Roku shares rose more than 22 percent Friday as the company continued to benefit from big gains in new users of its streaming technology products and services.
Late Thursday, Roku _ best known for its line of set-top boxes and devices that allow consumer to stream the services of Netflix, Hulu and other video options _ said it ended 2018 with 27.1 million active accounts, a gain of 7.8 million over what it reported it 2017. The amount of time Roku's users spent streaming programming on its devices last year rose 69 percent, to 7.3 billion hours.
Roku has been branching out from its streaming TV products, and revenue from advertising and licensing of its technology platform has been its biggest source of sales. This has included TV manufacturers building what are called Roku TVs with Roku's streaming technology built into the devices. Roku said that in 2018, 25 percent of all the smart TVs sold in the United States were Roku TVs.
