News / Media
WhereverTV Issues Update to Shareholders
WhereverTV Broadcasting Corp. (
WhereverTV reached several important milestones in 2012.
During 2012, the Company continued to benefit from the rising public demand for "over the top" television services and a heightened awareness of WhereverTV's Greek & Arabic cable television subscription services.
Mark Cavicchia, CEO of TVTV, stated, "We experienced the best year of subscription revenues in our brief history as a public company and signed a number of carriage agreements with US cable networks that will enable us to launch a US cable offering in 2013. Our overall performance in 2012 validates our 'go to' market strategy for launching a stand-alone 'over the top' cable service in the United States that will compete with major cable and satellite companies.
"It will take time to establish significant market share in this extremely competitive market of cash-rich incumbents; however, our industry-leading content and infrastructure partners will provide us with the ability to exploit WhereverTV's competitive advantages. Among those advantages are WhereverTV's lower cost infrastructure and customer acquisition/service costs that will be passed onto consumers in the form of lower monthly charges, a robust content offering, and superior customer service. On the back of these benefits, we anticipate robust revenue growth and nearing positive cash flow by the end of 2013."
Evolving and growing WhereverTV's core technology platform.
Mr. Cavicchia continued, "We increased reach onto new Connected TV platforms beyond our Roku and Boxee applications in 2012, and also consolidated our in-language subscriptions into a single application that was published as WhereverTV (for Droid phones and Tablet PCs), in addition to WhereverTV for GoogleTV (for media streaming devices and connected televisions running the GoogleTV operating system). These two new applications were published in November. We also completed development of our beta application for the iOS operating system, which will give millions of iPhone and iPad users the ability to watch their WhereverTV subscriptions on Apple devices starting in 1Q2013.
"We also have begun development of the WhereverTV digital video recording (DVR) application that will eliminate the need to have a stand-alone recording device in the home and expect to launch this service also in early 2013. We are also in the process of moving to a more robust customer billing and support system that will include many self-service features expected by our growing customer base."
Content aggregation and distribution pipeline remains active.
"In 2012, we continued to assemble the necessary content required to launch our basic US cable service. By the end of calendar 2012, WhereverTV had obtained carriage agreements from more than 50 US television networks as it nears its goal of 80 channels needed to launch a US service offering. We expect to secure the remaining channels and launch this service during the first quarter of 2013.
"We continue to partner with leading service organizations that will be able to help us rapidly penetrate the US market with our new content offerings. In February 2012, we signed an exclusive marketing and distribution agreement with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and became the sole broadcaster of the first ever US-based Greek Orthodox television channel, GOTelecomTV. This relationship gives us access to more than 1.5 million members in the USA and Canada. In May 2012, we formed a marketing partnership focused on the development a new Arabic Entertainment Services division. We expect to launch a 20+ Arabic package in February 2013 aimed at the sizeable and rapidly growing Arabic speaking population in the Americas."
Capital market support and positive cash flow on the horizon.
"2012 was a year of transition for TVTV, as we continued to aggregate enough content to launch a US cable service. Without the cornerstone US offering yet available, subscription revenues in 2012 were nearly $100,000, an approximate 500% increase over 2011. Greek and Arabic in-language content subscriptions, coupled with other in-language sales commissions, accounted for 100% of this revenue.
"While margins will continue to fluctuate over the near term, we will begin to see improvement in the year ahead as a result of rising subscription sales, especially in our new US service offering, as well as the monetization of commercial air-time inventory. Our ongoing revenue mix shift, the introduction of higher-margin service offerings and products, including the WhereverTV DVR service and multi-device subscriptions, will also improve our chances of reaching profitability.
"Until we achieve greater revenues from content subscriptions, we must obtain additional funding and access capital when prudent and available. In May 2012, we assumed majority control of a public entity via a reverse merger, which included $500,000 in equity financing. The public offering was led by US investors and, for the first time, allowed WhereverTV to raise funds from public markets. Despite this financial support, we believe that our market capitalization has yet to fairly reflect the underlying value of our business and that we will be required to pursue additional funding during 2013. In October 2012, we officially changed the name of the company to WhereverTV Broadcasting Corporation to reflect our corporate focus and our ticker symbol is now TVTV.
"We continue to expect robust revenue growth in 2013 as we launch our featured service aimed at the 110 million US households consuming cable or satellite television services."
The Year Ahead.
Mr. Cavicchia concluded, "In 2013, we will diligently pursue our business plan, which contemplates nearing a cash flow positive on a month over month by the end of 2013. In the short term, however, we expect that our quarterly revenue will remain variable as our revenue mix evolves to include a higher proportion of US subscriptions during the second half of the year.
"We are on track to achieve our long-term objective of becoming the first 'over the top' cable company in the United States. We have tested our platform by launching in-language content offerings over the past eighteen months necessary to attract interest from major US television networks, and are now well-positioned to move into the mainstream US cable subscription market. Our goal is to have at least 30,000 subscribers within the first full year of service.
"I welcome new shareholders and also thank our current shareholders for their confidence and trust. I also thank our employees, partners and distributors for their contributions in our continued growth and success."
Mark A. Cavicchia
Chief Executive Officer
WhereverTV is the next generation subscription television service, providing consumers with programming identical to existing cable & satellite providers. WhereverTV delivers the same channels and events via an over the top (OTT) service platform to single-family, multi-family, high-rises and businesses throughout North America. The Company's platform downlinks, encodes and broadcasts linear television programming cross the Public Internet to Connected Televisions, Blu-ray players, set top boxes, tablet PCs, laptops, and smartphones. The WhereverTV platform manages broadcast rights across geographies and provides individual customer viewing experiences based on customer locations (geo-targeting) and content-rights management (subscriptions).
This news release contains forward-looking statements, which may not be based on historical facts. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results events or developments to be materially different from any future results, events or developments expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors should be considered carefully and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Except as required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any obligation to update any such factors or to publicly announce the results of any revisions to any of the forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect future results, events or developments.
