Stocks sold off strongly Thursday morning on China trade worries and then recovered somewhat later in the session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI +1.79%) bounced back from being down 450 points and the broader S&P 500 (^GSPC +1.20%) also closed with a moderate loss.
Today's stock market
| Index | Percentage Change | Point Change |
|---|---|---|
| Dow | (0.54%) | (138.97) |
| S&P 500 | (0.30%) | (8.70) |
Data source: Yahoo! Finance.
As for individual stocks, Roku (ROKU +3.86%) bucked the market trend after reporting strong growth, while cannabis producer Cronos Group (CRON +0.56%) fell in the wake of its own quarterly results.
Image source: Getty Images.
Roku rides the streaming boom
Roku blew away its guidance for first-quarter results as the streaming TV specialist continued to grow market share, and the stock rocketed up 28.1%. Revenue soared 51% to $206.7 million, exceeding its forecast of $185 million to $190 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $10 million after the company set expectations for a loss of $8 million to $12 million.
Roku added 2 million new accounts in Q1 for a total of 29.1 million, up 40% from the period a year ago. Customers streamed 8.9 billion hours of programming, representing an increase of 74% year over year, and average revenue per user grew 27% to $19.06.
Roku estimates that its platform was on 1 in 3 smart TVs sold in the U.S. last quarter, up from 1 in 4 last year, making it the top-selling smart TV platform in the country. The company doesn't produce its own content, but is capitalizing on the rapid growth of streaming by partnering with content services to provide an advertising platform and to attract subscribers to those plans.
Investors were unimpressed with Cronos' results
Shares of Cronos fell 8.9% after the Canadian marijuana producer reported a modest increase in production and predicted losses will grow this year. Net revenue jumped 15% from the previous quarter to 6.47 million Canadian dollars ($4.79 million), which was more than analysts were expecting. The company reported a net profit of CA$428 million ($316 million), but that was due to an accounting adjustment as the liability on outstanding warrants was marked down. Excluding that paper gain, it lost CA$8.7 million.
Cronos sold 1,111 kilograms of marijuana in the quarter, up only 6.8% from the amount sold in Q4. Kilograms of dried cannabis sold increased 17% sequentially and sales of cannabis oil fell 23% by weight, but an increase in the selling price of oil contributed to a 9% gain in revenue from that product over last quarter.
Cronos still predicts that major capacity gains will come in the second half of the year, but investors may be having doubts about production that is falling behind that of peers, and a statement in the conference call that "adjusted EBITDA will likely decline over 2019" didn't help, either.
