third-party partnerships we've built over the last 18 months.

But to your point, there's a lot of opportunity to learn and grow as we optimize the Trade Desk deal and the others. What we're seeing is that we're growing both the number and types of advertisers we serve. And our early signs show us growing share of wallet as well, which is very good.

So Trade Desk represents the deepest integration to date, but also to address how we're going to move forward. We'll continue to do more integrations with other DSPs as well that expand our ability to serve the entire demand curve and do it at multiple price points.

And I think this will drive incremental revenue that holds us in good stead as we learn over the quarters. And then on the home screen video side, it's really an enormous opportunity. The video Marquee, which is currently in beta, is really receiving good reviews from our clients. It will go GA in the fourth quarter.

And you see us testing new units and looking at new opportunities to monetize the home screen all the time. Our positioning in the market has been about being the lead into television. And the whole notion of home stream innovation is that our home screen reaches U.S. households with 120 million people every day.

The Roku channel is the #3 app on our platform, and we're excited about the fact that we have the scale and the data to take advantage of that opportunity. Some of the other things we're looking at, obviously, food, home and sports are zones that we are building off the home screen, those are sponsorable and drive demand and price. And then we've talked on past calls as well about Roku City, each of which will expand our opportunity set next year.

[Anthony Wood, executive]

Sorry, this is Anthony. I'll just jump in and add a couple of things. On the programmatic, well, first of all, I think these are both big opportunities for us. I think we're really just getting started, both programmatic expansion as well as their home screen.

I mean if you think about DSPs, I mean, Roku is the #1 streaming platform by a very wide margin in the United States, which is the largest ad market in the world. We're in high demand by DSPs. They all want to integrate with our platform and something that we're not working on in earnest. So there's a lot of opportunity to deepen those relationships and grow that business.

And then we're also just getting started on how we can use our home screen to drive monetization. I mean, we -- Charlie talked about some of the things we've done like our food zone and our sports zone and our video ads in the Marquee. But we're looking comprehensively at our home screen. There's a lot of ways we can continue to improve that, both for the user and for the advertisers. So there's a lot of opportunity in both of these areas.

[Vasily Karasyov, analyst]

Okay. Dan, can I ask quickly how big the the 606 adjustment was in the quarter?

[Dan Jedda, executive]

Yes. It was $12 million.

[Operator]

And our next question will be coming from Laura Martin of Needham.

[Laura Martin, analyst]

Two. Connected television is moving full funnel as Amazon connects purchases to connected television ad units. And what I'm wondering is about cost per thousand for Roku who really only has a top-of-funnel solution primarily. So I'm wondering if you are seeing cost per thousand pressure as other alternatives have more of a direct performance-based connected television alternative as part of their product set? That's my first one.

The second one is generative AI. You have -- you're talking about self-service here, which I think is intriguing for your small and medium businesses. My question is, are you integrating generative AI into the self-service offering to get conversions up? And how are you using generative AI today in your product set?

[Anthony Wood, executive]

Laura, this is Anthony. Good to hear from you. So I guess a couple of things on connected TV move full funnel versus not. I mean, first of all, we do focus on top of the funnel as well as we have a lot of products that are focused on performance-based advertisers as well. So it's not -- it's an area that we spend a lot of time working on in terms of our ad product road map addressing the entire funnel of ad demand.

But the more important thing I think about our business is that we're a streaming platform, and we're not impacted by market-driven pricing changes in CPMs, the way other streaming services are because we have a very diversified revenue stream across streaming service distribution and advertising.

We have traditional video app, of course, but we also have a unique set of UI and ad products and sponsorships that are only possible because we own the platform. We also have a lot of performance-based ad products as well that are in our portfolio. The Roku home screen is, of course, one of our most important assets as an ad platform and is why we are the lead into TV.

Every day, U.S. households were more than 120 million people start their streaming experience with the Roku home screen and it reaches people before they decide what to watch, including those, they're only going to watch ad-free apps. So for a lot of our customers, a Roku ad is the only way to reach those customers.

We can -- and then, of course, we're continuing to focus on creating new ad products in our UI, including performance-based products. We have a great ad business that's well positioned to grow.

And then Charlie, do you want to add anything before we go to generative AI?

[Charlie Collier, executive]

Sure. Laura, it's a great question. Thank you. It is true, the market currently has a lot of supply. And as Anthony mentioned, it just doesn't impact Roku the same way it will be apps and individual streaming services. The fact that we're a platform, we're not an app, we're not bundling linear assets with CTV assets.

These all make a difference. We have inherent advantages that allow us to not just lessen the impact of market oversupply but also Laura benefit from and really grow in this environment because we have the scale to absorb pricing fluctuations. We have sports and original programming and unique home screen assets like Roku City, I mentioned earlier, and other assets that just create demand and drive pricing. And all of that makes us an extremely effective partner for advertisers. And again, we're just not affected the same way as individual streaming services and apps. Do you want to take...

[Anthony Wood, executive]

And then on -- you also asked about generative AI, this is Anthony, again. Obviously, we're looking I mean, AI is a technology we use across our business already. We're looking harder about ways we could integrate generative AI in ways that could drive platform revenue and also be cost effective. Self-service is 1 of the way -- obviously, one of the areas we're looking at. We just recently launched the Roku ad manager, which is a self-service platform, targeting advertisers that want to interacts with us on a self-serve basis and particularly small and medium-sized businesses.

And I view that as a huge opportunity as those -- to make it easy for those kinds of businesses to start to easily generate and deliver a high-quality television-based ad, the same way they can do an ad word today, for example. And so that's clearly something we're focused on. And yes, it's a big opportunity for us.

[Charlie Collier, executive]

Thanks, Laura. I'll just throw 1 thing on top of it. What we're seeing ads manager really ramps is that a significant portion of the ads sold in ads manager are taking advantage of action in their interactivity. So your technology question is because we really are building it to meet needs of the advertiser. And it's a solid demonstration of our demand diversification strategy we've been talking about for the last few quarters. We -- from direct IO to a preferred DSD or now through self-service, all of our demand diversification is really focused on platform revenue growth and is off to a great start.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will be coming from Ruplu Bhattacharya of Bank of America.

[Ruplu Bhattacharya, analyst]

I have 2. First one for Charlie. So you've integrated with TTD and you've integrated UID 2.0. Have you seen an uptick in fill rates? What portion of Roku's unsold inventory would you be willing to allocate third-party DSPs. And I'm asking that because also the shareholder letter talked about Roku's ability to serve the entire demand curve at multiple price points. So Charlie, what guardrail do you have on CPM?

[Charlie Collier, executive]

Thanks, Ruplu. I appreciate the question. As I said before, I look at the opportunities in -- at the Trade Desk and UID2, but also across all of our DSP and third-party relationships. And I see no correlation with margin degradation, which is at the heart of your question.

Inventory management is an opportunity for us and a strength. And again, programmatic does not mean margin degradation. CPMs and margins is a good way for you to think about it. They vary by deal type. And we have opportunities for advertisers across that value chain that you asked about. And we have higher price opportunities on the home screening and sports and original programming.

And then obviously, our channel partners are open programmatic, that all of this, that comes with fewer unique integrations, fewer data signals and fewer sponsorships those will be on the lower price. But I am bullish on our ability to price both up and down the chain.

And it's not just the DSPs, it's the SSPs, it's our measurement partners. We have a lot of third-party relationships we're building out. And then you'll note that we talked about 80% growth in hours that we're driving on the Roku channel.

And so our opportunity to deploy all these advantages and that growth across the value chain is pretty unique to Roku because we have enough inventory and enough demand with which to do so. So I believe it distinguishes Roku in this market, and I'll just say again, DSPs don't mean margin degradation.

[Anthony Wood, executive]

I'll just add this: The Roku Channel was the #3 app on our platform for the third straight quarter. And like Charlie mentioned, we grew hours 80% year-over-year. I mean, it's an incredible asset for us.

[Ruplu Bhattacharya, analyst]

Okay. Just maybe a follow-up for Dan. Can you prioritize your areas of investment over the next 12 months. So how are you thinking about spending on original content or spending on programmatic and international expansion. Can you help us rank order that?

[Dan Jedda, executive]

Yes. I can provide some color on that. So we've said for several quarters, we're very focused on platform monetization. And a lot of our investments and a lot of our allocation of our most important asset, our people, do go into the monetization side. We've given very specific examples of changes we're making in deeper integration with Trade Desk and other DSPs being fully distributed amongst DSPs.

We've given examples of changes to our home screen that we're working on the original content row video in the marquee Charlie mentioned we have other ad products that we're continuing to focus on. We've talked about the subscriptions investment and how we're focusing on improving the subscription journey, if you will, through our platform and using our assets to drive more subscriptions through Roku Pay.

We have more to launch in premium subscriptions, which you'll hear about soon. There's lots of opportunities where we're investing in that are going to drive platform monetization. We're also focusing on international and continuing to grow our scale there.

We're doing well on international. As I mentioned in an earlier question, we'll continue to invest in international because ultimately, that will monetize as we build scale and engagement. So those are the areas where we're very focused on in terms of monetization.

On the original content question, I'll just remind everybody that much of the cost or content, if you will, in in the Roku Channel is variable based, not fixed. We do have original content. We do have fixed license content, but the vast majority of that is variable based is on a rev share. So original content isn't a significant investment for us in terms of cost, and while we will absolutely continue to invest in this content because our streamers love it, it's not a material portion of our overall cost structure within the Roku Channel.

And lastly, I'll just reiterate what I said earlier. A lot of our -- all these investments are ongoing. They'll continue into 2025, but we're going to do so with modest OpEx growth rates that I talked about earlier.

[Operator]

Our next question will be coming from Jason Bazinet of Citi. .

[Jason Bazinet, analyst]

I just had a strategic question. You said the Roku Channel, I think, is the #3 app on your devices. And it's doing really well, but it's not #3, at least according to the gauge data from Nielsen. Have you ever thought about distributing the Roku channel on devices that aren't Roku devices?

[Anthony Wood, executive]

Jason, this is Anthony. Yes. So -- but to elaborate, is it is the #3 app on our platform, which obviously is an area where we have a lot of influence on what our viewers watch because as the lead in television, we spend a lot of time building out features that help our viewers find content to watch. And that position is the primary reason the Roku Channel, which is AVOD content, which tends to be more commodity-based content.

Roku channel has awesome selection a huge number of hours and has got a lot of good content. But it's generally licensed content, that's readily available, and so that position as the lead into television and making recommendations to our viewers on what they might want to watch has allowed us to build that business to a #3 app.

We have looked -- it is a actually off Roku. It's available on various platforms. It's available on Samsung. It's available on Amazon Fire TV, for example, but -- and it is a top 10 app overall amongst all apps. But if you just look at the economics of that business, it's much more economical and much more profitable when it's on our platform versus a third-party platform.

[Jason Bazinet, analyst]

And if I can just ask a follow-up. When you guys make innovations like, let's say, the Roku Sports channel, is that something that gets refreshed on every single Roku device that's in the field? Or are there some old devices that can't really handle sort of these innovations that you're rolling out to maybe newer devices?

[Anthony Wood, executive]

Yes. I mean that's a great question. We put a -- we don't talk about it much, but we put a tremendous amount of effort in keeping all devices in the field. running the same software version in the same release. So there might be a few small exceptions here and there, like very old devices, but very few and then generally, all device -- all Roku devices run essentially the same software version and have all the same features by region. So it might vary by region, like it might be different in Mexico, say, than the U.S.

[Operator]

Our next question will be coming from Peter Supino of Wolfe Research.

[Peter Supino, analyst]

Two, if I may. Wanted to ask you about your commentary on revenue growth. And I'm sorry if this duplicates a question we heard earlier, but trying to ask you again to expand on your outlook for 2025. I think there was a commentary in the prepared remarks that the business has been accelerating in Q3 and you expect it to accelerate again in Q4.

And I'm wondering why the press release just as growth in 2025. And then on another topic, I wondered if you could talk about your outlook for 2025 gross margins, whether the puts and takes in that outlook are any different in '25 than those that have existed in '24?

[Anthony Wood, executive]

Peter, Dan will take that.

[Dan Jedda, executive]

Yes. So to be clear, what we said -- what I said earlier was the acceleration in Q4 was off of Q2, obviously, because the guide that we gave on platform was 14% in Q4. And what we said about next year is while we do expect growth, and I would even go so far as to say we expect strong growth.

The question was from acceleration from current runway just some of the comps that we have on political, we need to get, especially in H2 -- we just need to get later in the year and see where that looks like before I can comment on that. So I'm just not giving full-on guide as to if it will accelerate from current run rates. I will say we feel very good about our growth from Q4 going into 2025, we'll provide more updates as we get through Q4 and into Q1. But like I said, I feel very good about our growth potential into 2025. Again, some of these are just comp issues specifically for political and as I mentioned, some of the 606 adjustments that we had this year.

And then the second question on the puts and takes on gross margin, -- so our outlook implies platform gross margin in Q4 to be between 52% and 53%, which is in line with H1 of this year. And looking beyond Q4, we have different platform activities growing at different rates.

So mix will have an impact on margin. For example, as we've stated several times, we believe M&E will continue to be challenged and will become a smaller percent of our overall platform revenue going forward. This will negatively impact platform margins, but we also have done a very good job of optimizing our brand advertising margins, which has largely offset the mix impact of M&E.

So I would just expect, as we go into 2025, I think our margins will be relatively consistent with with FY '24, if you exclude the impact of 606, so -- and that number is around 52%, that's my expectation going to '25. So think about it as flat margins on an ex 606 basis on the platform side with us being able to offset any M&E mix impact.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will be coming from Steven Cahall of Wells Fargo.

[Steven Cahall, analyst]

First, just to try to put a finer point on it. So can you just help us make sure we understand what's driving the Q4 deceleration platform revenue growth? Is that conservatism? Is that the Olympics in Q3 or the political was a little lumpy in or the 606 or the M&E comp is just tougher? So that's the first one, just to understand that quarter-on-quarter slight deceleration.

And then secondly, Dan, so you were just speaking about M&E and brand advertising. If we think about home screen as a whole, I know it's somewhere where you're investing in the you're potentially expanding into video, which I think is in beta testing. So if we think about the home screen a little more holistically between M&E and non-M&E kind of revenue, is that still something that you think will start to grow in the future or the comp is still pretty tough there?

[Dan Jedda, executive]

Yes. To your first question on the slight decel, so again, that's 15% going to 14%. I think it's the question that you're asking. And again, from a political standpoint, we had a very strong Q3 political. And while we expect Q4 to also be strong. I'll just remind everybody that there's really only 1 month of political in Q4, and that's October.

We also, again, had a 606 adjustment in Q3, which I just mentioned was $12 million. So again, like if you kind of do a sort of apples-to-apples comparison of Q3 to Q4, it's really not a decel in that context.

To the second question on home screen, Yes, as Charlie mentioned, video ads in our marquee unit is picking up. I do think that will grow and offset M&E, but overall M&E spend will just not keep pace with the growth of our brand advertising, which is growing exceptionally strong. And so we've been able to grow the advertising activities both on a year-over-year and really a step up in sequential change in growth from Q2 to Q3.

Despite these M&E challenges and M&E not growing anywhere close to our brand ads. And again, we expect that to continue. So the home screen is a big part of that. Also just overall, our brand ads growing through our integration with Trade Desk and a lot of our other ad products. But essentially, like on the home screen as a whole, like I do think we'll continue to monetize that home screen holistically which is one of the reasons why we've been able to grow sequentially. And again, we think that growth will continue.

[Anthony Wood, executive]

And this is Anthony. Let me just add. Our work on the home screen is not just focused on ads in the home screen. It's also focused on making the homes be more influential on what our viewers watch and there's lots of ways we monetize that viewing. So for example, we talked about how one of the drivers of our subscription revenue has been adding subscription services to the recommendation role on our home screen.

So there's a lot of activities around the home screen, just some of which have rolled out, some we're still working on and haven't been released yet, that we expect will drive monetization in a bunch of different areas, including advertising.

And on advertising, specifically, the only thing we've done so far is we've added video ads to the home screen, but there's other areas on advertising related to the home screen that we're working on as well. And those video ads in the home screen, a lot of them are non-M&E now. So there's a lot of brand advertising that's happening there as well.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is coming from Jason Helfstein of Oppenheimer.

[Unknown Analyst]

This is [indiscernible] on for Jason. So just a question on next year OpEx growth? How should we think about that or views on a margin target for next year?

[Dan Jedda, executive]

Yes. Again, I mentioned earlier that total OpEx when you back out restructuring and impairment from prior year was slightly down. I believe the number was down 2%, to be specific so far, and we expect that to continue for the rest of the year.

For next year, -- what I mentioned is we likely will have some increase in OpEx, although I expect that amount to be modest. I'm not guiding to OpEx right now. But I think at a high level, that mid-single digits is probably the right level for us. We'll provide more guidance going forward. But again, we do believe that we can grow our OpEx very modestly while continuing to invest in all these initiatives that we've been talking about throughout this call. So I do not expect a significant step-up in OpEx. It will be modest.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will be coming from Cameron McVeigh of Morgan Stanley.

[Cameron McVeigh, analyst]

I was curious if you are more or less exposed to certain streaming services like Disney, Paramount Plus, Max or Peacock and whether 1 is driving an outsized impact on the streaming services distribution revenue given some of the recent price increases we've seen over the past year?

[Anthony Wood, executive]

I mean we're a very large distributor for all the streaming services. So that's a fairly diversified business across the different streaming services. I mean, obviously, some streaming services have more market share than others, but there's no one particular area I'd call out.

[Cameron McVeigh, analyst]

Got it. And then secondly, I was curious if you could just talk about the international expansion plans a bit more and how that's trending and whether there's the biggest opportunity in one given country?

[Anthony Wood, executive]

Yes. This is Anthony. I'll start and then I'll turn it over to Dan for some more comments on that. So our international expansion is going well. We have a fairly constrained set of what we call focus countries, countries we're focused on internationally it's basically all of the Americas plus the U.K. And we're making good progress in all those countries on active account or streaming household growth. And in those countries are in different stages of monetization, but they're all fairly early in monetization.

So we're still primarily focused on growth of scale of households in those countries. We mentioned with the #1 streaming platform in Mexico. We're the #1 streaming platform in Canada. Obviously, we're the #1 in the U.S., and we're growing strong in all of our focus countries.

But Dan, did you want to add anything?

[Dan Jedda, executive]

I'll just add that, as Anthony mentioned, different international markets are at different stages of scale and monetization. As I mentioned, we have scale in Mexico and we're really starting to focus on monetization. And so we expect to have very strong growth rates in Mexico. But again, we're just getting started. So the base is relatively small. We're also seeing meaningful monetization in Canada.

These are the 2 areas where Anthony just mentioned, we're the #1 selling TV OS. But other countries are still building scale and just do not yet have meaningful monetization, but we're growing streaming households and engagement. So when you think of Brazil and the rest of Latin America, and even U.K., we're really still building that scale in engagement and monetization will follow.

So over time, we expect international monetization to be a more meaningful percent of our net revenue. But it does take time for us to build scale and engagement, which is what we need to drive platform monetization. And again, I think we've said it a couple of times, is we're going to continue to grow in all our markets. And we expect to achieve 100 million streaming households in the next 12 to 18 months. And with that scale, we'll ultimately monetize these international countries as well.

[Anthony Wood, executive]

This is Anthony. I'll just add on that forecast of 100 million streaming households in the next 12 to 18 months, we're assuming that we're growing in all markets we're in, all international markets and the U.S. We expect to be growing streaming households for the foreseeable future in all of those markets.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will be coming from Alan Gould of Loop Capital.

[Alan Gould, analyst]

I've got 2 questions. First, I was wondering if Charlie, if you could just give us some sense of how the ad market is looking right now? And then on the hardware side, how is -- for Anthony York or whomever, how is the new Roku Pro Series TV is doing? And you've had your Roku-branded TVs now for a year plus-or-so, what impact, if any, have they had on your partner branded TVs?

[Anthony Wood, executive]

So yes, Charlie can start -- kick that off, and then Mustafa can answer the Roku TV -- Roku-branded TV question.

[Charlie Collier, executive]

Great. Thanks, Alan. Look, third quarter advertising activities accelerated from second quarter nicely. In the third quarter, the year-on-year growth of advertising activities across the Roku platform, excluding M&E, as Dan said earlier, outperformed both the overall ad market and the OTT ad market in the U.S. So we feel really good about that.

To give you a few specific categories, a little more inside baseball in third quarter, the year-on-year growth of political, retail and CPG as a few ad verticals, they were up on the Roku platform, and we've mentioned M&A a couple of times, health and wellness. Those are verticals that continue to be a little pressured a little extra context.

The biggest change in the sales process in this market, certainly, and you've probably been observing it market-wide is that the ad market is now a 52-week market, upfronts were really positive for us. And we closed relatively early. However, in an environment where marketers are working with such varied levels of even short-term visibility. We come out of the upfront and jump right into working with our partners on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis.

So we're focused on brand allocations from the upfront and then meeting advertiser objectives all year long. And it's changes like that to the market that I think really hold Roku in good stead because of all the growth and all the characteristics I mentioned in the last answer.

Mustafa, do you want to...

[Mustafa Ozgen, executive]

Yes, sure. Alan, this is Mustafa speaking. Look, overall, we are very pleased with the progress of our Roku-branded TVs. We're still in the early stages of this journey, which we launched these products a little over a year ago. And our initial focus was on being fully distributed for these TVs, and we've done that.

We have now grown from 1 exclusive retailer, which was Best Buy for the calendar year '23, now to many national and regional retailers. And we will continue to grow the distribution and also the shelf space for these products.

And with respect to products, again, we continue to receive positive feedback from the users and great reviews and ratings from the technical press. We have 3 product lineups now the Select series, which is our entry-level products and the Plus series, the midrange and the Pro series, our sort more performance range products.

They are all receiving really, really good feedback. Pro series especially has been our Halo product that we can show our technology and capabilities. They are really doing well. But Plus series is a higher-end product. It tends to sell less compared to Select and Plus series. But overall, it complements the lineup.

And again, doing really well. We are very pleased with the performance of the product in terms of the video and picture quality, the other features that we have great reviews. And whatever we develop and design for our Roku branded TVs, we actually share with our partners. So our licensing partners benefit from these technology developments that we have.

We are completely open to them, almost -- they can almost take our underlying hardware and then reuse for their own purposes. So we are open at that kind of level. And so it's working well. So whatever we're learning, whatever we're developing is contributing to their products as well.

And so far, our relationship has been growing with our partners, and we continue to bring new partners to our Roku TV program. So overall, it's all moving in the right direction. And I should also note that the main distribution of our operating system particularly in the U.S., is through our third-party TV partners and also with our streaming players.

Our Roku-branded TVs are really a small portion of the overall distribution that we get in the U.S. and then this will continue this way. We still rely on and we expect to rely on our third-party partners to be the main distributor of our operating system in the U.S. and also in the international markets for sure because the Roku brand TVs are really available only in the U.S., not in other markets.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question, it will be coming from Mark Mahaney of Evercore ISI.

[Ian Peterson, analyst]

This is Ian Peterson on for Mark. Two questions, if I may. First question, how much of a contribution from political ad revenue did we see in Q3? And how should we think about the political contribution in Q4?

And secondly, for the Q4 platform revenue guide, any color on how much of a headwind there is in the guide related to SSD in the subscription price increases we saw in Q4 of last year. And secondly, should we expect easier video advertising comps related to the M&E and auto ad verticals from the strikes we saw in Q4 last year?

[Anthony Wood, executive]

Dan will take that.

[Dan Jedda, executive]

Yes. Let me just talk briefly about political. Political came in above our expectations in Q3. The team did an amazing job, and we're demonstrating that Roku has the tools and attack that make it a strategic platform for all advertisers, including political. It's also worth noting that political is another vertical of several that Roku is getting better at monetizing every cycle. But to answer your question specifically, like it was an impact on Q3.

We're not going to say how much it was. It did have an impact on Q3. It is factored into our guide for Q4. But note that, of course, political is only 1 month in Q4, the month of October versus 2 strong months in Q3.

And again, this is all factored into our guide. In terms of your question on SSD headwind in the Q4 guide, I would just not think of it as such as a headwind per se. Our subscription -- we did have price increases throughout this year in many of our partners. And so we are benefiting from that. That is what has caused the 606 adjustments in Q2 and Q3. We talked about that. So I don't think there's specifically a headwind in terms of SSD going into Q4.

I do think that -- I just want to reiterate that brand advertising ex M&E has continued to accelerate at a very healthy clip due to our innovative ad product due to our integration with Trade Desk and other DSPs. So we like what we see there. In terms of the last part of your question, if we should expect easier ad comps from M&E from the strikes.

Yes, I just don't think M&E is ever an easy comp just given the industry and the challenges that M&E faces. And -- we are in a great position to benefit from any M&E, whether it's due to easier ad comps or if the content partners decide to spend. However, that's not what we've seen so far. And we've been able to grow our platform and our advertising activities despite the challenges from overall M&E. So again, we feel really good about our path forward even in this challenged M&E environment. I don't know, Charlie, if you have anything to add to that from the M&E standpoint?

[Charlie Collier, executive]

Well, look, I think it's worth saying that the team is doing a good job. And Roku is and will continue to be the best place for M&E partners to build reach, to build engagement and to see ROI. Dan is right, we're not relying on this vertical for future growth, but a lot of the innovation on the home screen and beyond, both benefits our diversification of categories away from M&E and holds us in a great position when M&E is healthy.

[Operator]

Okay. And I would now like to turn the call back to Anthony Wood, CEO, for closing remarks.

[Anthony Wood, executive]

I'd like to thank our employees, advertisers and content partners, and thank you for joining our call today.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Roku has posted their prepared remarks and the replay will be posted on their IR site. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.