TiVo explains Aereo asset buy
March 4, 2015
By Chris Forrester
TiVo’s CEO Tom Rogers said that viewing consumers are facing “chaotic changes” in the variety and amount of programming available to them.
“Infinite amounts of new and compelling content coming from all directions, traditional linear TV, live sports and other events, recorded programming, video-on-demand, subscription video-on-demand, TV Everywhere and web streaming services. In this new world order of content, what’s driven our success is our innovation and our ability to organise the chaos and create a coherent way for people to consume all this content using one interface,” he commented.
Rogers also told analysts that “it looks as if we will be acquiring the [bankrupt Aereo] assets…. We have a much more extensive offering than what Aereo had, which was principally a way to record over-the-air channels. We integrate over-the-top with over-the-air into a much more comprehensive offering with a far more sophisticated user experience that we think not only drives the value proposition that Aereo didn’t, but truly is in sync with where the ecosystem is going for those level of customers who are looking for something that is able to get them the guts of the broadcast world in a way that they can record it without having to have an operator subscription, and at the same time, unifies that with the OTT product to make that a single viewing approach to all their video needs.”
Rogers was speaking to analysts following the release of the company’s results, which he said generated “record” revenues of $91.7 million for its Q4 trading period, which came from almost 5.47 million subscribers, up 30 per cent y-o-y, and up 1.9 million from three years ago. TiVo added 1.3 million MSO subscribers during last year. Net growth during the Q4 was 340,000
International growth added well over 200,000 subs during Q4.
Rogers added that TiVo had bought back in $118 millions-worth of its own shares (9.7 million) for cancellation during the quarter, following on $246 million of buy-backs during the rest of last year, and still had $300 million to use of future share buy-backs.
TiVo shares jumped more than 6 per cent at the end of the March 3rd.