Roku opens at a record high after getting a $50 price target on Monday

Reuters / Brendan McDermid

• Roku, which makes streaming video devices, has more than tripled since going public in November.
• Shares opened at an all-time high of $49.41 after getting a super-bullish analyst price target.

Shares of Roku blew past previous highs to open at $49.41 apiece Tuesday morning, a day after Needham slapped a $50 price target on the streaming device maker.

The stock climbed a combined 23.5% on Monday and early Tuesday, easily surpassing its previous record of $48.80, set earlier in November.

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"Like Netflix, we view Roku as a pure-play on over-the-top (OTT) TV-viewing growth, but Roku has no content risk," analyst Laura Martin said in a note. "Recent announcements and press reports that Disney, Google, Amazon, etc. are launching new Over-The-Top services helps Roku but hurts Netflix."

Roku has now more than tripled since going public on September 27, making its CEO a billionaire. Most of the gains came earlier this month when the California-based company said it brought in $124.8 million in revenue, crushing the $110 million that Wall Street was expecting.

Roku was started by veterans of Netflix - which Martin says is Roku's closest competitor - and seeks to capitalize on the growing ranks of cable-TV "cord cutters" who are ditching their cable subscription plans and watching videos streamed on their laptops, phones and TVs.

Not like Netflix, however, Roku credits much of its growth to its rapidly expanding platform business, rather than the sale of its streaming-media hardware, of which the company skims a cut off all transactions.

"Unlike a hardware company that would normally try to maintain higher ASPs and hardware gross margin, we strategically pass along player cost savings to consumers by actively driving down prices to grow active accounts," Roku said in a letter to shareholders earlier this month.

Shares of Roku are up 109.15% since their September initial public offering.

Watch Roku's stock price move in real time here.

Markets Insider