Roku has made official what’s been rumored: It wants to go public.
The digital media player maker publicly filed its S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday — the first big step for a company seeking an initial public offering (IPO) of its shares.
The company plans to list shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker “ROKU.”
Roku sells inexpensive boxes that allow consumers to stream Netflix, YouTube and other streaming video services to their televisions. It also offers its software to other consumers electronics makers that want to use it as the interface for their smart TVs.
Although the company is losing money, its revenue is growing fast as cord-cutters and other consumers snap up its devices, the cheapest model of which sells for $30. In the first half of 2017, Roku posted revenue of $199.7 million, up 23% from the same period in 2016, according to the S-1 filing. In fiscal year 2016, it had a total of $398.6 million in revenue, up 25% from 2015.
Roku did not specify how many shares it planned to sell, or the price of the shares. The Wall Street Journal reported in July that Roku was seeking an IPO valuation of roughly $1 billion.
Althought Roku said in the filing that it seeks to raise as much as $100 million through the stock sale, that number is just a placeholder and is expected to change as the date of the IPO draws closer.
Roku intends to set up a dual-class stock structure, which will give more power to pre-IPO investors than new ones. That will make it easier…