Roblox stock falls amid harsh earnings miss

Tech reporter Dan Howley reports on Roblox's second-quarter earnings miss with a mixed forecast on daily active users.

Video transcript

DAN HOWLEY: That's right. We actually saw a miss on the top and bottom line here for Roblox. They came in with revenue of $591.2 million. That's versus expectations of $645 million. EPS-- GAAP EPS was at minus-$0.30. There was expected to have minus-$0.25.

Now, there's a few things here in the numbers that are worth pointing out. The average daily active users were 52.2 million. That was up 21% over year. But the daily average bookings for those daily active users was down 21% year-over-year. Now, the difference between bookings and revenue is kind of a little bit of the minutia in video games.

You have revenue and then you have bookings. Bookings is inclusive of the deferred revenue that you've had from an online game. It's just a complicated way of doing accounting in gaming, and kind of unnecessary. But it's just interesting to see there that the daily active users was up, but the amount that those users were spending was down.

And revenue itself was actually up 30% year-over-year. And engagement was up as well. So that was up 16% year-over-year. So it really is kind of an up and down story here for the company. And in July, they're seeing revenue that's supposed to be up between 25% and 27% year-over-year. So we're seeing, obviously, the stock down at this point. You have to wonder, it's got to be a result of the miss, and then that bookings per daily active user taking such a steep, steep drop.

DAVE BRIGGS: Dan, we talk a lot about gaming in recent days and a lot of the pullback from the highs that we saw during COVID. Are we near a 2019 level? Or has it just fallen off so fast from COVID-- are we still at a pretty healthy level compared to pre-pandemic?

DAN HOWLEY: You know, I think we're still at a pretty decent level compared to prior to the pandemic. It really, honestly, is going company by company almost. We're seeing the broader trend that there's less engagement, there's less revenue just because-- year-over-year, just because we're seeing people go back out into the real world. Plus, inflation, people have to decide whether or not they're going to spend on a video game or spend in-game for a game-- that's how Roblox builds its cash, not through individual game sales, but through purchases that people make in-game.

People have to decide whether or not they're going to spend money on that or go out to eat, go to the movies, things along those lines. So we're seeing that pullback. Now, I don't think that we're going to go prior to pandemic numbers. This has also been kind of a strange year for the gaming industry in general just because I've said it before-- there haven't really been all that many super hot games.

There's been Elden Ring, which has just been everybody's favorite for most of the year so far. And that came out earlier this year. This is kind of the doldrums of the summer. Usually, we get a game or two around the spring that'll really knock people's socks off-- haven't seen it outside of Elden Ring.

And the end of the year, we could see some big smashes. But I'm not expecting anything to really make people go wild, be kind of a cross-cultural event until next year. It's also worth pointing out that game consoles are still very hard to come by. But for Nvidia and AMD, luckily for gamers, the prices of cards are coming down, but the demand there is falling for those companies. So it's hitting them where it hurts.

SEANA SMITH: All right, Dan Howley, thanks so much. Again, Roblox shares under pressure here after that bookings miss. You can see the stock off, look at that, nearly 13%.