By Tess Stynes
TiVo Inc. swung to a profit as the maker of television set-top
boxes continued to add subscribers.
The company also unveiled plans to repurchase an additional $100
million of its shares in the fiscal first quarter.
TiVo projected fiscal first-quarter net income of $5 million to
$8 million and service-and-technology revenue of $85 million to $87
million. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected $88 million
in comparable revenue.
TiVo also has worked to broaden its services. In January, the
company agreed to acquire cloud-based media services company
Digitalsmiths for $135 million, aiming to strengthen its U.S.
market share. Digitalsmiths provides personalized video search,
recommendations and browsing, social trending and mood-based
discovery for the pay-TV industry on many popular mobile
platforms.
TiVo continued to add new subscribers in the fiscal fourth
quarter despite an increasing list of competitors. Third-party
vendors like cable companies--so-called MSOs, or multi-system
operators--continued to play a big role in subscriber growth,
contributing a net 313,000 in the latest quarter. Overall, TiVo
added a net 319,000 subscribers, compared with the 209,000 gained a
year earlier.
Total subscriptions reached 4.2 million, a 34% increase
year-to-year.
For the period ended Jan. 31, TiVo reported a profit of
$710,000, or a penny a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of
$15.8 million, or 13 cents a share. Revenue increased 20% to $106.3
million. Service-and-technology revenue climbed 28% to $84
million.
TiVo had projected fiscal fourth-quarter net income of $2
million to $5 million and service-and-technology revenue of $83
million to $85 million.
Monthly churn, or the customer cancellation rate, was unchanged
at 1.5% for TiVo-owned subscriptions.
TiVo has mostly posted losses since the second half of 2009, but
has seen positive returns from its patent-litigation efforts,
reaching settlements with companies including Google Inc.'s
Motorola unit, Cisco Systems Inc., AT&T Inc., EchoStar Corp.,
Dish Network Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc.
Write to Tess Stynes at tess.stynes@wsj.com
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