TiVo Retains Interim CEO Pending Strategic Review

Entertainment technology provider TiVo has announced it will extend the contract of its temporary CEO Raghu Rau, having not yet found a permanent hire.

The job was left open when Enrique Rodriguez left in summer 2018 to join TV and broadband giant Liberty Global, as CTO. TiVo now says the recruitment process is on hold, while the company takes key decisions over its future. It is said to be considering a sale, going private and other options including selling its products business but keeping its intellectual property wing; but Rau (pictured) says this process is 'taking longer than we had hoped'. Decisions are expected by the time of a Q4 earnings call in February.

Rau's new deal sees his base salary remain at $750,000 per annum; grants him a second restricted stock unit award priced at $2 million, following one when he took the interim CEO role last year; and prevents him from poaching employees for one year after he leaves the company.

TiVo is also embroiled in major patent disputes with Comcast, who Rau says is expected 'ultimately to pay a license for TiVo's innovations, just as its pay-TV peer companies do and Comcast did in the past', with financial damages possibly 'running into the tens of millions, or even the hundreds of millions'.

Web site: www.tivo.com .