TiVo Inc., a maker of digital video recorders, is adding to its sales and marketing services in five European countries as it expands in the region.
The San Jose, Calif.-based company, which generates most of its subscriptions in Europe, is adding workers and services in offices in Austria, the U.K., the Netherlands, Poland and Spain, according to a statement Thursday.
TiVo has more than 3 million subscribers in Europe out of a total of 4.8 million at the end of its second quarter in July. While its set-top boxes are distributed by Vodafone Group PLC's Ono in Spain and Liberty Global PLC's Virgin Media in the U.K., the device is not yet available in Austria, the Netherlands and Poland. The company's boxes are also used in Sweden by cable operator Com Hem AB.
"Without being market-specific about where we hope to be, clearly more broadly distributed in Europe is the goal," Chief Executive Officer Tom Rogers said in an interview in Amsterdam at the IBC Global conference Thursday.
TiVo is expanding operations and adding staff in the offices of Digitalsmiths, the cloud-based video content provider it bought in February.
On Thursday, the company's stock climbed the most in a year after Broadcom Corp. announced a partnership to supply chips to enable Ultra HD content on TiVo set-top boxes, a move that could expand access to European cable operators. Broadcom, a maker of semiconductors, is also supplying the same technology to the devices of Vodafone's German business.
The two deals may give TiVo an opening to Kabel Deutschland's 8 million subscribers, said Todd Mitchell, an analyst with Brean Capital LLC.
Rogers declined to comment on the new European markets TiVo could expand into.
"'We wanted to have a presence and an ongoing dialogue and hopefully from there we'll be able to find that some or all of the TiVo toolkit can be put to work."
TiVo, a pioneer in the DVR market, has traditionally sold its own set-top boxes directly to consumers and rented the units to pay-TV services. In the U.S., operators using its technology include DirecTV and Comcast Corp.
"I think you're going to see some fairly solid growth, both on the U.S. and the European side of things," Rogers said.
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