TiVo Attains Profitability, Signs Deals

TiVo reported its first ever profitable quarter and announced a new deal with a cable provider on Wednesday, as it moved to wean itself from long-time supporter DirecTV. However, the company also warned that it would be willing to sacrifice profitability in order to gain new subscribers.

"Driving growth in the number of subscriptions at TiVo is the biggest critical challenge we face," companyCEO Tom Rogers said. "We will forgo reaching our goal of sustainable profitability by the fourth quarter."

Net profit was $240,000, or break even per share, compared with a loss of $10.8 million, or 13 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. Analysts were expecting a loss of four cents a share.

TiVo also announced that it had entered into an agreement with cable giant Cablevision to begin to test market TiVo DVRs to its customers. Initially, Cablevision will offer TiVo to the company's current satellite customers.

Earlier this month, long-time TiVo supporter DirecTV announced it would stop directly marketing TiVo boxes to its subscribers in favor of an in-house solution by NDS Corp. DirecTV parent News Corp. owns a 40 percent stake in Cablevision as well.

TiVo seems to be aggressively working in the cable television arena to ensure it can continue to grow its subscriber base. Analysts have fretted over the loss of DirecTV, but now it appears that TiVo service may soon be available to a market potentially bigger than DirecTV's 14 million subscribers.

"Driving broader relationships with companies throughout the media industry to advance TiVo's growth will be an important component of our strategy," Rogers said.