SeaChange International’s position at Liberty Global and the competitive OTT threat posed by MLB Advanced Media were among the hotter topics on the multiscreen video tech company’s fourth quarter call on Thursday morning.

SeaChange, whose product line include its Nucleus software for set-tops and gateways and its Adrenalin multiscreen video backoffice, among others, took a cautious tone with respect to growth activity  in general and, in particular, with Liberty Global.

“I want to be as conservative as possible, because we do not control when Liberty expands and announces their expansions and takes down more licenses [for Nucleus],” SeaChange CEO Jay Samit said in response to a suggestion from an analyst that guidance (SeaChange expects first quarter revenues to be in the range of $22 million to $24 million) showed that SeaChange isn’t seeing a lot of momentum in Nucleus or Adrenalin. “It’s baked, it’s running great, it's doing phenomenal in Poland, but I do not control that timing. So to bake that into our numbers we know it will be a slow build quarter-by-quarter. This isn’t a back-ended year or some big hockey stick year.”

But he does expect another “significant decline in our legacy products,” offset by new design wins for Adrenalin and Nucleus.

Samit also addressed opportunities for Rave, its new software-as-a-service for premium OTT video platform, noting that SeaChange is responding to RFPs, just completed a Rave trial with a telco, and is in a trial with a long-standing customer of its previous-gen Axiom VOD backoffice platform. BBC Worldwide and Algar Telecom of Brazil are among SeaChange’s known Rave customers.

“We’re getting the calls from all the right customers,” Samit said, but acknowledged that he doesn’t expect Rave to “translate into GAAP for this year.”

With respect to Rave, SeaChange was also asked to address the general OTT competitive landscape, including some recent momentum by MLB Advanced Media, which includes some work with HBO and the premium programmer's Internet video products, including its new stand-alone service, HBO Now. 

SeaChange, Samit said, is “dealing with a number of major media companies out there and we're not running across MLB, except in Wall Street Journal articles. They have got great technology, but they haven't set themselves up yet to really handle being in the service business, and that's one of our great advantages in that.”

On the financial front, SeaChange posted a fiscal fourth quarter net loss of $6.1 million (19 cents  per share), on revenues of $31.3 million, versus $35.6 million in the year-ago quarter. Analysts were expecting a loss of 4 cents per share.

SeaChange shares closed down $1.05 (13.13%) to $6.95 each on Thursday.

SeaChange International, the video software and services specialist, announced Monday that it will reduce its global employee base by 10% as part of an effort to streamline operations that will result in annualized cost savings of about $11 million when the process is completed.

SeaChange said it implemented the workforce reduction in the U.S. and, in order to comply with non-U.S. legal requirements, will implement the moves on an international basis “over the next several fiscal quarters.”

SeaChange did not disclose the number of employees that would be affected. It finished its last fiscal year, ended Jan. 31, 2014, with 723 employees worldwide, including 382 in the U.S.

SeaChange said it also expects those actions to result in restructuring and severance charges of about $1.3 million in its fourth quarter for fiscal 2015. SeaChange is scheduled to report its fourth quarter and full fiscal 2015 results in early April. 

SeaChange, which has become a software-focused company in recent years, is making these moves after building two next-gen products – Adrenalin, its multiscreen video backoffice platform, and Nucleus, a software platform for set-tops and gateways that includes optional support for the Reference Design Kit (RDK), the project being managed by Comcast, Time  Warner Cable and Liberty Global.

Those products are now deployed and in a “mature state,” said SeaChange CEO Jay Samit, who was appointed to the post in October 2014, succeeding Raghu Rau.

Samit said the streamlining was necessary in order to keep SeaChange growing, expand its toolsets and to ensure it’s in a position to innovate.

“Our industry is in a major shift,” he said, referring to a new wave of OTT products from new players and traditional MVPDs, and amid a trend that is seeing more and more programmers develop direct-to-consumer products. “All of these people need our technology.”

Of recent note, SeaChange acquired Timeline Labs last December, adding a California-based firm that helps broadcasters, cable channels and other media companies keep tabs on social trends and track audience engagement.

On the product side, the Acton, Mass.-based vendor has rolled out Rave, a platform targeted to “premium” over-the-top video that relies on Adrenalin. SeaChange also announced that Nucleus will be used by Layer3 TV, an emerging “virtual” MVPD based in Denver that’s expected to launch a product later this year.