TiVo loss, explains Premier product

Website: Rapid TV News
DVR specialists TiVo, still in the news because of its legal victory against Echostar last week, reported Q4 and end-of-year numbers last week.

TiVo lost money again, but less than anticipated. TiVo is anticipating an ingest of cash of some $400m as a result of its legal actions.

Revenues for Q4 (which ended Jan 31) were $45.3m, ahead of guidance at $43-$45m.

Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $3.2 million, beating guidance of a loss of $5 million to $7 million.

For Q1, the company sees revenue of $41-$43m, a net loss of $19-$21m and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $9 million to $11 million.

Tom Rogers, TiVo’s president/CEO said the past year was “significant” for TiVo and that 2010 would be a year when TiVo would go “beyond” the DVR with its Premier product.

“We put in place key distribution relationships in the US and internationally that leveraged those efforts and because advanced television solutions are increasing in importance for these providers in a new world of television consumption and because we offer so much more than the DVR, the deals we established in fiscal 2010 incorporate more predicable deployment commitments underscoring the importance of TiVo to our distribution partners.”

“As we begin this new era for TiVo, going way beyond the DVR, by no means have we forgotten our legacy in the DVR business and the importance of our intellectual property and the important job we have in protecting it,” said Rogers.

“With this launch [of Premier] we have successfully moved way beyond the original DVR company route to the company that has created the one-box solution, your DVR, your cable box, your movie box, your web box, and your music box, all in one box and solving for how consumers and distributors deal with presenting infinite amounts of content,” added Rogers.

“In creating this new experience, we used our vast knowledge gained over the last 10 years of how viewers want to watch television.

And with an eye toward future innovation, we built our new platform on Adobe Flash, making it the prominent use of Flash in any set-top box.”

“One of the great benefits of building on this standard is that we believe it sets the stage for robust future development, potentially enabling TiVo and a third-party development community to introduce new applications that can be quickly and easily implemented.

Suffice it to say our new platform is in Phase I of what we believe to be many more phases yet to come.”