What Roblox's Earnings Stumble Says About its Metaverse Aims

Roblox CEO David Baszucki probably deserves as much credit as Mark Zuckerberg (if not more) for making the metaverse a hot button term not just in gaming or AR/VR, but all of tech. So, should Roblox’s underwhelming quarterly earnings and the corresponding dip in stock price come as a sobering wakeup call after a few months of concentrated metaverse hype?

In a word, no. Roblox may not be tracing the exact rocketship trajectory analysts expected, but the growth numbers the company reported yesterday are still staggering when you step back and focus on where Roblox is today and the state of the world a year ago. Users continue to buy and spend Robux (Roblox’s digital currency) like mad. Roblox’s bookings, equal to the Robux purchases for the quarter, rose 35% year over year to $665.5 million, just about $30 million short of analyst expectations—a slowdown that can be explained in part by the easing of Covid restrictions.