Rebecca Day

Bowers & Wilkins and Lenovo partnered a second time on a laptop speaker system, this time for the Lenovo Slim 9i 14-inch PC due in the U.S. in June starting at $1,799. It builds on their relationship developing the Yoga 9i. The four-speaker sound system includes two integrated into the main chassis and two larger mid/bass down-firing speakers mounted in the base, B&W emailed Tuesday. The Slim 9i has a 4K OLED touch-screen display.

As it moves toward a fall separation of its intellectual property licensing and product businesses, Xperi’s focus on the product side is on driving adoption of higher value IPTV solutions to offset subscriber declines in its traditional electronic programming guide business, said CEO Jon Kirchner on a Q1 earnings call Monday.

After two years of COVID-19 impact, artist services and expanded-rights revenue increased 19.5% at Warner Music Group in fiscal Q2 2022, reflecting increases in merchandising and concert promotion revenue, said the company’s Tuesday earnings report. Performance revenue rose 9% “as bars, restaurants, concerts and live events continue to recover from COVID disruption,” said Chief Financial Officer Eric Levin on the company's earnings call. Streaming revenue from emerging platforms grew to $345 million for the quarter ended March 31; digital revenue, 70.1% of the company’s total recorded music revenue, was $931 million, up 8%; physical revenue grew 3.4% on “increasing demand for vinyl,” said CEO Steve Cooper. The music company continued international expansion, acquiring Qanawat Music, a distributor in the Middle East/North Africa market, expanding WMG’s presence in Dubai, Cairo and Casablanca, it said. It also partnered with Bollywood artists in India, where it grew share over the past 24 months, Cooper said. He positioned WMG at the “intersection of gaming, social and entertainment" with brands including Roblox, Fortnite and The Sandbox. An area of incremental revenue is digital fitness: WMG was the music launch partner for Peloton’s gaming-inspired fitness experience, Lanebreak, Cooper said. The company continues to build its presence in podcasting, launching in April Interval Presents, an in-house podcast network covering music, pop culture and social impact. WMG expects music to remain “resilient” amid macroeconomic challenges, Levin said. In video streaming, people generally subscribe to multiple services, he said, vs. audio where they generally subscribe to one service with their music aggregated in one place. Levin called digital music a very “fairly priced, if not even low-priced, high-value service that's central to people's lives.” Shares hit a 52-week low Tuesday at $25.35 before closing 5.46% down at $25.78.

An overabundance of content is a strength and a curse of the streaming TV market, said panelists on a Parks Associates Future of Video virtual webinar Thursday. “You have to connect consumers to the content they want," said Kamran Lotfi, Gracenote vice president-product management, citing data saying 46% of consumers say it’s hard to find content they want to watch.

About a quarter of trade shows that CEDIA Expo owner Emerald Holding plans to stage in 2022 “will likely exceed pre-pandemic revenue,” said CEO Herve Sedky on a Q1 earnings call Monday. Emerald, hard hit by cancellation of in-person trade shows during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, reported holding 31 in-person events during the quarter, drawing 5,700 exhibitors and 141,000 attendees.

Convergence in its remote control and home automation businesses has a lot of revenue potential for Universal Electronics, Inc., said CEO Paul Arling on the company’s Q1 earnings call Thursday. The company has launched a couple of HVAC, security and home automation products in “small quantities,” and that will ramp over this year into next, he said.

Dolby Q1 results were above the midpoint of revenue guidance at $334.4 million, but the company lowered Q2 guidance to reflect the impact of “lower estimated TV, gaming and automotive shipments for the year,” said CEO Kevin Yeaman on the company’s Q2 FY ’22 earnings call Thursday.

Fubo’s late March price increase for its base package, to $69.99 a month, didn’t factor into its lower subscriber guidance for the year, said CEO David Gandler on a Thursday Q1 earnings call, citing seasonality instead. The $5 monthly increase should drive the bulk of fuboTV’s 2022 revenue growth, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter wrote investors Friday.

Shopify said Thursday it agreed to acquire fulfillment technology provider Deliverr for $2.1 billion. Deliverr’s logistics network serves over a million orders per month for thousands of U.S. merchants, it said. “While adding Deliverr this year will impact profitability in 2022, it's well worth it because it accelerates our ambitions around” Shopify Fulfillment Network, said President Harley Finkelstein on the quarterly earnings call. Deliverr’s software, talent, data and scale will enable SFN to give merchants more control of their inventory across sales channels, Shopify said. Shopify shares hit a 52-week low Thursday at $395.86 before closing at $413.09, down 14.91%, after it projected lower first-half revenue growth vs. 2021. As consumers began returning in February to travel, dining out and shopping in stores, explosive growth in online shopping “moderated,” said Finkelstein. For Q1, revenue grew 22% to $1.2 billion vs. 110% growth in the year-ago quarter. Shopify’s gross merchandise value in Q1 last year jumped 114%, said Chief Financial Officer Amy Shapero, noting the 2021 surge in online shopping due to COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and stimulus. Also affecting results were inflation, which pushed more consumer spending online and offline toward discount retailers, she said. Shapero said a comparable number of merchants will join Shopify’s platform this year based on what the company saw in Q1, resulting in fewer merchant adds than last year due to “a tight and transitional labor market.” Finkelstein also referenced Shopify’s Shop Promise that will show two-day and one-day delivery promises on merchants' online stores and across social media. On Shopify’s reaction to Amazon’s extension of Prime delivery to third-party merchants, CEO Tobi Lutke said Shopify is “actually thrilled” that Amazon wants to share its infrastructure with small merchants across the internet. Whatever leads to more entrepreneurship “helps the vision of a company,” Lutke said. Shopify tools can help small businesses manage complex retail strategies, he said.

IRobot cut full-year revenue guidance in its Wednesday Q1 earnings report on stunted growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. CEO Colin Angle cited higher inflation and lower consumer confidence in Europe and elsewhere stemming from the Russia-Ukraine war.