Roku Inc.'s registration statement for its planned initial public offering shined a light on its shift to become more of a streaming platform rather than just a device manufacturer, but analysts are divided on whether the company's operating losses will overshadow its top-line growth.

Roku is looking to raise $100 million through the IPO, though it has yet to disclose how many shares it will offer or at what price those shares will be sold. What is clear from the filing is that Roku is a company in transition. For the first six months of 2017, net revenues from the company's streaming platform business nearly doubled year over year, rising to $82.4 million from $43.1 million. Meanwhile, revenues from Roku players fell slightly, dropping to $117.3 million from $119.1 million. Roku earns its player revenue from the sale of streaming boxes and sticks, while it earns platform revenue primarily from advertising and subscription revenue share.

"The positive is they are growing their platform revenues," Kathleen Smith, principal of the global IPO investment advisory firm Renaissance Capital, said an in interview. She noted, though, that Roku has a number of hefty expenses, the largest of which is research and development. "The losses are still pretty high at the company, and it's not clear to us whether we can expect near-term profitability," Smith said.

For the first six months of 2017, Roku reported research and development expenses of $48.1 million, up from $38.5 million in the year-ago period. All told, the company reported a loss from operations of $21.2 million in the first half of 2017, as compared with a loss of $32.6 million a year earlier.

John Fitzgibbon Jr., owner and publisher of IPOScoop.com LLC, said it is not unusual for a company — especially in the consumer technology sector — to have a history of losses when it begins trading publicly for the first time.

"It's rather common these days," Fitzgibbon said. Investors look beyond bottom-line financials to determine what else a company has going for it, he added.

But Smith said today's investors are increasingly concerned with profits due to some expensive lessons learned from earlier IPOs.

"Investors have been burned by these money-losing tech companies before," she said. As an example, she pointed to mobile camera maker GoPro Inc., which went public in June 2014 and saw its share price skyrocket, reaching above $90 per share in late 2014. The share price fell precipitously in 2015 and 2016, however, and the stock traded at less than $9 per share as of Sept. 6, 2017.

"I think there is a lot of fear around this kind of company, of what the valuation may be and then whether the underwriters can do a good job pricing the shares in a way that is sustainable in public market trading," Smith said.

But some industry analysts said there are reasons to be optimistic about Roku's future.

"Their trend line is going up, and they should be turning a profit within a couple years," said Greg Potter, an analyst at Kagan, a media research offering of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Parks Associates Senior Analyst Glenn Hower is also relatively positive on Roku, noting that as of the first quarter of 2017, 37% of streaming media players owned by U.S. broadband households were Roku devices.

"For people who just want to start streaming video on their TV out of the box, the Roku devices are pretty dirt cheap," he said, noting Roku devices can be found at Wal-Mart for as low as $29.99. This has helped the company retain a strong position among U.S. streaming media players, despite competition from other device makers, including titans like Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc.

Both analysts also pointed to Roku's relationships with smart TV manufacturers — including Element, Hisense, Hitachi, Insignia, RCA, Sharp and TCL Corp. — as a key market advantage.

Potter estimated that roughly "one-in-seven or one-in-eight TVs sold in the U.S. at this point has the Roku platform on it. And that's one of the ways they are driving their platform revenue."

Hower said the future of smart TVs will "play a big role in defining the future" of the streaming media player market, especially for a company like Roku. In signing deals with TV makers, he said, the company is "looking to future-proof their business."

But Smith noted that the timing of Roku's IPO coinciding with its transitioning business could make some investors nervous.

"The case they are going to make is that this licensing business is going to be important, and while it is, it's a very competitive business to be putting your technology in other people's devices," she said.