? IPO
Online gaming platform Roblox has confirmed its filing for IPO on the U.S. stock market and is now preparing to go public at a valuation of $8B
For comparison, In February 2020, Roblox was valued at $4B after raising $150m investments in Series G round
The price and share count are not determined yet. More than that, some sources suggest that the company is currently deciding whether to conduct a traditional IPO or to go for a direct listing
This July, Roblox announced that it was planning to pay its developers a total of $250m over the course of 2020
? Financial Performance
Roblox has surpassed $1.5b in player spending, with over $100m being spent only in May 2020 growing from $30m in the previous year
As of August 2020, at least 20 Roblox games have been played more than one billion times, and at least 5,000 have been played more than one million times
Number of active users have increased from 115m as of Feb 2020 to 164m as of Aug 2020
? Previous Funding
In February 2020, Roblox received $150m of Series G funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with additional financing from Temasek, Tencent Holdings, Altos Ventures, Meritech Capital and Tiger Global Management
In September 2018, Roblox raised $150m in a Series F round led by Greylock Partners and Tiger Global, with the participation of existing investors Altos Ventures, Index Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners and others
In March 2017, the company secured $25m of Series E funding from Meritech Capital Partners and Index Ventures
Before 2017, the company had raised about $10.76m during five financial rounds
? Product
Roblox is an online gaming platform with more than 164 million monthly active users, that allows people to create their own games and share them with others
During 2020, the platform managed to attract 35 million of new monthly active users
Since its launch in 2015, Roblox mobile app has been showing stable growth and was downloaded more than 437 million times with a peak of 17.7 million downloads in July, 2020
Each month, players spend about 3 billion hours on the platform. According to Sensor Tower Store Intelligence estimates, in June 2020 Roblox mobile lifetime player spending surpasses $1.5bn
SOURCES: VENTUREBEAT, YAHOO FINANCE , ROBLOX.COM
