Europe helps TiVo turn a profit

TiVo’s European business helped the DVR specialist add subscribers and turn loss into profit during its latest fiscal year.

TiVo, which sells receivers direct to consumers as well as delivering software to cable operators, added 387,000 cable subscribers in its latest fiscal year, ending the fourth quarter with a total of 1.17 million customers. That compares to a loss of 357,000 subscribers the previous year.

TiVo provides software to cable operators including Virgin Media and Ono in Europe. TiVo president and CEO Tom Rogers said: “Our very successful deployment with Virgin Media continues to grow. During the quarter ended December 31, 2011 we added 270,000 new TiVo subscriptions, bringing the total number of Virgin Media TiVo subscriptions to 435,000. This is the third straight quarter we’ve seen significant subscriber growth from Virgin, a development that we believe is key to driving higher customer satisfaction and improved metrics for Virgin as well.

“Additionally in Europe, our deployment with ONO, Spain’s largest cable operator is off to a good start, and we expect the subscriber additions to accelerate as ONO begins to offer TiVo to its full subscriber fibre footprint, highlighted by the recent launch of TiVo in ONO’s largest market.”

TiVo reported net income of US$102.2 million (€76 million) for the fiscal year, compared to a loss of US$84.5 million for the previous year. Adjusted EBITDA was US$147.4 million.