Yesterday's investor call

« Exclusive First Look: The New DIRECTV DVR | Main | Happy Commercial Day! »

Yesterday's investor call

Yesterday was the quarterly investor teleconference at TiVo, which was open to the public through streaming audio and a massive conference call system. I was letting it play in the background while working on other things, so I might have missed a few key details but the big picture news consisted of the following:

TiVo finally broke even, and made a small profit after 7 years of losses. They are hopeful that the following quarters will continue the trend and show increasing profits instead of losses

There are teams of TiVo and Comcast engineers working on a combo TiVo/Comcast unit that is set for release sometime in 2006. They referenced this several times as a big future subscriber growth path.

TiVo is moving to a cellphone plan business model (something I've heard suggested since TiVo was released) where you get a TiVo for practically free if you sign a long-term service contract of a year or two. They believe a major sticking point with new customers is the cost of the box.

TiVo's goals for the next year or so is to drive for more subscriptions and start working with advertising within the TiVo service, which they believe could be profitable once their subscriber base grows.

It costs TiVo about $200 to acquire each new customer.

They spent a significant amount of time comparing themselves to Sirius Radio, which has half of TiVo's subscriber base at a similar monthly subscription price, but Sirius has a $9 billion marketcap while TiVo's is only around $500 million. It sounded like a bit of sour grapes on the part of TiVo executives. :)

While DirecTV is moving away from TiVo to the NDS R15 box, they are ordering up loads of R10 combo DirecTV/TiVo units for their existing promotions. DirecTV is still using the TiVo to drive new subscriptions even though their own product is coming soon, and this was a bit perplexing for TiVo execs.

They are in dicussions with multiple cable operators, trying to use free TiVos as a way to lure new cable customers away from satellite. They talked about the Cebridge deal and a new Cablevision deal and said more deals are in the works.

by Matt Haughey August 25, 2005 in TiVo

Comments

Oh-doh

Posted by: Bob at Aug 25, 2005 9:44:05 AM

rogers is taking them in the right direction. above all else, they need distribution and market share, and they need it asap because the competitive landscape is only going to intensify. the plan to become profitable this year at the expense of market share was a very poor one for the long term success and profitability of the company. the day traders and wall street analysts are screaming bloody murder, but tivo is finally on the right path.

Posted by: chris maroney at Aug 25, 2005 10:19:08 AM

I was on the call as well. I came in a little late and left early, but my liveblogging efforts are here:

http://www.mostlymuppet.com/archives/2005/08/24/blogging-the-tivo-earnings-call/

Posted by: Seth at Aug 25, 2005 11:59:58 AM

Was there anything mentioned about CableCARD Tivo?

*shuffles feet*

Posted by: erik at Aug 25, 2005 1:10:41 PM

Just that they were working on it erik. Since Comcast engineers are involved, it should work out sometime next year (hopefully in the first quarter)

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Aug 26, 2005 12:05:34 AM

"Sometime in 2006" != first quarter 2006. "Sometime in 2006" implies "We'll get it out by the end of the year."

Posted by: Claw Shrimp at Aug 31, 2005 2:22:34 PM

Yesterday's investor call

Comments

Post a Comment

On this site

Recent Comments

Advertising