TiVo Posts Subscriber Gains for First Time in Four Years

ALVISO: TiVo ended the third quarter with more than 2 million total subscribers, up 117,000 subs, which is a big spike from the loss of 33,000 subscriptions posted in the second quarter of this year.

The gain is due in large part to Virgin Media now deploying the TiVo service in the U.K. Tom Rogers, the president and CEO of TiVo, said, "This was a great quarter and represented a significant step in our growth strategy. Our efforts to get TiVo in more homes globally continues to accelerate as we drove approximately 117,000 net subscription additions and returned to total positive net subscription growth for the first time in four years. We also exceeded our quarterly guidance on service and technology revenues, Adjusted EBITDA and net income. In the U.K., Virgin Media has now deployed its TiVo offering to more than 220,000 subscribers as of the end of October, and RCN recently expanded its TiVo product offering through the deployment of a whole-home solution. Both ONO and Grande deployments are now live, and we expect Charter Communications to begin initial deployments shortly. Additionally, DirecTV intends to launch its TiVo offering in select markets in December with a nationwide rollout to follow early next year. All of this is a testament to our leadership in advanced television and our ability to drive meaningful solutions to market."

For the third quarter, service and technology revenues were $51.8 million, growing 25 percent year-over-year. TiVo narrowed its net loss to $24.5 million, compared to guidance of a net loss of $27 million to $29 million and a net loss of $20.6 million in the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $13.9 million, compared to Adjusted EBITDA guidance of a loss of $17 million to $19 million, and to an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $12.2 million in the same quarter last year.

Rogers continued, "Our mass deployment efforts are proving successful and gaining momentum with pay-TV operators worldwide. These operators recognize the need to retain their position as the key providers of a video experience for consumers. They are increasingly turning to TiVo because of TiVo’s proven advanced television solution that enables them to extract more value out of the television experience by joining traditional linear TV channels with broadband delivered content while vastly upgrading the user interface.

"Demand for Virgin Media’s TiVo offering is quickly growing throughout the U.K. Just six months after launch, Virgin Media said that it had more than 220,000 TiVo subscribers live, up from the 50,000 just three months prior. Even more impressive is that 40 percent of these TiVo subscribers are new to Virgin Media. Virgin Media has also seen a significant increase in its customer satisfaction metrics, and CEO Neil Burkett best summed up what TiVo has done for Virgin Media when he said on the company’s most recent earnings call, ‘So how are our customers finding it? Well, firstly, they love it. Our net promoter score or customer satisfactions is much higher for TiVo than our legacy TV product. In fact, TiVo customers are twice as likely to recommend Virgin Media to their friends, telling their friends and their family about the game-changing technology, about the content discovery, and about their control. TiVo is facilitating a personalization that customers want. It’s liberating them and putting them in control of their own viewing. Eighty percent said that TiVo gives them more freedom to watch TV when they want it. Fifty percent are watching more catch-up TV."