• by Paul Gough , December 29, 2003

Who said that presents stop after the holidays?

In a day of trading that boosted a number of stocks, Wall Street was very good to the two satellite radio companies and interactive TV provider TiVo Inc. TiVo, along with XM Satellite Radio and Sirius, saw their share prices rise in the high single digits at the close of the day Monday. All three subscriber-based companies expected to cash in big during the holidays, and even though it's too early for the companies to report sales (the quarter doesn't end until Wednesday), investors seemed emboldened by their performance.

XM Satellite Radio was the unquestioned leader among the three, gaining 7.7 percent to $26.16 per share Monday on the Nasdaq stock exchange. That's up from XM's position on Dec. 22, when its shares began the day selling at $22.85. It's also been a climb from early March, when the stock sold for about $2.40 cents a share.

The smaller company in the field of satellite radio, Sirius, also benefited from Wall Street's good feelings. It rose 23 cents -- or 9.7 percent -- to close at $2.58 per share on the Nasdaq. Its year-long high is $2.68, which happened on Oct. 22.

TiVo shares closed at $7.09 per share, up 3.20 percent on volume of $1.74 million shares. It's up from its year low of $4.40 a share, but down from its 52-week high of $14.51.

That's not bad for a company that posted a solid third quarter in November but had been punished by Wall Street despite record subscriber growth. TiVo lost only $7.4 million during the quarter, compared to $11.5 million a year ago. It recently passed the million subscriber mark, adding 209,000 in the quarter and expecting to have 1.37 million subscribers by the end of the year. TiVo, which has always pushed itself as a holiday gift, expected to tally $20 million in revenues for the holidays. There have also been long-standing worries about the future of TiVo's deal with satellite provider DirecTV, whose merger with News Corp. was approved last week.