TiVo tops earnings estimates

Posted Mar 3rd 2009 9:45AM by Beth Gaston Moon
Filed under: Earnings Reports, Netflix, Inc. (NFLX)

Monday evening, TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), synonymous with digital video recording technology, announced a fourth-quarter loss of $3.6 million, or four cents per share. This was two pennies better than the previous year's results and six cents above analysts' expected per-share loss of 10 cents.

Revenue, however, moved south, to $59.2 million from $74.1 million last year, with service revenue sliding 13.5% lower while technology revenue dropped 37%. TiVo was expecting revenue of $47 million to $49 million, surrounding economists' expectations of $48.7 million.

Also impacting the company's bottom line were operating expenses, which dropped 13% during the reporting period; subscriber acquisition costs dropped 76%. Bloomberg quoted CEO Tom Rogers as saying "We reduced our workforce some and scaled back on our marketing expenditures ... spending beyond what the consumer will do is not a good use of our capital."

TiVo is ramping up its technological offerings to fend off competitive pressures. The company recently synched up with Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) to provide streaming movies and TV shows for NFLX subscribers. Additionally, BlackBerry users can now set their TiVo boxes remotely, which comes in handy when I'm in a meeting and release I'll be missing Gossip Girl.

In pre-market action, TIVO shares were up 7.3%.

Beth Gaston Moon works for WeSeed.com, "The stock market for the rest of us." The above comments are not intended as trading or investment advice.

Tags: earnings, inthenews, netflix, revenue, tivo