On Oct. 9, a day the Dow dropped 679 points, TiVo Inc. deposited a check for $104.6 million. The company had just won a hard-fought battle against EchoStar Communications Inc., whose Dish Network digital video recorders were found by a federal jury to infringe TiVo's patents.
"I think we were the only company doing high-fives that day," recalled TiVo Chief Executive Tom Rogers.
TiVo, whose name has become synonymous with digital video recorders, is the comeback kid of technology.
Four years ago, the Alviso, Calif., company was on deathwatch, having lost a crucial partnership to provide recorders for DirecTV Group Inc.'s satellite TV customers. Sales of its TiVo boxes were slipping, and the company was fast running out of money.
Today, TiVo is debt-free, has $200 million in cash and is expected to post its first profitable fiscal year -- the one that ended Saturday.
TiVo's stock price, which dipped as low as $3.51 on Feb. 11, 2005, has rebounded to close at $7.19 on Friday. It hit a 52-week high of $9.43 in February last year.
"Financially, they're in great shape," said Alan S. Gould, senior media analyst at Natixis Bleichroeder Inc., an investment firm in New York. "They've done a good job of turning the company around."
Even though TiVo remains vulnerable because of its declining subscriber base, the company is no longer on the brink of collapse. If anything, the nimble outfit has managed to cheat obsolescence by continuing to innovate and adapt to changing viewing habits.
"TiVo has managed to keep itself in the game by focusing on where the consumer demand is," said James McQuivey, principal analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. "They started the trend a decade ago. Now they're working hard to stay on top of those trends."
During its darkest hours in 2005, the company picked a new chief executive, replacing co-founder Mike Ramsay with Rogers. Though a technology newbie, Rogers had extensive experience in the world of television, having founded financial news network CNBC while president of NBC Cable.
Together with TiVo vice presidents Naveen Chopra and Tara Maitra, Rogers lashed together deals to bolster the foundering company. His strategy was two-pronged: Land services to make the TiVo device more useful, and find cable partners to distribute the TiVo service -- which includes its programming guide, search interface and other well-regarded features -- to subscribers for a licensing fee.
