Rovi in Talks to Buy TiVo, Merging Companies: New York Times
Rovi is looking to make another purchase, if a New York Times report is correct. The paper reported today that the digital entertainment company is in talks to buy TiVo, according to unnamed inside sources.
The report says that Rovi has a market value of $1.7 billion, while TiVo is worth $750 million. Post acquisition, TiVo shareholders will own around 30 percent of the merged company. The purchase price hasn't yet been decided.
The deal appears to be taking place because investor Glenn W. Welling of Engaged Capital won two seats on Rovi's board last year, and has been lobbying the company to join with TiVo. The Times notes that TiVo has been courted by Apple, Google, and Microsoft over the years, but has so far remained independent. The acquisition is anything but a done deal, and could still fall apart, the Times adds. The two companies combined own over 6,000 patents.
The news caused TiVo's share price to jump over 20 percent, while Rovi's shares fell by 2 percent.
Rovi acquired Fan TV in November 2014, gaining cloud-based discovery solutions. It sold DivX and MainConcept in April 2014, so that it could focus on the search business. For its part, TiVo acquired Cubiware, an international pay TV service provider, in May 2015.
Related Articles
A global survey by TiVo sees two distinct types of pay TV customers. Operators need to approach them differently in order to keep them happy.
13 Sep 2017
The newly combined company will be a digital entertainment giant, holding over 6,000 patents and ready to grow in new platforms.
29 Apr 2016
Now focused on search and discovery, Rovi hopes to create next-gen search products and bring them to market sooner.
04 Nov 2014
Saying that its future is in entertainment discovery, Rovi lets DivX and MainConcept go for $75 million.
03 Apr 2014
By combining deep metadata, cloud-based search, and natural language performance, Rovi hopes to take a lead in entertainment discovery.
25 Feb 2014
Companies and Suppliers Mentioned