New Citron position on Roku (mentions TTD)

Here is a link to the Tweet that has a link to the Citron site and updated report.

https://twitter.com/CitronResearch/status/100001216846349926…

In short, Citron is now long Roku, and partially because of the market paying up so much for Netflix and recently TTD too. The use of EV/sales as the main metric of this new stance along with some of his prior targets almost makes me think Left may browse the NPI and Saul boards.

volfan84
While Left’s analysis is often shoddy, I recommend taking each for what they are. In this case, I might actually go close out my CAPS Roku short, which has been my worst CAPS pick anyway.

Citron is long ROKU? Time to open up my short position!

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Hi Vol,

ROKU was discussed on this board a few months ago, and I think we successfully managed to convince a few people to back-out from investing.

I have a ROKU. A Roku 3 HD. Used it for over a year now as we moved away from sky tv and into streaming services only, with a seperate 4g broadband connection dedicated for it. I love it. It’s great. No problems, no hiccups. After a year of heavy use it’s as good as new. But no way would I invest in it.

Why? Because apart from buying the initial hardware, ROKU has since got nothing from me. Sure there may be promises or stories of adverts, but that hasn’t happened yet. And I’m still not sure how ROKU would benefit, as opposed to the channel (app) owners who do the advertising, such as Amazon Prime or Netflix or NOW TV.

I’m also not tied into ROKU. There is zero switching costs. At some point when the hardware fails, I will not automatically be getting a ROKU. I will look at the best hardware at the time in terms of price/performance. We went with the ROKU because of its neutrality (almost went with the NVIDIA SHIELD TV). I believe both amazon and the chromecast limit availability or functionality of competitors. That’s a shame. I wonder how long that will last.

ROKU is probably still the best option to go for, but I just don’t see their moat apart from first mover. I can easily see amazon upping their game, polishing their stick and making it easier to watch netflix and other channels on it.

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I hope I didn’t give anyone the impression that I was suggesting going long with Roku, as I also see very little moat for them.

I did go ahead and close out my thumbs down for Roku on CAPS, however. I broke into the top-10,000 on there within the past week.

I bought an NVDA Shield, in large part out of gratitude to NVDA for being my best investment by a long shot (I bought NVDA shares for something like $17.52/share within my first month or so as an investor in individual company shares, back in October 2014).

volfan84

At some point when the hardware fails, I will not automatically be getting a ROKU. I will look at the best hardware at the time in terms of price/performance. We went with the ROKU because of its neutrality (almost went with the NVIDIA SHIELD TV).


I am not quite sure I get the ROKU investment thesis either, but haven’t looked into it that much.
in the future, I expect most of our viewing devices (TVs, desktop displays) may be able to just download ROKU software and use it as a general purpose streaming manager.

Android TV does this today, and I am not sure why you couldn’t just have Android tv instead of ROKU in that scenario. ROKU would be content-neutral and, in theory, not be biased towards Netflix or Amazon Prime Video or Google Play/YouTube TV.

By the way, I just attempted my first real cord-cutting and it was an abysmal failure.
I was researching YouTube TV, and it looked pretty good, and had most of channels my family would want to keep access to if we removed cable service. I was looking at leveraging Hulu for a couple other channels that YouTube TV didn’t have, but there was definitely overlap.

My 6-month old stud 4k UHD Sony Android TV did not have the YouTube TV app…just regular ol’ YouTube. Huh. Same thing with my fancy schmancy Sony 4K BluRay streaming player. Huh.

Ok - so I go buy NVIDIA Shield, which I always secretly wanted a good excuse to do. It was a cool little gadget. However, YouTube TV maxes at about 720p.

WTF?

What is the point of having a 4K streaming player and/or 4k UHD tv, when your “cable replacement” can’t even do basic HD-quality streaming? So I returned the Shield, wiped away my tears, and decided to just beef up my internet speed and commit to at least one more year with my cable provider. Will check back in a year and see if they streaming folks have gotten their game together yet.

Netflix and Amazon Prime both do deliver many high-quality HD shows. But that is not the same as replacing my AMC, FX, TOON, SCI, SYFY, HIST, HDTV, and other beloved cable channels.

This circles back to Roku, because on TV’s that Roku comes prebuilt, they would only have to update the software, and so as YouTube TV and others improve their offerings, your ROKU-powered streaming TV would be able to take advantage. Same with Android TV being preloaded, provided that those TVs do indeed get software updates. I give ROKU an edge here because since this is all they do, I imagine software updates will be more common, whereas Google could just decide to go another direction. I have older Sony Android TV devices that are basically bricks now…never updated to handle the current versions of Amazon, etc…

This was a bit of a ramble, but I do think there is a future for ROKU, but not sure how it translates to stock/revenues right now.

Dreamer

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I think many people here are looking to Roku as a hardware play. Not so.

It is a operating system that is getting adopted by 4K manufacturers.

Roku is compelling because they are neutral and better partners than going with Amazon or Google alone.

One in four 4K Tv’s are being made with them as the operating system. When streaming continues to win so will they.

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Try SlingTV. No idea about the tech stuff, but I get all the channels I need for much less than cable.

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I put an antenna in the attic, pointed it downtown, ran a cable thru thru the wall to my OTA Tivo. My Roku is now a bookend on the shelf. My Tivo OTA uses my home’s WiFi/Internet connection to display all the channels I can get AND record simultaneously plus it streams my Netflix and Amazon Hulu yada yada choices and the remote was easily programmed to run the separate sound bar and run the TV choices (read: one remote). I might run out to a Red Box to rent a movie for $1.99 that costs $4.99 on Amazon but other than that all I need is a popcorn machine and/or an intervention to break me of my binge watching habit. Roku smoku.

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I put an antenna in the attic, pointed it downtown, ran a cable thru thru the wall to my OTA Tivo. … Roku smoku.

Similar story here.

And the best antenna was the one you buy at Costco.

And yes! Surf now!

And the best antenna was the one you buy at Costco.

And yes! Surf now!

Do you pay for the Tivo guide for 14.99 a month? If not how do you get your tv guide for everything so you can record?

Andy

This thread was from a bit more than a year ago (May 25, 2018). I was trying to find an old post of mine about MongoDB using Fortnite from around that timeframe, but it might have been a Premium Board post.

Looks like Citron actually made a good call on this one, as ROKU has gone from under $40 on 5/25/18 to over $100 now.

volfan84
long MDB, no ROKU position

Ok - so I go buy NVIDIA Shield, which I always secretly wanted a good excuse to do. It was a cool little gadget. However, YouTube TV maxes at about 720p.

YouTube app on the Shield maxes out at the video quality of the steam. For me that’s usually 1080p

That was YouTube TV, not Youtube, and my post is over a year old.
Kind of off-topic now.

If you want to discuss streaming tv options, NPI is probably a better place…just fyi.

Unless in the context of “why ROKU” as an investment or something.

thanks,
Dreamer