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by shbooms 489 days ago
It's completely true.

Looking at Vizio's financial records[0], the numbers make it clear.

They seperate everything into 2 distinct businesses, Device and Platform+.

Device represents their hardware business of selling physical TVs and soundbars. Platform+ covers all of their other "software-related" business, mainly consisting of ad delivery and selling user data to third parties.

2019:

- Device Net Revenue = $1.7 billion

- Device Gross Profit = $125 million

- Platform+ Net Revenue = $63 million

- Platform+ Gross Profit = $40 million

2023:

- Device Net Revenue = $1.0 billion

- Device Gross Profit = -($8.6 million)

- Platform+ Net Revenue = $598 million

- Platform+ Gross Profit = $364 million

So over the course of just 4 years:

- hardware revenue is down 40% and is actually losing money (confirms they are indeed selling the TVs at a loss)

- Ad/user data revenue, however, is up almost ten-fold (+949%)

- total gross profits of the two combined are up over 54%

[0] https://investors.vizio.com/financials/quarterly-results/def...