Roblox Stock Performance Misses Metaverse Platform's Population Has Grown to 300 MILLION MAU

You probably saw today's downbeat reports of Roblox's stock after the company announced its last quarter earnings:

Shares of Roblox closed down more than 21% Wednesday after the company reported second-quarter results that missed analysts’ expectations on top and bottom lines.

The revenue figure is what Roblox calls bookings, a category that includes sales recognized during the quarter and deferred revenue. Bookings rose by 22% year over year. Roblox reported $639.9 million in bookings in the year-ago quarter. The company generates revenue from sales of its virtual currency called Robux, which players use to dress up their avatars and buy other premium in-game features.

This despite the fact that Roblox also reported [.pdf link] strong user growth: "Average Daily Active Users (“DAUs”) were 65.5 million, up 25% year-over-year. Average monthly unique payers were 13.5 million, up 19% year-over-year."

Roblox the company doesn't report monthly active users — probably because its MAU can fluctuate wildly from month to month, based on the free time of its core user base of kids and teens.

That's unfortunate from a market perception point of view, because last December, Roblox was estimated to have 250 million MAU. And recently (this June), a leading Roblox analyst service RTrack reported that Roblox MAU had since grown to over 300 million:

RTrack now estimates that more than 300 million people log in to the viral metaverse gaming platform Roblox every single month. This is our latest estimation based on our one of a kind proprietary estimation system, with our estimations now the standard for tracking the metaverse behemoth.

More here. A knowledgeable insider I trust tells me RTrack is a reliable service, so I'm inclined to believe this number — especially since it's in line with the company's report of daily active users growing by 25%. Failing to miss revenue numbers is probably a temporary challenge, when the company still has to spend so much on trust & safety (all those kids on the platform), and sharing revenue with creators.

The real number to consider, in my opinion, is that this one metaverse platform has an active population nearly the size of the entire United States of America.

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