Roblox valued at $38bn after first day’s trading – that’s more than EA

The long-awaited Roblox stock market debut went well, with the company closing at $69.50 per share, creating a market cap of $38.26bn. To put that in perspective that just edges out EA at 37.43bn (EA’s stock has been sliding since mid-february, though it’s still hugely up over the last year). 

Roblox chose to list its stock directly on the market, rather than a managed IPO. So no new shares were created and there’s no lockup period to trading those shares. That makes the share price of Roblox today more transparent and market-driven. Spotify chose the same approach for its listing back in 2018. 

The listing follows on from a private financing round in January, reports CNBC. There shares were sold for $45, showing a significant rise in value since then. 

Of course, with the pandemic rolling on, Roblox couldn’t be a better imaginable position right now. It remains among the top grossing apps on both Android and iOS. With revenues up by 82 per cent last year to $923.9m. 

That said, the company wasn’t actually profitable, with a net loss of $253m. And that despite having 32.6m daily users, locking up 30.6bn hours. And those losses look set to continue as the company continues to pay developers on its platforms hefty fees in order to increase and improve the content available for players.