Virgin Media drives TiVo growth

TiVo’s European business helped the DVR technology specialist grow its total subscriber base by 524,000 to 2.5 million in the 12 months ending April 30.

The company has seen strong growth at UK cable operator Virgin Media. “Virgin Media continues to be a wonderful example of how strategically important our product has been in bolstering pay TV offerings,” said Tom Rogers, CEO and president of TiVo. “Virgin Media recently reported it added another 242,000 TiVo subscribers, bringing the total to 677,000, or 18% of its entire base in just over a year’s time. Virgin Media is growing its pay TV subscriber base faster than its key competitors, which is a significant reversal in trends and remarkable given the tough economy in the United Kingdom. We believe this is evidence that TiVo is fuelling a substantially improved competitive position for Virgin Media.”

TiVo also delivers its service via Spanish cable operator Ono, which doubled the number of TiVo customers since the previous quarter.

At last week’s Cable Show, TiVo announced a deal with Pace to devlop the TiVo-Pace XG1 set-top box, a six tuner gateway. Rogers said the device would enable operators to use TiVo’s whole-home solutions, including support for traditional and IP services. “We feel this will be a real potential accelerant for deployment of TiVo,” he said.

TiVo posted first quarter service and technology revenues of US$54.5 million (€43.8 million), up 40% per year. A one-off payment relating to a Dish Network settlement meant TiVo reported a net loss of US$20.8 million for the quarter.