Rebecca Day

Xperi-TiVo 2020 revenue grew 21% to $1.15 billion, which “far exceeded” expectations, said Xperi CEO Jon Kirchner on a Wednesday call. Q4 revenue was $427.8 million vs. $90.4 million in the 2019 quarter, before the TiVo deal, the company reported. The company has a “cautious outlook” for 2021, said Chief Financial Officer Robert Andersen on a call (see Q4 materials here), with risk in the consumer segment. While cord cutting continues, IPTV deployments are increasing, said Kirchner. Q4 had a licensing deal with Comcast through 2031, Kirchner said. Xperi renewed and extended licenses with Cox, Sony and TCL in Q1. The company delayed to 2022 plans to separate the product and IP businesses, said Kirchner, citing impact from COVID-19 and the need for both businesses to be able to “stand on their own two feet” with “attractive growth stories.” He referenced “complex systems work” that has to be right to operate independently. Xperi stock closed down 3.7% at $21.21.

By 2025 streaming will surpass total music industry peak revenue reached at the turn of the century, said Dawn Ostroff, Spotify chief content and advertising business officer. “The music industry is growing again.” Much streaming revenue is from subscriptions, she said, but as audiences continue to migrate from linear listening to on-demand consumption, “that revenue will also come from advertising,” she told the company's virtual event Monday. U.S. consumers spend about the same amount of time listening to digital audio as they do streaming video -- about nine hours weekly, Ostroff said. Digital audio advertising hasn't had that expansion, she said, citing an opportunity to steal share from the $30 billion ad market for terrestrial and satellite radio. Spotify HiFi will roll out later this year for Premium subscribers, said the company. The music service is expanding further internationally, it also announced.

Companies including Adobe, Arm, BBC, Intel and Microsoft will develop standards to certify provenance of media content, to address disinformation and online content fraud. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity plans an end-to-end, open standard for tracing the origin and evolution of digital content, C2PA said Monday. Member organizations will partner to develop content provenance specifications for common asset types and formats to enable publishers, creators and consumers to trace images, videos, audio and documents, said C2PA. Specs will include defining what information is associated with each type of asset, how that information is presented and stored, and how evidence of tampering can be identified, it said: Collaboration with chipmakers, news organizations, and software and platform companies will enable a “comprehensive provenance standard and drive broad adoption across the content ecosystem.” This builds on recent advances in content provenance, including Project Origin; the Content Authenticity Initiative; and C2PA member Truepic's development of the first native integration of hardware-secured photo capture smartphone technology, C2PA said. "There's a critical need to address widespread deception in online content -- now supercharged by advances” in artificial intelligence and graphics “and diffused rapidly via the internet,” said Eric Horvitz, Microsoft chief scientific officer and Project Origin executive sponsor. Organizations interested in joining can apply at membership@c2pa.org.

Roku, coming off subscriber gains, took shots at MVPDs. CEO Anthony Wood said on a Thursday call that advertising impressions rebounded on the platform, underscoring Roku’s role in the over-the-top video world: “Across the industry, the impact of streaming is increasingly evident; consumers are cutting the cord.” He noted a third of U.S. TV homes are OTT-only, as top media companies are “reorienting around streaming” and launching new services. “The traditional TV upfronts are beginning to crumble,” said Wood. Chief Financial Officer Steve Louden said Roku's U.S. active account base is more than twice the video subscribers of the top cable company. Comcast didn't comment Friday. Also Friday, Pivotal Research Group's Jeffrey Wlodarczak told investors the pandemic accelerated the move to direct-to-consumer. It delayed the launch of products competing with Roku and left a “2-horse race between Amazon and Roku,” the analyst said.

CEDIA Expo producer Emerald had a 73% Q4 sales plunge year on year to $12.2 million. Declines were partially offset by insurance payments, said the company Thursday. Emerald held two events in Q1, said Chief Financial Officer David Doft on a quarterly call. The trade show company canceled the remainder of Q1 events, and many Q2 events were postponed until later in 2021, he said. The company hopes the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines allows more activities in the second half. Emerald canceled 19 events in Q4 and 94 in 2020, including CEDIA Expo. Buying software-as-a-service company PlumRiver will help expand digital presence, said CEO Herve Sedky on his first such call since joining Emerald Jan. 5 from Reed Exhibitions.

Coming off a record Q4, Walmart executives cited “aggressive” plans for e-commerce growth during a Thursday virtual investor event. CEO Doug McMillon noted it wasn’t the first place to go to buy products online, and the retailer “has to earn that” role: It requires the right assortment, price, service and on-time delivery, and “it takes some time to build those kinds of capabilities.” Revenue for the quarter ended Jan. 29 was $152.1 billion, up 7.3% from the year-ago quarter, the company reported (and see here). U.S. e-commerce sales jumped 69%. Revenue growth was below analyst expectations. “We know less than we typically do in a normal year,” Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs said, citing the economy, COVID-19, government stimulus and vaccines. The stock closed 6.5% lower at $137.66.

Q4 revenue at Shopify spiked 94% to $977.7 million, reported the company Wednesday. At the end of 2020, 1.7 million merchants were selling on the e-commerce platform, said President Harley Finkelstein on a quarterly call. Responding to a question on whether the growth in business creation spawned by COVID-19 is sustainable, Finkelstein noted the U.S. had more business registrations in Q3 than at any time since 2004 and said Shopify is seeing similar. The pandemic created a "catalyst," whether people needed to supplement their income or lost a job and needed to find something else, but “I do not think this trend is going away.” As countries roll out vaccines in 2021 and consumers are able to move about more freely, “the overall economic environment will likely improve,” said Chief Financial Officer Amy Shapero. Some consumer spending “will likely rotate back to offline retail and services," and the shift to e-commerce, which accelerated in 2020, "will likely resume a more normalized pace of growth,” said Shapero.

On its patent infringement cases against Google, Sonos Chief Legal Officer Eddie Lazarus said one goes to trial Feb. 22, with a preliminary decision expected in early May. A second case, in U.S. District Court in Waco, Texas, also involves five different patents and is expected to go to a hearing in July to define patent terms; that case is scheduled for trial in June 2022. Sonos believes Google is “infringing a very substantial portion of our patent portfolio," and "we're going to continue with this process until we vindicate our [intellectual property] rights," Lazarus, a former top FCC official, told a quarterly call. (See Q1 materials here). A Google spokesperson said “Sonos has misrepresented our partnership and mischaracterized our technology. Our products and devices were designed independently. While we look to resolve our dispute, we will continue to ensure our shared customers have the best experience using our products.” Sonos stock closed up 16% at $36.44. Meanwhile, Sonos is working to ramp up to meet demand while the company transitions to manufacturing in Malaysia. That's where iRobot also is boosting capacity.

Strong demand including for 5G points to a “solid 2021,” S&P reported Friday. U.S. tech firms in Q4 delivered “strong beats and guides” for future quarters amid a “smart" 5G smartphone cycle, and increasing fifth-generation wireless network deployments will add to the growth, the firm forecast. Enterprise IT spending remains weak, however. Increasing confidence in an economic recovery will likely result in higher spending as the year goes on, said the report. Apple's fifth-gen rollout was a “great success” in Q4 and will support a 2021 upgrade cycle that Samsung will also benefit from, said S&P. The next-gen mobile phone cycle will be “very good for suppliers since 5G phones have higher silicon content.” Network upgrades are accelerating, too, to support wider adoption of 5G phones, with Japan and Korea furthest ahead, followed by China, the U.S. and Europe. Ericsson should pick up market share from Huawei, particularly in Europe, it said.

Global adoption of 5G and "increasingly complex technical requirements" are driving a multiyear industry transition that “plays to our strength,” said outgoing Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf on a fiscal Q1 call Wednesday. See quarterly materials here. Strong demand for 5G handsets, and growth in RF front-end, automotive and IoT, drove a record 62% year-over-year increase in revenue to $8.2 billion for the quarter ended Dec. 27. Profit jumped 165% to $2.5 billion, but “the strong performance and outlook would have been even stronger had we not been supply constrained,” said Mollenkopf.