TiVo 2Q Earnings Down, But 6% Rev Rise

All that TiVo gained in the first quarter of this year--reporting its first profits--was lost in the second quarter.

TiVo took a hit, losing $17.7 million in its second-quarter earnings period. Back in April, the decade-old company eked out its first-time profit of $835,000 for the first quarter.

Worse still, the second-quarter drop was lower than the same period of a year ago, when the digital video marketer suffered a $6.4 million drop.

Much of TiVo's problem this quarter was due to an inventory write-off charge of $11.2 million from its supply of standard-definition DVRs. TiVo has now made a big move to manufacturing and selling HD DVR boxes.

On a positive note, revenues rose 6% to $62.7 million. The 7-cents-a-share loss was a bit more than Wall Street analysts were expecting at 5-cents-a-share decline.

For the future, TiVo has struck a deal with big cable operator Comcast to bring TiVo service to some of its platforms, including Scientific Atlanta set-top boxes. It is also in agreement with DirecTV to give users who have DirecTV DVRs the ability to add on TiVo software to those units.

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Overall, TiVo-owned subscriptions totaled 1.71 million--up 136,000 on an annual basis compared to the year ago-period. TiVo had additions in the second quarter of 41,000, compared to 74,000 a year ago.

Subscriptions were impacted as retailers switched from the standard-definition DVR TiVo product to the HD DVR TiVo product.

All subscriptions--those owned by TiVo or distributed by providers such as DirecTV--were at 4.2 million as of second-quarter 2007, down 5% from a year ago. Much of that loss came at the expense of DirecTV, which is now selling DVRs under its own brand name to users.

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