Synacor said it has renewed and expanded its deal with Media Communications.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but Synacor said the new deal extends its existing portal and advertising agreement and expands Mediacom’s use of Advanced Cloud ID, Synacor’s identity management and authentication platform that will enable Mediacom to use apps tied to their pay TV subscription without having to repeatedly enter user names and passwords.  

RELATED: Synacor Cracks Down on Password Abuse  

Mediacom has also reupped its agreement to use Synacor’s Zimbra email and collaboration platform. Synacor acquired Zimbra in 2015.  

Other Synacor customers from the service provider arena include Service Electric Cablevision, Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, AT&T, HBO, WideOpenWest, Armstrong Cable, Atlantic Broadband, CenturyLink Cable One, Cincinnati Bell, Mediacom Communications, Verizon, GCI, Hotwire, Charter Communications, Windstream, and Grande Communications, among others. 

Synacor posted record revenues in Q4, but shareholders punished the company’s stock as revenues from the company’s portal deal with AT&T aren’t scaling up as quickly as originally anticipated.

RELATED: Synacor Shares Soar 119% on AT&T Deal

The situation with AT&T isn’t new, as Synacor announced last August that revenues linked to its portal agreement with AT&T would be delayed into 2018. When the deal was announced in May 2016, the original expectation was that revenues from the contract would reach about $100 million per year following full deployment that, at the time, was seen starting in 2017.

In the last three quarters of 2017, Synacor generated about $25 million in revenue from the AT&T deal, as AT&T has chosen, for the near term, to prioritize consumer experience and engagement, Himesh Bhise, Synacor’s CEO, said on the earnings call, noting that Synacor’s 2018 guidance reflects the annualized 2017 run rate.

For full year 2018, Synacor expects revenues of $150 million to $155, or growth in the range of 7% to 11%, and a net loss of $4.4 million to $8.6 million.

“Clearly, this forecast is below the $100 million annual revenue target that AT&T and Synacor announced when we first discussed the portal contract and was a critical element of Synacor's $300 million 2019 target,” Bhise said, but stressed that the agreement still “reflects market validation of the quality of our platform and enables us to continue to advance our products with one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies.”

UPDATE:Synacor shares closed Friday at $1.75 each, down 30 cents, or 14.63%.

But progress is still being made, as the ATT.net portal is engaging “millions of customers every month,” and Synacor and AT&T have collaborated on the launch of more than 35 microsites that promote AT&T services and drive traffic to ATT.net, Bhise said.

And despite the slower than expected growth from the AT&T engagement, Synacor posted Q4 revenues of $46 million, up 32% from the year-ago, marking a quarterly record for the company. That was driven in part by growth in Synacor’s publisher advertising and software businesses, Bhise said.

Synacor also announced that it has expanded its authentication authorization deal with HBO to also include HBO Now (the programmer’s direct-to-consumer OTT subscription service), complementing earlier work with HBO Go, its TV Everywhere product.

Synacor said WideOpenWest has teamed with the vendor on a new customer portal that ties into a renewed and expanded deal between the companies.

The new portal includes some security updates and easier access to video across different devices.

Under the updated deal, Synacor’s relationship continues to cover the portal, advertising and email services, and also includes an “advanced” Cloud ID platform that aims to simplify WOW’s TV Everywhere login experience – once a user is signed into an app, all other participating provider apps on a connected TV or mobile device will automatically log the customer in.

Synacor also posted Q3 revenues of $36.3 million, up 14% year-on year, with search and advertising up 23%, a figure that includes the addition of revenues coming way of Synacor’s portal services deal with AT&T.

Q3 net income was $300,000, versus a net loss of $3.3 million in the year-ago quarter.

Shares in Synacor were down more than 27% Thursday morning, the day after the company said revenues linked to its portal agreement with AT&T will be delayed into 2018.

“The joint AT&T-Synacor team has decided to focus on engagement over monetization…so we anticipate that the ramp up in revenue that we were expecting towards the end of this year will get delayed to 2018,” Himesh Bhise, Synacor’s CEO, said Wednesday on the company’s Q2 earnings call.

As a result of the delay, Synacor revised its full year 2017 revenue guidance to a range of $140 million to $150 million, down from a previous range of $160 million to $170 million. It’s also expecting a full year 2017 net loss of $9.3 million to $13.9 million, from a previous range of a net loss of $2.8 million to $8.0 million.

Shares in Synacor were down 98 cents (27.65%) to $2.57 in morning trading Thursday.

Update: Shares of Synacor closed Thursday down $1.15 (32.39%), to $2.40 each.

Synacor announced the AT&T deal last May, noting that expected revenues from the contract were expected to be about $100 million per year following full product deployment, which, at the time,  was seen starting in 2017.

RELATED: Synacor Shares Soar 119% on AT&T Deal

The latest revelation is another bump in the road. Last November, Synacor said it and AT&T had agreed to push back the launch of a next-gen desktop and mobile portal service to the first half of 2017.

Despite the shift in timing, “the AT&T portal product implementation, rollout and migration have been completed as planned and engagement metrics look strong,” Bhise said. “We worked with AT&T to successfully roll out the new ATT.net portal across the country and completed the migration of the installed base of desktop, mobile, and tablet users to the new experience. We are particularly pleased to see the customer satisfaction ratings across the various facets of the new ATT.net are increasing towards pre-migration levels.”

Bhise also stressed that, despite the decision to prioritize experience and engagement, “we are monetizing today” with AT&T.

“The AT&T team and the Synacor teams are working extremely well together and so given the nature of that relationship, given the size and strategic presence of AT&T, I’m very comfortable making sure that this is the right long-term relationship for us and then,” Bhise said.

Likewise, he said Synacor remains committed to its “3/30/300” plan, which anticipates $300 million of revenue, $30 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2019.

Synacor today announced that it has expanded its partnership with Alaska’s GCI, noting that the new multi-year deal includes an upgrade to Synacor’s hosted email platform and the deployment of the vendor’s Advanced Cloud ID platform to streamline the log-in experience on connected TVs and mobile devices. That latter effort will let users access authenticated video content across devices without having to enter passwords repeatedly.

Synacor posted a Q2 net loss of $3.3 million on revenues of $31.2 million, up 2% from the year-ago quarter. It ended the quarter with $23 million in cash and cash equivalents, a number that includes $20 million raised in April 2017 from an equity offering.

Synacor has expanded its relationship with Windstream in the form of a multi-year agreement to provide hosted email for the service provider.

Financial terms were not announced, but the hosted agreement also includes email monetization via way of advertising. The agreement also broadens Synacor’s deal with Windstream, which has already been a portal customer of Synacor’s.

The Windstream deal also expands Synacor’s email and messaging business. Synacor acquired Zimbra, a provider of open source-based email, messaging and collaboration software, in 2015.

RELATED: Synacor Snares Zimbra

Notably, Windstream is outsourcing its email needs to Synacor as another major ISP, Verizon, shifts gears. As reported last week, Verizon is closing down its email business, but, as part of the transition, will provide its broadband customers with an option to retain their Verizon.net email addresses via AOL, which Verizon acquired in mid-2015, or shift to a different provider such as Google, Yahoo or Live Mail. Verizon, which acknowledged that there are “more capable email platforms out there,” is also in the process of acquiring certain Yahoo Internet assets, so it will soon have two major email platforms at its disposal.

RELATED: Verizon Dropping Its Email Business

Himesh Bhise, Synacor’s CEO, said there are still major synergies between email and portal products, as together they drive engagement, traffic and monetization.

“Rumors of the demise of email are greatly exaggerated,” he said, noting that it’s still a key tool for marketing, advertising, and customer retention. “Fundamentally, it’s going to continue to be an important platform.”

Bhise said Synacor won about 300 new small and medium business contracts for the licensing of Zimbra’s email software. Bhise also estimates that Synacor has about 500 million mailboxes on Zimbra’s platform worldwide.

As for future email-facing growth, he sees it coming from both consumer ISP and enterprise segments through direct sales and via Synacor’s reseller channels.

In a recent whitepaper focused on the email business, Synacor holds that ISPs should view inactive email accounts “as the lowest hanging of all potential fruit -- they have already walked through your door, you just have to turn on the lights and give them more of a reason to stick around.”

Synacor also believes that it’s not too late to drive consumer usage of ISP email, despite the popularity of “free” email services from sources such as Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail.