WHEN: Today, Wednesday, March 10
WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
Following are excerpts from a CNBC interview with Roblox Founder & CEO David Baszucki on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Wednesday, March 10. Following is a link to video on CNBC.com:
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
BASZUCKI ON USER GROWTH AND MONETIZATION
DAVID BASZUCKI: So first off, our users have been growing virally as I said, and what’s really exciting is a lot of the stuff we’ve seen in COVID, Roblox being used to bring people together, I’m chatting with Bobby our camera person and hi to your daughter Bobby, who’s used Roblox to stay connected during the middle of this. A lot of that’s going to continue going forward so we’re very optimistic about the growth and on the monetization, what’s really exciting about Roblox is it’s free for most people but people who want to and who are interested can use our virtual economy. That virtual economy has also been scaling with our user and engagement growth and we’re very optimistic about it.
BASZUCKI ON PATH TO PROFITABILITY
BASZUCKI: Really interesting and in our prospectus, we share two different things. We share a bookings and cash flow description. We also share GAAP accounting, and this is a great educational moment for families around this. On the booking side, we generate a lot of bookings, almost 2 billion in 2020, and we generate a lot of cash. On the GAAP accounting side, we show revenues which because a lot of the items purchased on Roblox in our economy are durable, we defer that revenue over 23 months so there’s, we’re positive cash flow, we’re making cash and at the same time we show revenues.
BASZUCKI ON ROBLOX BEING A NEW CATEGORY
BASZUCKI: We’re in a whole new category. We sometimes call it the human co-experience category. Some people refer this as the future meta-verse category. It’s a unique category because it allows people to come together, even when there not together in real life and do things together. There’s an amazing amount of engagement in the category, there’s elements of social connectivity, immersive 3D, but we believe it’s the forging of a new category.
BASZUCKI ON WHY ROBLOX IS UNIQUE
BASZUCKI: So, there’s so many unique things about the Roblox platform, it’s driven by a creator community. All of the stuff on Roblox, the avatar items, the clothing, and all of the experiences that people are creating created by that creator community. It’s a really unique aspect along with our digital economy, virtual economy, the level to which we lean into safety and civility, we believe is unique to Roblox, it’s the foundation of really building a civil society on our platform.
