Roku beat Wall Street earnings forecasts for the first quarter of 2026 and raised its full-year profit guidance as the company continues its upward rise on the streaming-video tide.
In addition, for the first time, Roku reported results for its advertising and subscriptions operating units (which are housed in its Platform segment) to give investors more insight into its business. The company touted Q1 as its highest quarter to date for premium subscription sign-ups.
The San Jose, Calif.-based company reported overall Q1 revenue of $1.248 billion, up 22% year over year, and net income of $85.7 million (or 57 cents per diluted share) compared with a net loss of $27.4 million in Q1 2025. Adjusted EBITDA in the most recent quarter jumped 165%, to $148.4 million.
“We are executing against our monetization initiatives and remain well-positioned to drive sustained double-digit Platform growth and achieve $1 billion of Free Cash Flow by 2028, if not sooner,” Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood and Dan Jedda, CFO and COO, said in their Q1 shareholder letter.
Shares of Roku spiked more than 10% in after-hours trading on the earnings report.
Earlier this month, Roku said it surpassed 100 million streaming households worldwide (defined as the number of distinct user accounts streaming on its platform in a given 30-day period). The company doesn’t break out that number on a quarterly basis anymore.
For the full year, Roku raised its outlook for adjusted EBITDA to $675 million (up from $635 million previously). The company expects Platform revenue to grow nearly 21% to $5.0 billion with Devices revenue of $535 million, for total net revenue of around $5.5 billion, which would be up 16% versus 2025.
The results show Roku continues to be competitive with tech giants like Amazon, Google, Apple and Samsung in the connected-TV space.
In Q1, Roku’s Platform segment — which includes ad sales and revenue from subscription video partners — generated revenue of $1.13 billion, up 28%, with gross margin of 51.6%.
Advertising revenue grew 27% to $613 million, with gross margin of 60.5%. According to the company, video advertising growth on the Roku platform outpaced both the U.S. OTT and digital ad markets. “We believe this outperformance reflects the growing recognition among advertisers that Roku’s unique combination of scale, first-party data, and innovative ad technology delivers measurable outcomes that help businesses grow,” Wood and Jedda wrote in their letter.
Roku’s “increased focus” on subscriptions drove Q1 revenue in that business up 30%, to $519 million, with a gross margin of 41.1%. Excluding Frndly, the low-cost streaming service it acquired last year, subscriptions revenue grew 23%.
The Devices business, which Roku treats as a loss leader for the Platforms side of the house, had revenue of $118 million, down 16%, with the decline driven primarily by lower player unit sales and promotional pricing. For Q1, the segment had gross margin of -16.3%.
For the first quarter, total streaming hours across the Roku platform came in at 38.7 billion, up 8% year over year.
For Q2, Roku expects Platform revenue growth of 20% and Devices revenue down “high-single digits.” It is forecasting total net revenue of $1.3 billion, slightly higher than prior Wall Street forecasts, which would be up nearly 17%, with total gross profit of $580 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $170 million.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Roku announced a deal with the CW Network that will bring CW programming to the Roku Channel for next-day streaming, starting in the fall of 2026. That includes new series “Private Eyes West Coast,” “Police 24/7,” and game shows “Scrabble” and “Trivial Pursuit,” which will be available on a CW-branded hub on the Roku Channel. Additionally, new installments of “WWE NXT” will be made available to stream on the Roku Channel every Wednesday following its live Tuesday night broadcast on the CW.
