Roblox Soars as ’Grow a Garden’ Fuels Metaverse Mania—Wall Street Still Doesn’t Get It

Virtual green thumbs are pumping Roblox's valuation into the stratosphere. The platform's 'Grow a Garden' experience has become an unexpected growth engine, proving once again that user-generated content runs circles around traditional game studios.

Metaverse momentum builds

While legacy gaming giants struggle with development cycles, Roblox creators keep churning out viral hits. The gardening sim's success highlights the platform's secret sauce: empowering players to become creators.

Wall Street's blind spot

Analysts still value Roblox like a game company when it's really the AWS of virtual experiences. Meanwhile, crypto natives nod knowingly—they've seen this decentralized creation model before in Web3.

One hedge fund manager sniffed, 'It's just digital tulips.' Tell that to the millions of kids learning coding and entrepreneurship through virtual garden plots.

Key Metrics

Viral Experiences Lift Roblox

At first glance, some might have been disappointed with Roblox's second-quarter financial results. Revenue growth of 21% year over year was below what many had hoped to see, and a slightly wider loss than expected could also have proven to be a downer for investor sentiment.

However, Roblox shareholders instead largely concentrated on measures of user engagement. Bookings soared by more than half year over year, as the number of monthly unique payers climbed 42%. Bookings per daily active user were up 7%, adding to the positive impact of a 41% jump in average daily active users. Hours of engagement skyrocketed 58% to 27.4 billion, further showing the popularity of Roblox's platform.

Founder/CEO David Baszucki pointed to the strategic investments that Roblox has made to make its platform work more effectively. The rise of Roblox's VIRTUAL economy has taken hold, and creators on the platform are thriving. One teen has gained notoriety by creating a game called "Grow a Garden" that allows users to grow a virtual garden, and that game has broken records for having the most players engaged at the same time. After having had to wait a long time for the full promise of the metaverse to take hold, Roblox investors are now seeing the rise in engagement that they've hoped would come.

Immediate Market Reaction

Shareholders were ecstatic about the game platform's performance, and Roblox shares jumped 20% in premarket trading in the first half-hour after the release of its quarterly report. The MOVE came in part as Roblox management boosted its expectations for the remainder of 2025.

The stock now trades at all-time highs, finally surpassing its previous late-2021 peak. Having almost tripled just since April, Roblox shares are seeing huge momentum, and it's entirely possible that the stock could continue to climb.

What to Watch

To be clear, investors shouldn't expect Roblox's success to translate to profitability anytime soon. The company's new 2025 guidance calls for losses of between $1.20 billion and $1.26 billion for the year. However, new bookings projections of between $5.87 billion and $5.97 billion are quite a bit higher than previous guidance for between $5.285 billion and $5.36 billion. And with free cash FLOW now likely to top the $1 billion mark, Roblox should have plenty of capital to keep following its strategic vision to foster further growth.

Helpful Resources

• Full earnings report
• Investor relations page