TiVo today reported its first profit. It had a net income for the second-quarter of $240,000 and break-even earnings per share. That's in comparison with a net loss of $10.8 million or a net loss of 13 cents per share for the same period in 2004.Wall Street analysts expected the company to lose an average of 4 cents per share on revenue of $40.8 million.
Service and technology revenues for the quarter increased 46 percent to $40.7 million, compared with $27.8 million for the same period last year.
Total subscriptions reached more than 3.5 million, with a net increase of 254,000 total subscriptions in the quarter. TiVo standalone unit subscriptions increased by 77,000, compared to 78,000 in the same period last year. DirecTV subscriptions rose by 214,000, for a new total of about 2.3 million.
"Driving growth in the number of subscriptions at TiVo is the biggest critical challenge we face," Tom Rogers, TiVo's CEO, said in a statement. "Given the increasingly competitive environment, approaching this area more aggressively than we have in the past requires additional investment in subscription acquisition.
"We will be announcing a number of new promotional initiatives in the fall, one of which combines a hardware and service offer which we believe will be well received in the upcoming holiday season." Hmm. What could this be? In any case, this aggressiveness means the company "will forgo reaching our goal of sustainable profitability by the fourth quarter," he said.
Rogers also said the company will no longer provide guidance on subscription growth. This is partly because of "limited control" over DirecTV marketing efforts and priorities, and partly because standalone subscriptions are now only "one piece of our long-term distribution model." DirecTV plans to chiefly market its own PVR starting this fall.
It did say that it anticipates service and technology revenues between $41 million to $43 million and a net loss of $20 million to $25 million in the third quarter.
