Internet TV company Roku has hired investment bankers Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Allen & Co. to investigate a possible initial public offering that could raise as much as $1 billion, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
TheJournal saidaccording to sources, the offering could come before the end of the year and that preliminary documents for an offering could be filed in the next few weeks.
Roku had tested the IPO waters in the past. In2014 it was considering an offering but instead decided to further develop what was then its fledgling streaming video business. Initially a hardware-focused company, Roku has come to rely more and more on ad revenue from its streaming services that offer content from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and YouTube as well as revenue sharing deals with those companies.
Roku declined comment.
