I just listened to the conference call. I jotted down some notes, but I was multi-tasking since I’m at work and I’ll try listening to the replay later to see if I missed anything good.
General notes:
288,000 net new subscribers this quarter
225,000 net new DirecTV subs
63,000 net new SA subs
1.9 Million total subscribers
Over 1 million DirecTV subs
787,000 SA subs
39.8 million net revenue
10.4 million operating loss
They expect:
340,000-400,000 subs this quarter
240,000-280,000 DirecTV
100,000-120,000 SA
26.4-27.1 million tech revenue
37-41 million operating loss
3 million total subs by the end of their fiscal year (January 2005)
Profitability by the end of the next fiscal year (January 2006)
They’re shifting from upfront licensing to royalty based licensing to attract more consumer electronics partners.
They mentioned where the market, and TiVo, is going – and the intersting bit was a mention of integrated media servers. I didn’t hear any mention of CableCARD on this call, like there was last time, and I was hoping they’d have something to say.
They did mention TiVo To Go as being on track for this fall.
EDIT: Relistening notes below.
TiVo invested in a company named TGC to develop low cost DVR technology in China.
2Q subscriber growth was ~2,000, or 3%, lower than expected. They attribute this to the $199 Toshiba TiVo/DVD promotion which shifted sales. They sold the number of units expected, but more of the TiVo Basic DVD units than they expected. They don’t count those units unless and until the owner upgrades to TiVo Plus.
“All of our marketing and most of our development efforts go into the retail business, characterized today by DVRs and DVR recorders with TiVo sold through national retail distribution. In the future we see this category expanding to include media centers and other home network connected media components. Including products connected to broadband. In other words, products in this catagory are characterized by their differentiation and value over basic DVRs. And according to analysts the market for DVD recorders alone is expected to be about 27 million units by 2007. Today this retail business generates 90% of our revenues from sub fees, and we have about 85% of the market. And later this year we will exceed one million retail subs.”
Current DirecTV agreement runs through February 2007.
The Humax DVD recorder will only have the standard TiVo service, no TiVo Basic.
70-90 million operating loss from the year ended January 2005.
