Q1 2021 Roblox Corp Earnings Call
[music].
Good morning, My name is James and I'll be your conference operator today at.
At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the roadblocks Q1 2021 earnings Q&A session.
All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise and <unk>.
After the Speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.
If you'd like to ask the question. During this time simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad.
You'd like to withdraw your question. Please press the pound key.
Thank you.
I am now going to hand, it over to and again roblox head of Investor Relations. Ana you May begin your conference.
Thanks, Paul Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining our Q&A session to discuss <unk> first quarter 2021 results with me today, and where Blackstone CEO, David the duty and CFO Michael Gaffney.
Before we start I want to remind everybody that yesterday after market close we published the shareholder letter the earning.
In terms of on our Investor Relations website at IR Dot Roblox Dot com.
Since the letter provides a lot of details we will make some brief opening remarks and reserve the rest of the time for your questions.
And for our webcast participants. Please note the question icon at the bottom of your screen, where you can type in your questions and we'll do our best to take as many questions as we can today.
On today's call, we may be making forward looking statements, including statements about our future growth rates and business and investment strategy.
Any statements that refers to expectations projections or other characterizations of future events, including financial projections future market market conditions or the impact of COVID-19 on our business and on an economy of the hole is of forward looking statement based on assumptions today.
Actual results may differ materially from those expressed and these forward looking statements and we make no obligation to update our disclosures.
For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward looking statements. Please refer to the press release, we issued yesterday as well and risks described in our registration statement on form S. One, particularly the section titled Risk factors. This information can also be found on the other filings with the SEC.
When available.
We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. These measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP metrics for our reported results can be found in our press release issued yesterday as well as and our supplemental.
And materials copies of which can be found on our IR website.
And finally this call is being webcast and will be archived on our web site. Shortly after with that I'm going to turn the call over to Dave.
Thanks, Anna and thanks for everyone for joining us today.
Before we start taking questions are one of them again by saying that our hearts go out to the people around the world who are still suffering as a result of COVID-19.
It appears we are making progress and it is also clear that this virus is still of global challenge.
Like everyone. We want to put these risks behind us as soon as possible just this month.
Roadblocks, we're going to begin to open our offices on a limited basis and we hope that by mid of September our offices can be fully open.
This is our first earnings call since our direct listing on March 10th yesterday afternoon, we posted our earning results and the leverage all shareholders as well as supplemental financial and metrics data on our Investor Relations website.
We hope this information was helpful insight into our performance in Q1.
And an exciting period and we're looking forward to answering your questions with that we'll turn it back over to the operator.
At this time I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question Press Star then the number one on your telephone keypad will pause for a moment to compile the Q&A roster.
And our first question comes from the line of Nexia Quandary of <unk> from Jpmorgan go ahead. Please your line is open.
Thank you very much I was wondering if you could give us your update or thoughts on sort of longer term growth specifically and the press release, you did highlight great accomplishments in terms of international expansion and eating up which I know has been a more near term and and consistent growth driver for you, but when you look longer term like what.
Extension, such as music advertising and any kind of other sort of partnerships one.
The other sort of extension do you see as more achievable sort of in the intermediate term. Thank you.
Yes. Thanks for your question, let me just start by saying.
And the near term and and the longer term, we still see incredible opportunity in the core growth drivers, which is to continue to expand the business geographically.
And two.
And grow the user base in terms of the age demographic. So we feel like we're nowhere close to being done on those two growth factors and that is still our short term goals for us and substantial long term goals for us to continue to expand.
We look at geographic expansion and in particular and Asia, we have a long way to go.
All across Europe, and we're still very optimistic about the potential for increased growth in North America, and and some of our core markets like the United Kingdom, and and Scandinavia. So we still see if we were to kind of sticking to our knitting on user growth of ageing of.
And the geographic those are still really big growth drivers for us over the next few years.
In terms of the platform extensions, we still are and we're obviously very excited about where the top line can go and we haven't given any specific numbers around brand partnerships.
Or music, but you've obviously seen some progress we've talked about it and the shareholder letter and we certainly see longer term potential for for those.
The expansion to our platform as well.
Yes.
And then the visit lifting off Mike. This is Dave and Q1 are over and <unk> via the use grew by 111% and our hours are up 128%.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Brian Nowak with Morgan Stanley Go ahead. Please your line is open.
Thanks for taking my question I have two the first one on China. Just curious I know, it's very early but any sort of early learnings from China, and just sort of as we sort of think about this opportunity are there any material differences that you see and the <unk>.
Kinda of potential user base that could cause the slope of the penetration or payer growth to be different in other regions.
And then secondly on aging up day.
That was the good disclosure on the <unk> you just mentioned and users and time spent could you just give us. Some examples of some of the content that's really driving the aging of the the overall user base to sort of really realize that opportunity. Thanks.
Yes, Hi, a couple of things to share.
And in China, We do have the license we are in line and we're seeing very early signs of what we hope to of the happened which is in some developers and shine a break the end of the toxicity and the world market and we have many many world outside of China.
You are now live in China the.
The thing to note.
And we've seen consistent growth and South Korea, and Hong Kong.
And Brazil, and really all around the world.
We can't make any forward looking projections on a sign of a lot of lovely patterns out there as far as this evening, we continue to be impressed by the quality of the process and the creation of our developers are making and more and more of the content is helping drive this exciting.
<unk> rich.
We're close to passing of not passing Mike and shine and having more of our users being 13 and over the <unk>.
<unk>.
And I'll highlight.
The fun and exciting and iconic game.
Which one of our boss of the award which is extremely appealing to players on our platform of of all ages.
Great. Thanks, Dave.
Okay.
Our next question comes from the line of Mike <unk> with Goldman Sachs. Go ahead. Please your line is open.
Hi, Good morning. Thank you very much for the question I just have two first can you talk a little bit more about the investments and personnel and R&D made in the quarter, specifically, which areas of the product Road map are you investing for now and how should we think about.
Roblox as investments in R&D for the rest of this year and over the mid term.
And then second I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about.
The April bookings that you guys disclosed.
Is that a good way to think about the rest of the second quarter and how are you thinking about engagement of bookings cadence through the rest of the year. Thank you.
And Mike and I will of both answer this I'll talk of the high level above where we are investing in R&D that I'll kick it over the life for the numbers and then the.
And for April.
And exciting thing about our platform is the breadth of technology that supports what we're doing and we go all the way from a mobile client two or three of the immersive cloud of engine to the developer tool kit to back and infra and it's an extremely broad and surface.
It's area and and part of our robust philosophy and the way we think of about the company as we need to be innovating and many many areas. It's what has brought us to where we are today and what we're doing right now behind the scenes is doing that again for five years out so some of the things we've highlighted and.
And in prior calls publicly.
Safety and stability, not just being defensive but really leading the industry and creating a civil society and our platform and all of the tech behind the ml.
And the AI, including our human often and team of over 2000 moderators getting into the future of communication, which includes the space.
<unk>, not just test, but voice and no ship base, there, but lots of great were to come there are avatar system, which we've had some early announcements on some of the tech. It is really an early signal of our firm.
The identity system, Nevertheless, everyone, the who they want to be whether it's the fashion model of soldier traditional robots character cartoon character.
We have the wonderful and mix of our clients and are and for our working together to really provide these immersive experiences and the lot of work going on there so covering and the place where we're investing is really manifolds and we do invest 80% of our.
And not really invest we have stayed true to the notion that about 80% of our people are working on product and engineering, we see this going into the foreseeable future.
And I've touched on about four times the baby.
Areas and I'm not going to go into all of them right now I'll kick it over to Mike, though to go more into the numbers.
Sure Hey, Mike.
Couple of things when we did the.
And the forecasting work inside the company for the direct listing.
Basically the underlying assumptions, where we looked at all of our core metrics. The obviously, we're looking at it at a time when we were sort of right and the middle of of COVID-19, and we had some pretty big lift and our business and we made some assumptions around.
COVID-19 basically.
The global situation being out of the system by the end of the second quarter. So and in fact, we pick the end date to the pandemic. If you went out and we did our forecasting now.
That hasnt happened and.
And so there is obviously still and in the second quarter. There is a combination of just core metrics and core growth and improvement of the business and there is still obviously.
And the influences and the.
Of cover there is still and the numbers as well.
April bookings overall were very strong definitely.
And what we expected and.
Somewhere around I don't know of $45 to 47% of the consensus numbers for the quarter. So so April numbers were really strong.
When we look at what that means and the medium and longer term just day the following when the.
When the pandemic started we immediately saw engagement go up because of some.
Substantial user base at the time, the immediately had more time and spent more time and the platform and and we grew users very quickly and those uses of the ability to engage very quickly as well because of that we started with the really strong Q version of Payors and really strong monetization and Thats, obviously reflected and the step up.
And bookings that we've seen over the last.
Several quarters.
And if you look at April what you will see the bookings looks to be the <unk>.
Highest growth of all of the numbers, partly that's because bookings took a while to get going vis vis the users and engagement last year and.
And partly I think it's because of we just have when you get down to that those of the clearly the most engaged users of the Windsor and end up becoming payers and so we're just seeing really high conversion and monetization characteristics as we head into the rest of the year.
Great. Thank you very much David Mike much appreciate it.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of drew Crum with Stifel. Go ahead. Please your line is open.
Okay. Thanks, good morning, guys.
And given your experience around improving payer conversion and outside of the U S and Canada. During <unk> can you discuss in the early observations around what has worked thus far and.
And as economies reopen and how youre thinking about monetization overseas progressing as we move through 'twenty, one and then separately the <unk>.
<unk> exchange fees have averaged about 18% of booking of the last several quarters and your comments and the shareholder letter around returning nearly $500 million to the developer community of this year just based on <unk> of the math would suggest about $2 $7 billion of.
Bookings this year does that make sense or how would you pushed back on that assumption. Thanks.
Guys.
Moving onto some of the same orders of.
The COVID-19 about the stickiness of our economy, and then I'll take it back and like on the debit is.
We developed our ex.
The economy over five years ago, and when we did of the philosophy was to create a system that connects our people on our platform with our developers and allows the flexibility and our developers to create amazing content, and then monetize that and a balanced and premium.
And with our player base and the people on our platform.
This system has turned out and the enormously powerful and as.
And kind of countries come online.
Whether that's the U S and Canada, or whether the Philippines, and Brazil, and Russia and all of these companies that over time, we've seen the combination of amazing content and the players becoming more embedded in our platform and driving higher and higher bookings per day are you. So there are no day.
And we had been the journey.
To provide a platform and the tools, where developers are making and increasingly high quality content and that's been driving the engine. We have made some small adjustments over time and we continue to move as much money as we think is financially prudent and back to the developer community and example of it.
And March where we increase the engagement based payout of rate by approximately 75% and which is driving the.
The mining and we're transferring to developers of based on timing of use within our platform.
So no future predictions on where that ex is going but this general philosophy of we want to run on the gaming business and moving less money to our developers of as possible I think you'll see that going forward and I'll turn over to Mike for the rest of the yeah and just on one of the.
One of the outputs of the engage the base payout model has been to get some economics key developers that are maybe not in the top hundred accumulator and hearings and framework.
Seen out in the.
And I don't want to call. It the long tail that you are seeing development and I'll tell you that our early in monetizing on the platform. This is and a real boost to their economic and in some cases.
Virtually all of our all of the economics come from engage and base payout and that's great because it keeps them engaged and the platform and as they get better and better of building amazing content that is appealing to a broader user base they get some feedback and economic feedback from the market.
Really wonderful until we have high expectations of the productivity of endgame based accounts over the next.
Few years related here the question on development expenses.
I think what we're really looking at is the.
The Q1 number was.
Almost $120 million at the multiply $120 million times, four you're at $480 million.
And when you're when you're inside the company, we often have the big goals and and.
And you remember, we did and outside of about two years ago, where we really challenge ourselves to get the.
$400 million of engagement based sales actually.
Several years from now and now we're in the situation now where if things break the right way, we could be at half of $1 billion. This year. So.
I would say rather than giving ourselves the goal of $480 million, we like the goal of the half of $1 billion.
Yes. This is ramping on that where the mic that goal of the offside was for total of the money to developers and we do believe long term engagement based payouts and we'll hit that $400 million their piece of the total developed the developer.
Yes.
Yes.
Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Gee with Bank of America Go ahead. Please your line is open.
Yes, Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. So first one just in terms of identity. So advanced skinning layered flows and animations and I think you've heard several of the things you guys are pretty excited about around the direct listing. So can you talk a little bit about what new technologies such as <unk>.
And I mentioned it looked at enabled some of the platform sort of the users and so the developers and maybe how that ultimately flows through the model financially.
And then the second question is very encouraging to see the older and the international users continued to grow nicely pretty remarkable and the marketing is only around $50 million.
Last year and 2020, so can you maybe talk about the level of investment and how that May change and 21 going forward as you extend your brand awareness.
And to those areas that would require a digital and it does require a different dedicated sales team or is it more traditional channels. Thank you.
And how about <unk>.
The termite you'd do that pardon the.
The things we've shipped right now are very early tech component that ultimately form the net.
The foundation for our vision around the identity and the Avatar, our vision and we set of publicly before is we really believe everyone on our platform.
Will ultimately be who they want to be and who you want to be avatar is very important is wherever we can imagine and so our vision is everything from cartoon characters. The classic roblox blocky avatars to ultimately triple a average.
Sorry is that we feel around the wide range of immersive three of the experiences.
And we're building internally as technologies that allow the combinatorial exelon and income.
The system, where any piece of clothing works on any avatar and also where ultimately motion integrator of the system as well, including the captured motion as well as you can see the fee with our acquisition of Bloom AI of.
<unk> for ultimately, including your own motion to drive the face of the <unk> Avatar.
Phil early and the compliments, our vision that ultimately our whole outlets out of the system, including clothing bodies space here and animation is 100% UGC supported by our creator community you're growing the CEO over the next year more and more developments along the.
And I personally believe it's going to really expand the vision of what robots.
Hey, Ryan.
Net debt.
On the on the economic side back to when we wrote the.
Perspective, and the good Investor day, we talked a lot of about the characteristics of the net of version when Youre getting out of the importance of identity and today gave you some of the technical.
Investments and some really good example of how and that.
And from the platform.
And the power of the community come together.
And what we see and the spending on identity right now and whats happening with avatar. So.
The three five years ago, our split between.
Robot spend inexperienced versus.
And on investments in catalog and our investments and the identity for the 80 20.
With the experience of getting 80%, 20% and the catalog since and we made the catalogs and user generated and all.
All of these investments and the platform the technical and product investments and the platform and we've seen it slowly moved from 80 <unk>.
And that's the only the 70 525 and in the past quarter and actually about 70 30, So we see.
Users are choosing to spend more of their robots on their identity.
And there is still spending there.
We're still growing the spend and experience, but it's clearly important to them on the.
Worldwide platform and to invest in their identity and as we make more investments and technology and product. What is possible is just going to increase so I think we're going to see continued strong investment in the and.
Identity on the platform.
As it relates to the marketing spend.
The thing we've always proudly focused on building great products, and believing that there's excellent product market fit and if you go back to the economic underlying economic model. We generally talk about four areas of investment and therefore, the four day cost bucket.
There is the pain and processing, which we've talked about there is the.
Personnel, which is 80% of engineering and product people Theres, the Miami share with the developers and the community and then there is trust and safety and infrastructure and then everything else. We're just really really careful about spending and that model has been really efficient for us over the years, instead of and really great unit economics and.
And I.
I guess then in the situation, where we haven't had to spend a lot of money to drive user growth that organic signal to US is one that tells us that the product is doing well and so I don't think you should expect to see us change that over the next few years.
Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Thornton with true of Securities Go ahead. Please your line is open.
Hey, Good morning, David Good morning, Mike a couple of quick ones for me I guess first is there any way to talk about or quantify or give us any color on kind of what the pipeline looks like for the branded experiences for music experiences.
And maybe now versus where we were I don't know six years of six or 12 months ago and any color there.
And then just secondly around subscription.
And I get the question is are we still kind of moving up into the right in terms of mix and any way to gauge maybe what inning are we in terms of getting subscription until we get the kind of full penetrated kind of kind of run rate any color there would be helpful. As well thanks guys.
The first on the pipeline around immersive experiences, we can announce anything but historically.
If one looks at what we've done starting with little Nasdaq's going the Ava Max going through one world together going through Royal blood of the block fees.
There has been enormous progress there and we're very optimistic that and the future being together and and immersive three D concert with friends is very different than watching on a screen and as we come back together.
Following the pandemic I think we've all where and how amazing the types of experiences can be so we're very optimistic about this and we're not going to announce anything but more and more of our technology. Both the inverse of Miss the ability for audio to these specialized ability to talk when the in concert is going to support.
And more and more amazing experiences.
Talk a little about subscriptions and I'll kick it over to Mike on the number.
And also we have the vision that ultimately.
And once again and those ship date.
And experiences in the metals are going to be supported by engagement and theyre going to be supported by transactions and theyre going to be supported by advertising and when we look at some of the types of experiences that we can imagine on the platform. There will be some of experiences that are more and more subscription and support.
And just like many of our experiences are premium right. Now. So there is a range of functionality that we will be rolling out over the next few years to support those types of experiences and and.
It's very very early and where we see prescription volume.
That said, our current people, who have roblox premiums retained amazingly well.
The wonderful source of virtual currency for robust and even the subscriptions as we have them right now are wonderful.
The way for people the by robust and to retain.
Hey, Matt a couple of.
On the.
And of your questions was on the pipeline of.
Of brand and music and the other thing, they're not going to be able to share the specifics around pipelines and we made some comments and the shareholder letter.
And both brands and music and.
I would expect that in most quarters over the next several we will be making some references to things that we're doing.
And if if you.
The App trained and auto and his team my guess is the pipeline of variety of and more and more brands are interested in the platform of our size of the scale is the way to reach of user base.
That's large and growing and very engaged so there's no doubt the brands are quite interesting. We gave two examples pre examples rather and the shareholder letter I think one of the things that I like the most about it is that the brands are working with our community and to build their experiences and that's just a really great way and other way for our developers too.
The Bill cool stuff and see some economics and so that's great.
And your question about subscription and the only thing I would add to day to comment on the subscription is that if youre looking at.
And the sources of of.
Robust purchases the rate of growth and subscription is faster than the rate of growth of the Ala carte purchases, but both are still.
Very important cash.
And again as a reminder, if you'd like to ask the question over the telephone. Please press Star then one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Brandon Ross with the light shed partners go ahead. Please your line is open.
Alright, thanks for taking the questions maybe just a follow up on the brand's question Hugh.
Just had prior and can you talk about two things one of the role that.
Robotically.
Typically playing and shepherding these brands and media companies onto the platform.
And.
And as brands come on is that of discrete revenue opportunity for you and how do you think about sizing the overall advertising opportunities on the platform.
And then I have a follow up.
Yes.
Sure.
And you talked about how are we talking to the brands and we've got a dedicated team.
Under under Craig's organization that is responsible for brand partnerships and neither of those quite honestly inbound but also proactive.
Calling and coverage of businesses and retail media and entertainment et cetera.
And they do a great job and again as a as the platform that will be attractive to advertisers.
We have certain characteristics that are very interesting ultimately the way, we do advertising will be largely different than I think anybody else, we expect it to be different and Jessica.
The CPM and kind of a business. So there is a dedicated team they are active and the market talking the brands about our platform and what it means our user community our level of engagement. This is the user base of its hard to reach.
And especially in the digital world and.
When you consolidate and is not an EPS is not the right way to reach this audience as well or and certainly not a growing and greater ease of decided and so ultimately we are really optimistic but it's still really early and so when you ask about sizing the market and if theres lot of.
There are a lot of the companies that more pure advertising model of it probably used to build to build the model, but for now I guess.
It wouldn't be putting a lot of revenue and the business and our.
And our business plan and we're off.
Domestic about where to go but right now we are.
Not as though.
Okay.
Of certain deliverables of that team for 2021.
And I'll just.
Rick and Mike of the looking more forward without giving anything specific from a vision of point of view and exciting thing about brands and connecting with people and immersive platforms like roadblock is it the non inter model, it's a native immersive experience.
We're right now the people on our platform of wearing jujube products, where the right now.
And without stopping or without the interrupted our players are seeing branding from for example, the Scooby Doo movie. So there is a whole different way of the advertising reaching consumers.
The interrupting and with the experience of gut feel natural ultimately my hope is the size of the opportunity is related to the total hours of immersion, we provide and.
And in April that was over $3 2 billion hours.
That is one way to think about what this might be.
Okay, and then just a follow up on FX.
You talked about the 75% increase and engagement based payout and presumably that to help.
The real UGC creators that are the core of roadblock.
But theres also been of professionalization of.
The studio.
Being built on your platform, we see and backed by.
A lot of venture money, that's come in over the past year and.
And does that put any pressure on you to also change the Roebuck exchange rates, especially as there's actually pressure on those studios the show of dollar return and pay employees and dollars and not Roebuck.
And then also on Capex.
And what extent.
The competition play.
And.
And in your payout the creators and the platform.
Yes.
Great question the overall.
Last four to five years every year as we've tracked what developed the number one developer time developers of hundreds of developers thousands of Mei.
And we've seen all of the category continued to grow and the total.
The money now and growing to each of the categories continued to grow.
I believe we'll keep growing so of the developers coming to our platform I'm looking towards 10 items reported or can we support of studio and our largest studios now orange and in the digital hobbyist day on the teams of 10, 2030, 40, and professional does and Thats part of why we're seeing all of this.
Money flow into the platform.
All of the developers and creators on roblox or UGC creators, whether the developer and number one or the developer number of 1000 and the pipeline and so there is a complementary system, where even the weighed down the ad.
And all of her number 10000 and then.
And Mike mentioned earlier, there has been organic effect, where when that shifts.
The surprisingly because that ex.
Periods and that is really experimental we believe there is an and.
Interacting with the developer awareness and motivational to create content on our platform and it contributes to the funnel of these numbers of the rising the ranks of 1251 and the ultimate being number one and so even our top developers participated and engagement based payout and the other thing to note we never.
And would announce future increase and our Dev.
That said historically, we have done it several times over the years as our P&L and balance sheet makes it the prudent so.
Our top line philosophy is to move as much money into the hands of.
The developers as possible.
Hey, Brian income.
Remember also you have to look at the value proposition for developers on our platform. It is a little bit different than in other places.
Use of our tools our servers.
The content moderation and safety customer support billing and collection and obviously a large audience. That's really what you get when you come on to the robust platform to your to your comment and and correct insight that we do pay.
Developers and dollars in 2018, the developer community made $72 million.
In 2021, and he said we are of a goal we hope and we can get the half of $1 billion.
So the growth of 72 and could potentially of 500 million is a lot of incremental dollars and so we're trying to build the biggest pool of capital of that can support.
The biggest audience of.
Of engaged and excited developers and as we possibly can and in terms of just the multiples of the dollar and available on the growth rate of those I think that roblox effectively.
Great. Thanks very much.
Thanks Sam.
Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Thornton with true of Securities Go ahead. Please your line is open.
Yes, Thanks, guys a couple of quick ones for me.
I think early you talked about the mix shift towards virtual items for identity and the Avatar correct me, if I'm wrong, but I think the payout economics, there a little bit lower so that seems like that would be accretive to the margin all of those contacts to make sure that we have that right.
And then just secondly, I'm just wondering if theres any movement of anything you can say about job youre getting roblox, hardrock and Playstation and switch of somebody's other of other platform just any movement on those on those fronts. Thanks again guys.
Yes, I'll take the margin question, and then I'll kind of of the day.
You are correct and that the ratios of different on the other hand, given the size and scale of the business and the investments that we're making I would just caution.
Everyone against.
Looking at the margin leverage immediately happening and the next few quarters. We obviously the again the unit economics of the business are quite positive and where we.
We're happy with the cash flow and that the business is generating on the.
The other hand, we see our role right now as investors and this business not as Optimizes and the margin and I don't mean that and the majority of the things I just mean.
Such a big opportunity we are so far from the user base and the scale that we want this business to be abbvie of so many.
And we want to invest in product and technology that will enable more and more developers to build incredible content and bring that to the broader set of users that we still and much more focused on on those investments and hiring more people.
It's great to be at.
Over 1000 employees.
And it's amazing how we've grown that and employee base over the last few years, but the the ambitions of the business and you're talking about billions of users.
It will take us the.
And thousands of employees and we had a long way to go in terms of investing in and growing the.
The head count and the business and as we've been talking about the economics of the developer community. If we keep our it and keep our eye and focus on that I think generally that will just pay incredible dividends, because we will ultimately drive greater growth and the top line of the business.
And in roofing on devices.
There's a wonderful historical context to the so it goes all the way by the result of iPhone.
The prior to that to the National HTML content was not consumable on mobile devices and all of the seven with the pension zoom the.
And what you can assume that and your desktop and we sustainably index of one.
And it was pivotal we have the same vision for the immersive three of the multi player and cloud stuff of the med <unk> and.
We believe this should be accessible on all of the devices those from viewing as well of interaction and we really innovated around this on phone and tablet computer and the Xbox consoles showing that developers can create content that when pushed to our cloud runs on all of these devices as well as the auto.
And some multiple languages, so absolutely long term switch Playstation quest all of these platform and it makes perfect sense for roblox.
<unk> seen right now and.
Is an incredible focus on the phone by us, which we believes and incredibly difficult form factor and the most difficult form factor for that of immersion.
But these are all the <unk> platform and at the same time, we won't share of any ship dates for them.
Our next question comes from the line of David Gibson with Astral Advisory and go ahead. Please your line is open.
Thank you just further on the April trend comments each of the growth, which went from 37% can you give us a sense of how that is different amongst the major regions like the U S, Canada, Europe, APAC and rest of world.
And then secondly, thinking as you emerge from COVID-19. He has and you see different trends out of countries that don't have much kind of like.
Taiwan, Australia, and others that is different what gives you the insight into how you're seeing the U S and Europe will play out for the future. Thank you.
And Dan and thanks for the question.
If you if you go to the supplemental materials on the website, we breakdown the users by region and by age and so those regional numbers and Q1 and this trend that you've seen over the last few quarters premium ex translate into the April numbers I don't know if the absolutely exact but my strong expectation is when you look at it will be and will be.
Pretty similar meaning.
The highest growth regions of the Asia Pacific and Europe, and slightly trailing in terms of growth and year over year growth and April will be the U S and Canada.
Okay around the world.
It's hard to get a great signal.
To find a country that is representative of the rest of the world, where you saw a big COVID-19 Spike.
In 2020 and then.
Vaccinated.
Part of the entity or whatever it is and all of the sudden now you don't have COVID-19. So it's really difficult to get and absolutely clean signal of what we do see around the world.
Is.
The continued high rates of conversion and that's probably the one thing that seems characteristic of countries, even if COVID-19 is and as.
Big of an issue as it was prior.
I wouldn't say we have.
<unk> signal.
Right now the U S is.
60, plus percent of the bookings and so.
We're just still elevated and the United States and so we don't.
We don't get that much signal from other parts of the world.
Hmm and actually look to Taiwan, specifically, so maybe we'll go off and do that homework.
And see what that is helpful.
Okay, and then just generally how should we think about the seasonality of May and June versus April.
And that's.
And like a pre COVID-19 world.
We see the newly grow anyway, or do they slow down and how we should we think about those numbers.
And normal seasonality David is that April has Easter and so it's a little bit bigger than May and then.
In June you of seasonality inside of the May because basically schools out and so we see the normal seasonality and we see of big a big jump and June versus May and began a decline and may versus April.
We didn't have that seasonality last year right and we're just growing straight through it. So we will be very interesting to us to see if we see some of that seasonality I wouldnt be surprised if we do.
Last year, there was no way is the seasonality of the country. This year I would suspect and Thats, what youll see slight sequential decline in May and then June probably picking up that's the normal seasonality.
Okay, that's great thanks very much.
Yes, no problem.
And now I'd like to turn it over to Anna yen for some the webcast questions.
Alright, Alright first line is from lines in line and capital how do you think about roadblocks and potential and as the casing, having compare and creating educational programs for high school.
And as an enormous opportunity.
Hey, Great question, Ryan and.
And.
Even when we started the company roadblock, we have the vision that the best way to help learning was to build a very high quality and consumer platform that was free for everyone with the nurse and that there'd be enormous educational opportunity the as usual offers.
Community on a platform is it really of stack and it starts with maybe the more traditional expected learning to create learning to code and learning to be of designer learning to be and artist learning to be of producer we already see this manifest and both within schools within summer camps, and more and more rehab and <unk>.
And the learning computer science will be happening on top of emerge of popcorn and by global office, and so fun and and so organic and we have over 8 million and creators right now on the platform who are really the learning all of the stuff because it's fun to create the profit and share with friends.
But going beyond that as we go to the next level, whereas we start to think about what went on in COVID-19 and the ability of times.
And together on the platform the certainty educational opportunities.
Start with parallel of books and video and we used the classic example, when we're studying the ancient Rome in the future we'll read about it we'll watch video about it but classrooms will do the ancient room together and immersed in it and we think these will all of the viable ways about learning and emphasizing and understood.
And the way out and the future we're very optimistic about the people, who don't have access to certain schooling or education, either geographically or for other reasons.
Really using the matters to participate spatially and learning activities and so there is this such as Brian in the future around supporting education on and all of these levels. We are starting to support external vendors as well as our own internal curriculum and.
And we think there is a bright future there.
Right.
The net.
And Justin can you discuss any plans you have regarding video content integration and some line of experiences and you see.
The video at the potential extension to attract new users and to further monetize the platform.
Yes.
Great question and for those of Us that participated and the one world together.
Experience on Roadblock, you got a little sense of how we.
Use of video, we are creating and supporting immersive <unk> experience.
With our friends and we can go places together, we can go to a concert we can play together. We can work together, we can go to school together and just as in the real World and when we go to concerts and as there are video screens and they are of performers live we think thats going to be very common and in the meta versus.
Well so the primary interest right now of all of our work around video is mimicking the way the real world and making that video available within those experiences.
And one can imagine a lot of other interesting video experiences on our platform as well.
And with streaming things of that typically happens right now on partners like Youtube Twitch and so there isn't a huge video ecosystem around roblox regard Influencers is just not on our platform right now and we don't have any future forward looking statements around the product in that area.
And I think that cycle and more.
Well the off the shown impressive growth and international my fault and what is driving that.
And is the technology content of applying.
Can you comment on.
Great question, Yes, yes, yes, yes.
And what has driven our growth historically has been a dual loop and.
It's unique to this class of.
Platform is a loser around great content of high.
The quality of the content the figure of the economy the bigger of the economy. The larger teams are able to make content and mixed with up and coming the UGC creators.
And the better the content the more and people come to the platform but of that content. Then serves as the foundation for the second and viral loop, where the more of my friends, who are on the platform the more exciting answer and need to come to the platform and hang out play work learn experienced the entertainment within that content.
So its the us to all of those all of these worked together and the two viral loops to drive our growth.
Great.
Yep.
Cool.
The team. Thank you all really appreciate it and thank you for all of the great questions.
I just wanted to thank everyone out there, including members of the Roadblock community for.
And for joining us today.
And it's really exciting building. This net interest we're really excited.
Our hearts really reach out for all of the countries that are working through COVID-19 and we hope we're done with this as soon as possible. So thank you for joining us on our first earnings call per day.
This concludes today's conference call you may now disconnect.
Okay.
[music] inventories.
And.
Okay.
And.
And then.