TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), today reported financial results for its quarter ended October 31, 2006.
The conference call is in a few minutes, but it looks like it was a good quarter. TiVo-owned subscriptions gross additions (as opposed to DirecTV) were up 10% year-over-year (101,000 vs. 92,000), which is the first year-over-year increase in 6 quarters. Overall TiVo-owned subscriptions were up 24% from last year, to 1.6 million. TiVo reported a net loss of ($11.1) million and net loss per share of ($0.12), compared to a net loss of ($14.2) million, or ($0.17) per share, for the third quarter of last year. DirecTV subscriptions declined, as expected, since DirecTV is no longer marketing the TiVo-based systems. So the loss from any subscribers dropping the service or switching to DirecTV’s in-house DVR are greater than what new subscribers were added. Total subscriber base is up slightly to 4.4 million, 11% up from last year.
One important thing to note is that TiVo-owned subscriptions are worth much more to TiVo than a DirecTV subscription. They receive a much higher revenue from direct subscriptions, so the shift to having more TiVo-owned subscriptions in their total is a good thing. Those subscribers can also use the added services which DirecTV hasn’t allowed their subscribers to use.
Online sales increased from 33% of their total sales last quarter to 43% this quarter, and response to the pricing changes they made early in the year have been positive. (The pricing changes from a couple of weeks ago came after the end of the quarter.) However, TiVo did comment that changing pricing to have the same pricing for online and retail purchases allows them to do national advertising, which they began this month.
58% of new sales in the quarter were of the S2DT, and 47% of new subscriptions were for use with analog cable. Analog cable continues to be the largest single segment of TiVo’s user base.
EDIT: From the con call webcast:
- Unsurprisingly, they’ll be featuring the Comcast platform at CES in January. (I’ll be there again.)
- One bit of news on the most recent pricing changes. Since the new pricing on November 5th, 60% of new subscribers have selected 3-year pre-paid or 3-year monthly plans. My response – Duh. They’re the best value by far. And right now 3-years pre-paid cost the same as 2-years, so no one is going to take 2-years pre-paid.
- Single tuner S2s account for about 1/3 of current inventory and they’re selling through a lot of those with the holiday promos. Going forward the focus will be on the dual-tuner products.
- TiVo sees the international market as a large part of their future business. Hmm – maybe they’ll finally get back into the UK?
