Roblox CEO David Baszucki says bookings are turning around

Roblox CEO David Baszucki told CNBC on Wednesday that the company is seeing its bookings recover in April after the company said earlier this week that they declined 3% in the March quarter.

Bookings are how the company describes sales of its virtual currency, Robux, which players use to buy digital items such as avatars and other premium features.

Roblox is a virtual world game particularly popular with children that’s played on phones, PCs and game consoles. Players can inhabit virtual worlds, play games and even sell their creations to other players.

Baszucki told Jim Cramer in a “Mad Money” interview that bookings fell partially because the company saw boosted user engagement last year during the Covid pandemic, which has subsided.

“March was a very difficult compare. We were all locked down a year ago,” Baszucki said. “We’re happy that in April, we’ve seen that start to turn around. We think longer term, we’ll see booking start to catch up with user growth.”

After the closing bell Tuesday, Roblox reported disappointing first-quarter results, which prompted investors to sell the stock. It plunged 10% in after-hours trading Tuesday. However, it closed Wednesday up nearly 3.4% in a major turnaround. While it’s unclear what drove the surge, the company appeared bullish about the current quarter’s growth rates.

Roblox recorded a per-share loss of 27 cents in the first quarter, which was wider than expectations. Revenue and active daily users also came in light. The company said it was optimistic about growth rates in the current quarter and that the summer could represent a growth opportunity.

Roblox is also starting to more seriously develop alternative sources of sales and new users for the virtual world, Baszucki said. As economies emerge from the pandemic, Roblox will push for new search features and easier partnerships with brands and to expand the amount of user-generated content (UGC) sold on the platform.

“I think this quarter is the first time we’ve come out and said look, we’re going to nudge a bit towards the efficient frontier on our economy, both around how we do search and discovery, the amazing possibilities for how brands can bring traffic, and also our UGC catalog, which has an enormous amount of economic activity,” he said.

One possibility in the future is that Roblox could be used to connect co-workers in an enterprise setting, the Roblox CEO told Cramer. “Someday we’ll use Roblox in our own office to stay connected as some of our people work remotely,” he envisioned.