On Wednesday, Roku Inc. (ROKU) n entertainment technology company placed it’s initial public offering $14 per share. Underwriters for the IPO included Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Allen & Company, and RBC Capital Markets.

Thursday on its first day of trading it closed at $23.50 up 67% in one day. Major investors include: Menlo Ventures, Twenty-First Century Fox and Fidelity.

Pushing consumers away from traditional television, Roku made one of the first devices to offer streaming content such as Netflix over TVs back in 2007. To remain competitve with Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Google Play, Roku now offers over 3,000 channels internationally.
Roku primarily brings in their revenue by selling streaming video players also known as Roku boxes. The company reported $398.6 million in revenue in 2016, which is up 25 percent from $319.9 million back in 2015. Although reporting increased revenue over the last year, Roku continues to lose money with a net loss of $42.8 million from 2016, an increase from the $40.6 million the previous year.

Roku generates revenue through other avenues than just selling their boxes, the company has expanded its advertising business as well getting a cut of the revenue from media companies and new signups for apps on their platform. They also license their software to companies like Sharp and Hitachi.

Roku Chief Executive Anthony Wood stated during an interview that Roku will continue to “ride the wave” of online television away from the cable.

“Roku’s position in this ecosystem is being the platform that ties together the customers, the advertisers, the user, and we’ve been competing with big companies for a long time very successfully,” Wood also stated.

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