TiVo is in advanced negotiations to be sold to Rovi, according to The New York Times.
The talks are said to be “advanced,” but “he negotiations were at a sensitive stage and it is still possible a deal could falter.”
The deal would merge TiVo and Rovi, which is one of the largest owners of patents for digital entertainment devices. Shareholders of TiVo would receive a combination of cash and stock.
The past few months, developments at TiVo are are moving fast, with a new chief financial officer and interim CEO Naveen Chopra, and the recent news of the laying off of 50 people.
Activist investor Glenn W. Welling of Engaged Capital successfully won two seats on the board of Rovi last year. Since then, he aggressively pushed the company to revaluate its strategy and pressed it to seek a merger with TiVo.
Since March 2015 Welling has been conducting a campaign against what it sees as the waste of shareholder money on “baseless, outrageous and recycled claims”. The EPG developer and patent holder Rovi has attempted a series of court actions in the UK – cablenet Virgin proudly claiming to have fought off ten such attempts. A number of actions have also been brought against Ziggo in the Netherlands. Rovi lost most of these cases.
