Post-acquisition, new SeaChange CEO expects better year ahead
Courtesy of SeaChange International
Jay Samit, who joined SeaChange International as CEO this fall, said the video software company is "out of the woods" after a tough year for earnings and looking ahead to growth in 2015.
(UPDATED at 10:11 a.m.) The average viewer has little concept of how the content they’re watching on television—and, increasingly, on a tablet or iPhone—is delivered. But they expect a seamless viewing experience.
That’s the paradigm of media consumption today, and it’s one that SeaChange International of Acton is counting on as it positions itself to maintain an edge delivering custom video software to video content producers all over the world.
Industry veteran Samit seeks to meet millennial expectations
Leading the charge is Jay Samit, SeaChange’s new CEO, who joined the company in the fall. In an interview Wednesday, Samit said he has dedicated his career to developing technology that syncs video on demand across multiple screens, which today is an expectation among millennial viewers, who often begin watching a movie or show on an iPad, then switch to another device, like a smartphone, expecting they can pick up where they left off.
“When you think about it, that’s how you live your life today,” said Samit, a business blogger for the Wall Street Journal online who worked most recently as president at ooVoo, a social video chat service with more than 100 million users, and has also held senior executive roles with Sony and EMI, where he spearheaded their digital media efforts.
Samit hit the ground running, with SeaChange’s acquisition of Santa Monica, Calif.-based Timeline Labs announced in December, less than two months after his hiring was announced. Samit said that acquisition, which is expected to close Feb. 2, is “a way to leverage (SeaChange’s) skills and add functions major clients were asking for.”
Company expects turnaround after year of losses
Timeline has figured out how to use social media to improve broadcasting and accurately measure who is watching what. That allows advertisers to better gauge the market on which they spend more than $100 billion annually, according to Samit. The company expects to maintain all Timeline employees and operations in Santa Monica.
Breaking new ground through an acquisition is symbolic of SeaChange’s high hopes for the coming years. This follows what former CEO Raghu Rau called a “transitional year” when the company in April posted a $3 million loss for fiscal 2014—and lost $19.2 million the previous year. Year-over-year losses continued through the third quarter, which ended Oct. 31, but according to an earnings statement, SeaChange officials predicted a turnaround in the fourth quarter, which ends Jan. 31.
Samit reiterated that optimism this week, saying that though sales of the 21-year-old company’s legacy products declined more rapidly than anticipated when it announced it was developing next-generation software a few years ago. But the product has been well received and, today, legacy sales generate less than 50 percent of SeaChange’s sales revenue.
“We’re through the woods and onto a really great year,” Samit said.
(Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the percentage of revenue generated by legacy sales.)
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