The meta-universe is very hot, but the performance of the "meta-universe concept stock" is mediocre.

Jiyuan Universe concept Unit$Meta Platforms (FB.US) $After Thunder, Roblox, a gaming social platform popular with young people, also disappointed the market when it released its fourth-quarter results. Roblox shares tumbled more than 15% after the fourth-quarter results were announced.

From the performance of stock prices in the past year, we can see that we have benefited from the upsurge of meta-cosmic speculation caused by Facebook Inc's renaming.$Roblox (RBLX.US) $The stock hit an all-time high of $141.60 on Nov. 22, but has since fluctuated lower, hitting a new low of $53.63 last month.

In 2022, Roblox has fallen 25% year-to-date, and its share price has fallen by about half from its all-time high.

Investors were disappointed that the fourth quarter results fell short of expectations.

Judging from the financial results, the number of Roblox daily active users and scheduled revenue are lower than expected. In the fourth quarter, revenue was $568 million, up 83% from a year earlier, and the company's net loss for the quarter was $143 million, up from $58.7 million in the same period last year. The loss per share was $0.25, lower than Wal's expected loss of 12 cents per share, but larger than the loss per share of $0.30 in the same period last year. However, Roblox's scheduled revenue (Bookings) recorded $770 million, below analysts' forecasts of $772 million.

According to user data, the number of daily active users of Roblox in the fourth quarter was 49.5 million, up 33% from a year earlier and slightly lower than the 50.5 million expected by analysts. The duration of user participation was 10.8 billion hours, up 28% from a year earlier.

According to full-year data, Roblox's full-year revenue was $1.9 billion, up 108 per cent from 2020, while scheduled revenue was $2.7 billion, up 45.5 per cent from a year earlier, and the number of daily active users was $4550, up 40 per cent from last year.

Epidemic restrictions are gradually relaxed, and companies are worried about a slowdown in future growth.

As a gaming social platform, Roblox has been one of the beneficiaries of the blockade and home isolation brought about by outbreaks over the past two years.

In terms of the number of daily active users, Roblox has grown rapidly since the outbreak, with its daily active users (DAU) rising rapidly from 17.6 million in 2019 to 49.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. According to the key indicator forecast just released by the company in January, Roblox's daily active users are likely to grow to 54.7 million, an increase of 32 per cent over the same period in 2021.

However, like other epidemic beneficiary stocks, the high growth that Roblox has always been proud of may gradually slow down as the control of the epidemic in Europe and the United States is relaxed. In a letter to shareholders, the company acknowledged that Roblox's earnings had been affected by the epidemic in the past seven quarters of the world's two years with the epidemic.

In its letter, the company warned investors that growth in their key indicators was likely to slow. "over the past three quarters, as parts of the world begin to return to a more normal life, the absolute value of our indicators continues to grow. The number of users, participation time, paying users, and booking revenue are all at or near the highest level in history, but the growth rate of some key indicators has slowed compared with doubling or even tripling growth in the same period last year. "

Roblox said that at present, the company's scheduled revenue (Bookings) mainly comes from the United States and the United Kingdom, but the two companies are being liberated from the restrictions of the epidemic. Although user stickiness and payment conversion rates in these countries are still higher than at the time of the outbreak, the relatively high base also puts pressure on year-on-year growth.

In the letter, Roblox also mentioned the growth of users in various regions. The company says the growth rate of users in the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America and Europe is the highest in the world. Of these, the number of users in India and Japan both grew by 100% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2021, albeit from a small base.

Finally, in the letter, the company left investors a meaningful question: what would be the growth rate of Roblox in normal times? (What is a normalized long-term growth rate for Roblox?)

Can the first shares of the meta universe be bought now?

Although Roblox has fallen sharply from the hype about meta-universe, investors are still bullish on Roblox, with its shares up more than 7 per cent on Tuesday, judging by the market reaction on the eve of the earnings report.

Earlier, Drew Crum, an analyst at Stifel, an investment bank, praised the gaming social platform, saying it had demonstrated "strong revenue capacity for the year and for many consecutive quarters". The analyst gave Roblox a "buy" rating, with a target price of $110.

Bank of America Corporation pointed out in a research report on Monday that Roblox has the potential of a "young tech giant" because it seems to be the only mature metacosmos product on the market. In the report, Bank of America Corporation has a particular eye on Roblox's rapid user growth over the past two years, emphasizing that the company's growing and strong community is one of its advantages over other competitors.

Bank of America Corporation said Roblox's share price was undervalued and that its $68 share price, which closed on Friday, did not reflect its leader in meta-universe. Bank of America gave Roblox a "buy" rating and set a target price of $84.

Even "wooden Sister" Cathie Wood, who has had an unlucky year this year, has spent tens of millions of dollars on Roblox in the past two weeks. The reason is similar to Bank of America Corporation, that is, Roblox may become a leading enterprise in this field.

According to InvestingPro statistics, the fair value of Roblox is only $52.66, which is still nearly 30 per cent lower than Tuesday's closing price, but the average target price given by 14 Wall Street analysts is $102.64 and the market is more divided.

In addition to corporate fundamentals, for such high-growth technology growth stocks, investors also need to consider the impact of macro factors on stock prices.

During the epidemic over the past two years, the Fed has boosted the economy by releasing liquidity that has pushed the share prices of many tech growth stocks to soar. With the Fed about to raise interest rates in March, tech growth stocks, including Roblox, are likely to experience a painful round of "valuation killing".

For example, the flagship fund of "wooden Sister" Cathie Wood, which focuses on betting on technology growth stocks.$ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK.US) $The decline this year has reached 22%, close to the decline for the whole of last year. Among the top ten heavy stocks of ARKK$Roku Inc (ROKU.US) $、$Zoom Video Communications Inc (ZM.US) $、 Block 、$Twilio (TWLO.US) $They have all fallen by more than 20% this year.

All in all, as the leading company in meta-universe concept stock, although "thunderstorm" in the fourth quarter, judging from the steady growth trend in the past seven quarters, Roblox still has a lot of room to increase in terms of user acquisition and revenue capacity, so investors can pay more attention to it.