TiVo Community Forums Archives - If TiVo makes no profit, why are they still in business?

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If TiVo makes no profit, why are they still in business?
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Posted by: timckelley

How many years has TiVo been in business now? They haven't made any profit yet? Why aren't they bankrupt?

Posted by: jsmeeker

'cause they have cash reserves from investors and what not.

Posted by: timckelley

When are those reserves projected to be tapped out?

Posted by: jsmeeker

quote:
Originally posted by timckelley
When are those reserves projected to be tapped out?

not sure.. Go look at their financial statements and stuff... Don't forget, there are always ways to get more capital.

Posted by: Want1394

Probably never. Losses are now very moderate and they raised an additional ~$70M this week from institutional investors - total cash >$130M. If you are really interested, learn to read financial data on Yahoo.

Posted by: timckelley

It just seems to me that the investors must have a lot of confidence in TiVO considering how many years it's taking to have a profit.

For example, when I worked at IBM, it was said that when IBM started a new venture, they'd give it 5 years to make a profit. After that, they'd sell it off or terminate it.

Do we have good reason to believe that TiVo will eventually be profitable?

Posted by: Dan203

Sorry but stock talk is not allowed on this forum. If you want to get into more details you'll have to vist one of the forums dedicated to the subject. (Try Yahoo! and Fool.com)

Dan

Posted by: phone1

Without commenting on the stock, (we've had many "Will TiVo survive?" threads). I will repeat what has been posted here several times. They apparently are cash flow positive for their operations, meaning that gross income exceeds operating expense. What it hasn't exceeded is their total overhead, including servicing their debt.

This is still a good sign though as it demonstrates that their business model is working.

Posted by: jtown

They'll last as long as they can get investors to keep investing. Look at Amazon if you want an example of just how many hundreds of millions of dollars investors are willing to pour into a company that doesn't turn a proffit. (Actually, it's claimed that Amazon finally turned a proffit but I've heard that before and it's always turned into a negative number when the weight of their debt was factored in.)

Posted by: JTAnderson

Has DIRECTV reported an annual profit yet? Has Dish Network? If so, how many years were each of them around before the first profitable year?

Oh, and let's not forget Amazon.com.

Posted by: rodneyremington

Oops, I guess the Federal Government will have to shut down, seeing as they have been deficit spending for 19 of the last 20 years ;)

Posted by: MighTiVo

quote:
Originally posted by JTAnderson
Has DIRECTV reported an annual profit yet? Has Dish Network? If so, how many years were each of them around before the first profitable year?

Oh, and let's not forget Amazon.com.

Amazon reported a profit this year....

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?f...rticleId=336185

Posted by: samo

quote:
Amazon reported a profit this year....

So did Dish Network, not a good example. Since stock talk is forbidden here let me give you another example. My teenage son is at Duke medical school. Between grants and student loans he makes enough to pay his tuition, but if I don't pay for his living expenses he would starve. Same with TiVo - they make some money on operations, but without R&D, sales and marketing and administration they can't functions as a company. And somebody has to pay rent as well. So they are in constant need for sugar daddy to survive. So far they are successful in finding venture capitalists who gamble that TiVo can produce enough hype in short term and that they can make a fortune on quick turn around. These venture capitalists are doing great with TiVo investments - they dump their holdings after each hype announcement to small investors with great profits. As long as TiVo can continue to attract speculators they can stay in business for years without making a dime.

Posted by: dswallow

quote:
Originally posted by timckelley
How many years has TiVo been in business now? They haven't made any profit yet? Why aren't they bankrupt?

Because they're funded by black money authorized in a secret amendment of the Patriot Act to make it easier to spy on everyone. See that little TiVo icon on the front panel? There's a hidden camera in one of the TiVo guy's eyes. Don't go looking for wires, though. It's entirely self-contained inside the plastic mold and uses optical short-range laser transmission to a special receiver built into the BroadCom/TiVo multimedia chipset. The SatC LNB is actually a transmitter, too. That's why it's slightly bigger than the other LNB's. People started noticing, so they combined all the LNB's in the Phase III dish.

They're still working out the bugs in the auto-worm functionality included in HMO that can track down all webcams on the attached local network, so the HMO offering has been delayed on DirecTV DVR's until that's worked out fully. Too much upstream bandwidth was getting used on the satellite when the buggy version kept finding kiddie porn and uploading it as if it were webcam data. There's actually an internal battle right now over whether the kiddie porn detection bug should be considered a feature and left in.

NSA also partially funds TiVo as part of their distributed codebreaking system. That's been relatively successful so far, but internal memos have documented that people are noticing the slowdown caused by dedicating a percentage of processor time to codebreaking and consequently slowing down operations like Season Pass reordering and Grid Guide display. They provided funding for development of a solution to deployed units which is built in to the CacheCard in order to solve this problem. NSA was hoping to avoid further scrutiny, but, alas, leaked documents have made some aware of this and NSA was forced to abandon that project and enabled a failsafe circuit in the CacheCard to kill that functionality, but a small bug in the failsafe hardware is causing timing issues for a subset of users...

Posted by: bsnelson

So, if I put a tinfoil hat on SatC, I'm golden, right?

:)

Brad

Posted by: dswallow

quote:
Originally posted by bsnelson
So, if I put a tinfoil hat on SatC, I'm golden, right?

But then you'll stop receiving a lot of HD programming. :)

Posted by: ZeoTiVo

so weaknees is a govt. front to launder haliburton money while getting getting the decryption technol;ogy into the series 1 via the cache card ?

the good news is - this means TiVo can stay in business as long as the federal govt. is in business. So the black case on a TiVo is just a nod to the balck helicopters ?

Posted by: JTAnderson

quote:
Originally posted by MighTiVo
Amazon reported a profit this year....

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?f...rticleId=336185

That was my point. It took Amazon several years of sometimes huge losses before they began to show a profit.

Posted by: cptodd

quote:
Originally posted by dswallow
Because they're funded by black money authorized in a secret amendment of the Patriot Act to make it easier to spy on everyone. See that little TiVo icon on the front panel? There's a hidden camera in one of the TiVo guy's eyes. Don't go looking for wires, though. It's entirely self-contained inside the plastic mold and uses optical short-range laser transmission to a special receiver built into the BroadCom/TiVo multimedia chipset. The SatC LNB is actually a transmitter, too. That's why it's slightly bigger than the other LNB's. People started noticing, so they combined all the LNB's in the Phase III dish.

OH MY GOD! The things I have done in front of the little TiVo man. . . errr woman. . . errrr thing? Those government eyes must be popping out! :p

Posted by: jdixon

Basically whenever they need cash to make payroll they up the costs of the monthy sub, when they decide that people will run to the competition if they keep that up they charge for features. Pretty simple.

Posted by: David Bolling

If you spend more than you get in your paycheck, why are you still alive?

Posted by: peter144

quote:
Originally posted by David Bolling
If you spend more than you get in your paycheck, why are you still alive?

Back to basic corporate finance. A COMPANY has FOUR sources of CASH

sales
borrowing money
selling stock
selling assets

It has FIVE uses of CASH

losing money on sales
repaying debt (including interest)
buying in stock
buying assets
paying dividends

TIVO has been selling stock and issuing debt in excess of all of its uses.

You personally have parallel sources/uses of cash in addition to your paycheck.

draw down your bank account or savings
borrow money
sell your stocks or investments
sell assets (on ebay) or your home

Someone with assets or borrowing ability can certainly spend more than his "paycheck" for some period of time.

p