Popular video game platform Roblox (RBLX) – Get Roblox Report saw its stock soar as much as 30% in extended trading after the company released a very strong earnings report.
After the bell Monday, San Mateo, Calif.-based Roblox released an earnings report showing that bookings increased by 28% while users played its games for a total of 11.2 billion hours in the latest quarter. Total revenue (excluding deferred revenue) was up 102% at $509.3 million while demand for popular games like “MeepCity” and “Adopt Me!” remained strong despite the drop anticipated as pandemic-related restrictions eased across the country.
“Growth in all of our core metrics — DAUs, hours, and bookings — displayed strong year-over-year growth despite lapping Covid-impacted periods and back-to-school seasonality,” Michael Guthrie, Chief Financial Officer of Roblox, said in a press statement.
The company saw its net loss increase to $74 million from $48.6 million but attributes it to the cost of growing — active daily users are up 31% at 47.3 million. The company has also increased its employee count by 66% from 865 in the third quarter of last year to 1,435 now.
Free cash flow generated by Roblox equaled $170.6 million; it said it had $1.9 billion of cash and cash equivalents as of September 30, 2021. The company also said it lost $25 million in bookings due to a platform-wide outage from Oct. 28 and Oct. 31. It said at the time that the outage was caused by a number of factors and a final analysis is still pending.
“Engagement is our north star,” CEO David Baszucki said in a press statement. “We’re very pleased that during the third quarter, people of all ages from across the globe chose to spend over 11 billion hours on Roblox.”
As a result of the strong earnings report, Roblox shares surged by as much as 33% in after-hours trading. In more recent action the stock rose $21.16, or 28%, to $98.68. An analyst conference call is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday.