Rovi open to more acquisitions

Peter Halt

Rovi will look to continue to grow the business through “strategic acquisitions and organic growth initiatives” following its buyout of Fanhattan and Veveo last year.

Speaking on the firm’s fourth quarter earnings call, chief financial officer Peter Halt identified cloud delivery as one potential acquisition area but stressed that Rovi would apply “rigorous strategic technical and financial criteria” to any new opportunity.

“Areas we might consider growth through acquisition could include technologies which accelerate delivering products and services in the cloud, or expanding our data analytics and search and recommendation operations,” said Halt.

Rovi’s CEO, Thomas Carson, also named discovery as an area of interest when pressed further about potential additions to the firm’s portfolio.

Rovi bought content discovery and navigation firm, Fanhattan, in November in a bid to accelerate its vision to offer “next-generation guidance and discovery using advanced cloud, user interface and hardware technologies.”
Last February it also announced it was buying personalised entertainment discovery specialists Veveo for US$62 million (€47 million) in cash.

Halt said he expected increasing revenues from these deals to “ramp up in the second half of the year.”
In Q4, Rovi reported a 12% year-on-year decrease in revenues at US$134.2 million, which it attributed to the “continuing decline in analogue copy protection revenues” and a comparatively better Q4 2013 thanks to catch-up payments on several new deals.

Rovi reported a fourth quarter net loss of US$5.8 million, compared to a net loss of $60.8 million for the same quarter of 2013.