Needham analyst Laura Martin keeps a Buy rating on Roku (ROKU) with a $100 price target after Walmart (WMT) closed its $2.3B acquisition of Vizio. Walmart will now “fast follow” Amazon (AMZN) and create a better retail media network by tying Vizio’s connected TV ads to Walmart’s online and offline sales, the analyst tells investors in a research note. Needham expects Roku will be purchased for a “large premium within the next 12 months.” There are several categories of potential purchasers including streamers like Netflix (NFLX), connected TV ad buyers like Trade Desk (TTD), retailers like Target (TGT) and large language models hungry for billions of new data points daily like Amazon, Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL), contends Needham. The top reasons to acquire Roku include its installed base, unique data sets, pricing power, shelf space, buy versus build advantages, and the fact that it’s now the only scaled connected TV platform that can be purchased, the firm contends. Roku shares in premarket trading are up 5%, or $3.51, to $79.20 following Needham’s research note.