TiVo Earnings: An Early Look

Earnings season is now starting to wind down, with most companies already having reported their quarterly results. But there are still some companies left to report, and TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO  ) is about to release its quarterly earnings. The key to making smart investment decisions with stocks releasing their quarterly reports is to anticipate how they'll do before they announce results, leaving you fully prepared to respond quickly to whatever inevitable surprises arise. That way, you'll be less likely to make an uninformed knee-jerk reaction to news that turns out to be exactly the wrong move.

TiVo's namesake digital video records took the television world by storm once upon a time, but the company has been struggling to regain its former glory ever since the tech bust a decade ago. Let's take an early look at what's been happening with TiVo over the past quarter and what we're likely to see in its quarterly report next Tuesday.

Stats on TiVo

Analyst EPS Estimate	($0.11)
Year-Ago EPS	$0.06
Revenue Estimate	$64.8 million
Change From Year-Ago Revenue	29%
Earnings Beats in Past 4 Quarters	3

Source: Yahoo! Finance.

Will TiVo record better results this quarter?
Analysts haven't touched their consensus figures on TiVo's earnings over the past three months, with their calls on full-year fiscal 2014 also remaining the same. But investors have been increasingly optimistic about the stock, which has risen about 25% since mid-November.

For a long time, TiVo has ridden on the success of its portfolio of digital video recorder patents, which it has wielded successfully in many infringement lawsuits. Verizon (NYSE: VZ  ) decided to put its legal proceedings behind it, settling with TiVo in September for $100 million in damages for past infringement and spending another $150 million or more to get the benefit of licensing TiVo's intellectual property through mid-2018. Verizon saw the deal as worth it, especially as it and partner Coinstar (NASDAQ: CSTR  ) hope to have TiVo boxes be part of the Redbox Instant streaming service they're launching soon.

But TiVo's litigation docket is growing short, and so in October, the company sought to bring in cases against Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO  ) and Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) Motorola Mobility, alleging damages in the billions of dollars. Given TiVo's successful track record, most investors are expecting a settlement that will add even more money to TiVo's coffers.

The next step, though, is figuring out what TiVo will do next. In looking at TiVo's quarterly report, your main focus should be to figure out what TiVo management believes is the right strategy going forward. With its technology as its main asset, partnerships are the logical conclusion, but TiVo also has to demonstrate an ability to keep innovating to keep its patents from getting stale and losing value.

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