If you have children under the age of 13 at home, you may have heard of “egg stealing.” It went from a brand new version of Roblox to one of the platform’s biggest games in a matter of weeks.
Click-through rates like this are how Roblox makes money. Kids flocked to buy Robux to keep up with the game and move on to the next craze.
According to the company’s financial report, the average number of daily active users of Roblox (RBLX) in the second quarter was 123 million, an increase of 10%, and the platform usage time was 29 billion hours. Bookings increased 8% to $1.56 billion.
Management still believes in the long-term game. CEO David Baszucki said on the second-quarter conference call that the company “strongly believes in Roblox’s ability to achieve long-term growth of over 20%.”
Investors are less patient. According to Reuters, Roblox expects third-quarter bookings to fall by 14% to 18%, its first quarterly decline in four years. Shares fell nearly 30% on July 31, the worst single-day drop on record.
Roblox’s third-quarter results look better than expected, but the impact of saving it may have faded, according to a Bank of America research report shared with me.
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Bank of America expects Roblox third-quarter results to beat expectations
Bank of America analyst Omar Dessouky raised his third-quarter bookings forecast to $1.7 billion from $1.64 billion in an Oct. 8 preview. That’s above the Wall Street consensus of $1.62 billion he cited, and above the high end of Roblox’s own guidance range of $1.58 billion to $1.65 billion.
The reason was engagement. According to third-party data tracked by Dessouky, total platform working hours fell by 7% in the third quarter compared with the same period last year, which was better than the 16% decline among Dessouky models.
Excluding the five breakthrough games that have faded last year, under the leadership of “Steal an Egg”, game length growth accelerated from 20% in the second quarter to 37%.
Related: Roblox made a change that cost it $9 billion
The problem is the weekly numbers. “The most successful launch of the year, Stealing Eggs has reached daily peak times comparable to last year’s [Grow a Garden] and Steal a Brainrot, but engagement appears to be picking up (-9%/-18% W/W over the past two weeks),” Dessouky wrote.
Dessouky maintained a neutral rating and $48 price target, about 5% above its reported price of $45.56. The stock has recovered significantly from about $34.50, which it hit on July 31, according to Wall Street 247.
Search changes and age checks reshape player engagement
Roblox itself also brings some volatility. “Our strategic decision was to focus our discovery algorithms directly on measurable long-term retention,” Baszucki noted, a shift that Reuters said steered players toward games with fewer built-in payouts.
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Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra said the impact “especially on the under-13 age group is a major factor affecting our booking performance.”
The age check adds more friction. According to WebProNews, after Roblox required facial age estimation to use chat features, daily active users dropped from 152 million at the end of 2025 to 132 million in the first quarter, and fell again to 123 million in the second quarter.
According to GamesBeat, Roblox said at its developer conference in September that exploration is becoming more age-focused, as younger players prefer short games that can be jumped in and out. Desuki believes this is less punishing for short-lived, meme-like hits.
“Recalibrated algorithms that provide hyper-personalized recommendations for younger users can fuel hit factories and reinvigorate U13 engagement and monetization,” Dessouky wrote.
Against this backdrop, it’s easy to see why investors want more evidence. Dessouky wrote that less than half of the investors who spoke to Bank of America recently expected Roblox’s growth rate to return to above 20%.
Wall Street quickly turned cautious after the July report. Benchmark and BTIG both downgraded the stock to “sell,” while Deutsche Bank, Wedbush and BMO downgraded their “buy” ratings, 247 Wall St. reported.
GTA 6 is the wildcard for holiday bookings
Dessouky expects Roblox’s fourth-quarter guidance to be at least in line with Wall Street, but his own model is more cautious. He expects fourth-quarter bookings of $1.91 billion, below the consensus of $1.98 billion and down about 14% from the same period last year.
Heise said he’s worried about Grand Theft Auto 6, which Take-Two has confirmed will be released on November 19th. Dessouky believes that this announcement will lead players away from the wider gaming world (including Roblox).
There is evidence that the hot product pipeline is refilling. Since June, the number of games in the Roblox daily top 100 that have been online for less than 30 days has remained near a peak in mid-2025, according to Bank of America tracking data.
However, a lot may depend on whether Roblox can turn a one-time click into a steady stream of clicks. To me, this is the core tension in the story: The algorithm is now designed to reward kids for playing games they stick with, while bookings still rely on games they get addicted to and abandon.
Valuation is where the debate rages. Dessouky values Roblox at 20 times its estimated 2027 EBITDA, roughly between a high-growth software company and a traditional game publisher.
“If RBLX can sustain 20%+ growth into 2027 and beyond, it looks cheap. Without evidence of sustained growth, valuations risk being compressed to a diversified video game publisher (10x),” Dessouky wrote.
RELATED: Deutsche Bank sees troubling signs for Roblox as stock price plummets