By Sam Boughedda
A Needham & Company analyst maintained a Buy rating and $95 per share price target on Roku (NASDAQ:ROKU) in a note to clients Tuesday, telling investors the most common question they now receive is, is it better to own Roku or The Trade Desk (NASDAQ:TTD)?
The analyst explained that the firm prefers Roku's long-term strategic position.
The variety of reasons for their preference includes Roku's installed base of devices in 63 million homes, control of consumer relationships, 15-30% revenue share from every app on its platform, upside from rising SVOD competition, ira best in-class CTV data, 100% CTV-related revenues and a much lower valuation than TTD.
"Of its 63mm active accounts (ie, homes) at 6/30/22, we estimate that about 33mm of these are Roku TVs, where Roku is the operating system, and the balance are Roku dongles, which are plugged into "dumb" TVs to make them smarter," wrote the analyst.
"It has proprietary CTV viewing data, which gives it best-in-class ad units in CTV, the fastest growing digital ad segment," she added. "Like Amazon's ad units, ROKU allows SVOD services to advertise on ROKU's home page and then immediately convert viewers into paying subs through ROKU's payments platform, which "closes the loop" between the advtg and the subscription."