A man photographs a Roblox banner displayed, to celebrate the company's IPO, on the front facade of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 10, 2021. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/ File Photo
(Reuters) -Roblox beat quarterly bookings estimates as in-game spending jumped and summer break drove more users to its online gaming platform for titles including "Adopt Me!" and "Murder Mystery 2", sending its shares over 17% higher on Wednesday.
The results are the latest sign that spending was holding up well on videogames in an uncertain economy, after Electronic Arts raised its annual forecast last week.
Roblox said average daily active users surged 20% to 70.2 million in the September quarter, a period during which children typically engage more in gaming due to summer breaks at schools.
"Growth was particularly strong in western Europe and east Asia," finance chief Michael Guthrie said, noting the regions consist of older players that spend more on its platform.
"Those are wealthy countries, so they have a lot of purchasing power."
Net bookings, generated from in-game purchases of Roblox's virtual currency "Robux", came in at $839.5 million, beating estimates of $830.2 million, according to LSEG data.
The company, among the world's most popular gaming sites for children, has been trying to draw in older gamers and investing in advertising.
That helped drive a 20% jump in hours spent on its platform and a 14% rise in the number of average monthly unique paying users in the third quarter.
Roblox launched on Meta Platforms' Quest mixed reality headset in September and saw more than 2 million lifetime installs as of Oct. 31, the company said. It also recorded over 15 million downloads in October from Sony's PlayStation devices after launching in the previous month.
The company posted a net loss of $277.2 million for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a loss of $297.8 million a year earlier.
In February next year, Roblox will reveal its forecasts for full-year 2024 and the first quarter, it said.
(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Devika Syamnath)
