Roblox Corporation (NYSE:RBLX) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

David Baszucki: Yes. It’s really exciting. Yes we actually are in the process of having a developer day with some of the top creators on the platform right now. And we really have arguably the foundation not just a 5, 10 or 20, but hundreds of some of the most creative people creating studios on our platform who arguably are the future CEOs of the interactive entertainment environment. What — this content is already there. We have in our top 300 a huge collection of amazing experiences. What we really want to do more and more is to optimize the long-term health of our platform by making sure these amazing creators are all seeing the growth they need to — to continue building their business. And if our content distribution is too focused, some of those not necessarily long tail, but some of those creators in the top 300, for example are not seeing enough action to supercharge their business.

So we’ve seen the content curve in Q1 with the work we have done, once again not just with our top picks or not just with the ability to buy sponsored placement and not just with the adjustments of our algorithm to I think focus a little on long-term platform health. We’ve seen that curve get flatter and more distributed. The other thing is our live events; The Hunt, for example, featured 100 creators, some of the most amazing creators and behind the scenes was also a content discovery event, where as part of the hunt users on our platform experienced all 100 of those experiences. So I think — our belief is there is already amazing creations on the platform. There is a lot of creators out there with five to 20 people already on their team building businesses that are arguably up and coming, great new content and we are seeing more, I would say new creators coming into our top 20 in the last quarter than we had in Q4.

Clark Lampen: Understood. Mike, maybe as we think about I guess a more prudent approach to sort of forecasting the back half of the year. Has there also been, I guess sort of a commensurate sort of moderation in any of the sort of pipeline or product launch initiatives that you guys had sort of talked about last quarter thinking about I guess – whatever you had maybe plan to provide to the community in terms of economy initiatives? Have those been walked back in any way for 3Q or 4Q?

David Baszucki: I want to comment on that. We have a lot of stuff in the pipeline on advertising and economy, and we’re continuing to drive that. Just as I highlighted we rolled out dynamic price floors. We are rolling out more integration of — on the homepage sponsored advertising, we have other things coming around search advertising on the platform. We just rolled out in-game and in-experienced video. So you are going to continue to see velocity there. In other areas of the company on the raw performance and quality of our simulator you will see that drive for quality and perf continue there. So I think it’s selective. And I highlighted on the AI side, we have a lot of work and things we will be bringing to market there.

And also on the content and live ops side, you will continue to see these events. So we are focusing a bit on AI safety. We are focusing a little bit on economy adds, while other areas of the company continue to drive perf and quality you. Thank you.

Operator: At this time, we have time for one more question. Your next question comes from Eric Handler with Roth MKM.

Eric Handler: Good morning. Thanks for the question. Two questions actually. First, over the last 12 months to 18 months, you’ve seen a huge inflow of branded experiences. And I’m curious, how does the engagement and monetization of those branded experiences compare to the traditional non-branded content that’s on the platform?

David Baszucki: Yes. I’ll just go anecdotal high level without metrics. And then Mike I don’t know if you have any. There are experiences on Roblox, any of our top 20, top 100, top 200 experiences that are played many times a day, week or month and sometimes for years and years by some of our players. And these are long-term engagement with games that’s not necessarily our expectation for branded experiences. Although over time, more and more branded experiences will have longer playtime and longer dwell time. That said, our research, there is an interactive movie trailer on our platform. And the engagement of something like that is much more deep than what would typically happen with a video movie trailer. And we do expect the engagement of branded experiences to ultimately be very different than image, print or video engagement.

These are experiences where friends can shop together, try things on interact with the brand. Once again whether it is Lamborghini’s or adidas or Gucci and really relate. So the engagement is much higher than video. Mike, I don’t know if there’s any numbers we would share around that?

Mike Guthrie: No hard numbers, Eric, that we would share at this time. I think it is early in the experiences, and each of those are individual experiences. They are learning how to build content on the platform. So some of them have done an incredible job and created very, very engaging experiences and others are still learning what our platform is all about, and they are experimenting and they are not looking at those kinds of metrics yet. So I just think it’s early to draw any conclusions. And Eric, you said you have a second?

Eric Handler: Yes, so recognizing it’s still very, very early. But in the few days that you’ve been out with the Walmart Discover, and knowing it’s — they only have three in real-world products to sell. How is that going? And you did the digital advertising beta that you did was six months. How long do you think this is before you sort of go-live on a broader scale?