Sirius XM Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 1, 2025
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Operator

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

Operator

It is now my pleasure to introduce Hooper Stevens, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Finance. Thank you, Hooper. You may begin.

Hooper Stevens
Hooper Stevens
Senior Vice President & Head of Investor Relations at Sirius XM

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to SiriusXM's first quarter twenty twenty five earnings conference call. Today, we will have prepared remarks from Jennifer Witz, our Chief Executive Officer and Tom Barry, our Chief Financial Officer Scott Greenstein, our President and Chief Content Officer and Wayne Thorson, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, will join Jennifer and Tom to take your questions during the Q and A portion of this call. I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during the call might be forward looking statements as the term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These and all forward looking statements are based upon management's current beliefs and expectations and necessarily depend upon assumptions, data or methods that may be incorrect or imprecise.

Hooper Stevens
Hooper Stevens
Senior Vice President & Head of Investor Relations at Sirius XM

Such forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For more information about those risks and uncertainties, please use SiriusXM's SEC filings and today's earnings release. We advise listeners to not rely unduly on forward looking statements and disclaim any intent or obligation to update them. As we begin, I'd like to remind our listeners that today's call will include discussions about both actual results and adjusted results. All discussions of adjusted operating results exclude the effects of stock based compensation.

Hooper Stevens
Hooper Stevens
Senior Vice President & Head of Investor Relations at Sirius XM

Additionally, we have posted a supplementary presentation on our Investor Relations website for your convenience. With that, I'll hand the call over to Jennifer.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Thanks, Hooper, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Q1 marked our first full quarter since unveiling our new strategic direction and sharpened focus on super serving our core in car audience at SiriusXM. We are already seeing early benefits from these efforts as reflected in our solid first quarter results. Given our momentum and despite broadening economic uncertainty, we're pleased to confidently reiterate our full year guidance today.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Across the business, we remain dedicated to our three key pillars enhancing our subscription business with a keen eye toward our in car leadership, leveraging the strength of our advertising business across our portfolio and optimizing efficiencies to deliver both cost reductions and higher returns. Diving into the first quarter, our subscription business delivered strong results with solid year over year improvement in self pay net adds driven by positive trends within our in car business which offset an expected reduction in streaming net adds. We saw reduced in car churn largely due to lower cancel demand and non pay despite the full price rate increase we implemented in early March and signs of declining U. S. Consumer confidence.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Even in the face of economic uncertainty, our business remains resilient buoyed by our industry leading customer satisfaction and the essential nature of our service to our core subscriber base. Underpinning everything we do is the unique live and human curated content we offer our subscribers, which fuels fandom and the must hear moments that happen on our air every day. Our coverage of and presence at every major sporting event from the Super Bowl to March Madness and our exclusive music channels including pop ups curated by the biggest artists such as Lady Gaga bring fans closer to what they love. Additionally, our wide variety of news and politics programming where we're seeing double digit listenership growth and our new talk programming including the launch of shows featuring Alex Cooper's Unwell and Page Six deliver value to our subscribers that they simply cannot get on any other service. We will continue to leverage the power of our extensive live and on demand catalog as we look to both showcase our value to current subscribers and introduce new listeners to our portfolio.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Our efforts to add more value across our packages are paying off. Many of our subscribers are now enjoying the additional channels and programming newly included in their plans and time spent listening in our app where we offer even more content has increased year over year among in car customers. We believe this led to the better than expected reaction to our rate increase which impacted virtually all Full Price plans as we experienced minimal churn impact. We have also made progress rolling out our new in car pricing and packaging structure. This strategy along with additional actions taken last year has reduced our reliance on discounted promotional pricing at acquisition while improving price transparency, building brand trust and driving our highest quarterly customer satisfaction on record.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

New programs launched over the past several months including Tesla, enhancements to our used car owner data and our multi year OEM subscriptions which continue to expand launching in model year 2026 Ford and Lincoln vehicles later this year also led to improved in car acquisition in the first quarter compared to last year. These programs give us confidence our strategy is working as we continue to unlock opportunities to grow within our core audience segments. We are committed to ensuring we provide the right offerings for our customers and are focused on both enhancing the value of our higher priced tiers and introducing additional options for more price conscious listeners. This includes the launch of an ad supported subscription featuring a compelling subset of our music and talk programming which will open up a new persistently lower priced option in almost 100,000,000 cars already on the road. The new tier allows us to leverage the strength of our advertising business without putting our more premium tiers at risk.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

The opportunity here also grows as our fleet becomes increasingly IP enabled. We remain on track to have more than half of new SiriusXM equipped cards featuring our 360L product this year, allowing us to further customize offerings for our subscribers across content, marketing and advertising. We plan to begin testing early iterations of this new subscription in the coming months enabling us to hone the offering and bring to market the strongest package. This is another way we are working to showcase the value of our service to potential subscribers, building upon the work we've done to date with both free access, which continues to expand and our free to air events, which included Chris Stapleton Radio broadcasting free to all SiriusXM radios throughout February. On the topic of advertising, ad revenue was mostly flat as compared to the same quarter in 2024.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

While we are closely watching day to day changes in the marketplace, the flexibility and broad reach of our offering allows us to meet the evolving needs of today's advertisers. This is best represented by the launch of our Creator Connect solution, which allows marketers to tap into creators' audiences across audio, video and social. In the first quarter alone, we have already outpaced our full year 2024 bookings for social and video and see this as a continued growth driver. In Q1, our podcasting revenue was up 33% year over year. Our podcast network clocked close to 1,000,000,000 downloads across audio and video in the first quarter and we now reach an audience of 70,000,000 monthly podcast listeners.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Our expertise in monetizing digital ad supported music within Pandora provides a strong basis for the opportunity ahead as we look to expand SiriusXM advertising. The ability to deliver audiences across broadcast, streaming and podcast inclusive of video and social makes us a unique one stop shop for marketers and we are continuing to invest in ad tech solutions to make it easier for advertisers to buy, plan and measure across all three. At a corporate level, we remain committed to optimizing the business and driving efficiencies. In addition to ongoing cost actions, we are testing a variety of new initiatives for savings and growth. We continue to see strong potential in areas such as AI, where we're leveraging the latest technologies to improve the customer experience, our marketing and our ads business.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

In closing, while we are watching the shifting economic forces closely, we are pleased with our first quarter results and continue to have confidence in our full year guidance today as well as in our ability to deliver meaningful value to consumers across our business in the quarters to come. With that, I'll pass it over to Tom.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

Thank you, Jennifer, and good morning, everyone. As Jennifer mentioned, we entered 2025 with clear priorities. Our first quarter performance reflects our disciplined execution and steady progress across the business. Despite the headline driven market uncertainty, we delivered strong margins, returned capital to our shareholders and advanced our strategic initiatives that will position us for a strong 2025. Before I dive into the quarter, let me address tariffs and the uncertainty surrounding new auto sales impact on our business.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

Big picture, we sleep well at night. We have modeled multiple scenarios and we do not expect any material tariff related impact to our subscriber results this year. Thanks to our robust recurring revenue model, increased penetration in the used car market and enhanced trial capture rates compared to past auto sales downturns, we believe we have built a resilient buffer against any potential reduction in new car sales. Looking at OpEx on the equipment side, we do not manufacture hardware for automakers. Any tariff exposure is largely indirect and limited to components sourced by automakers or their suppliers.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

So far, the impact on our OpEx has been negligible, though we continue to monitor the broader supply chain. And of course, we are also watching overall consumer health and its impact on discretionary spending. To date, our strong churn performance suggests no meaningful change in consumer behavior, but we're staying vigilant and tracking trends closely. Looking at the first quarter, total revenue was $2,070,000,000 down 4% from a year ago, reflecting modest subscriber declines as we lap our toughest ARPU comp of the year, along with softer advertising trends across both of our segments. Net income was $2.00 $4,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA totaled $629,000,000 down 3% from prior year with margins consistent year over year at 30%.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

Free cash flow is $56,000,000 down from $88,000,000 in the prior year period, primarily driven by timing of payments, lower cash receipts and higher capital expenditures, partially offset by the elimination of Liberty related deal costs. On the cost side, we began the year focused on achieving our $200,000,000 run rate savings target by the end of twenty twenty five. So far, we've reduced costs by over $30,000,000 contributing to lower expenses across marketing, product and tech, transmission, customer service and G and A. Sales and marketing expenses were down 19%, driven by more streamlined media mix and tighter campaign execution. Product and technology expenses declined 15% and G and A decreased three reflecting our continued emphasis on operational efficiency and disciplined cost management.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

Turning to the segments. In the SiriusXM segment, we generated $1,600,000,000 in revenue, a 5% decline year over year, primarily driven by lower subscriber and equipment revenue. Subscriber revenue declined 5%, reflecting a smaller average self pay base and lower ARPU, and equipment revenue fell 18% driven by changes in chipset costs and OEM production schedules. In this segment, gross profit was $937,000,000 representing a strong 59% margin, down modestly from 60% last year. Self pay net subscriber losses totaled $303,000 reflecting a 16% year over year improvement.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

Churn improved 18 basis points, rounding to 1.6% in the first quarter and was a key contributor to our improved subscriber results. We saw improvements in all three broad categories we track, vehicle related, non pay and voluntary churn. We have successfully managed the recent price increases across virtually all of our full price plans with minimal churn impact thus far and are continuing to reshape our pricing structure to better satisfy demand at various price points. We continue to anticipate a slightly improving trend in our core in car net additions for the full year. But as discussed on our last earnings call, our full year results will likely include a couple of hundred thousand of additional drag from reduced streaming only marketing, churn pull forward related to the implementation of click to cancel and shorter introductory self pay promotional plans.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

ARPU in the quarter was $14.86 and while down 3% year over year, we expect year over year comparisons to become more favorable as the year progresses. Subscriber acquisition costs were $100,000,000 up 11% over previous year's quarter, driven contractual changes with certain automakers focused on improving penetration rates and higher chipset costs. SAC per installation was $18.86 further increased by the timing related pullback in module production. Turning to the Pandora and off platform segment, revenue declined 2% year over year to $487,000,000 reflecting macro pressure in the digital ad market. Advertising totaled $355,000,000 down 2% on that pressure, partially offset by continued growth in podcast monetization and revenue.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

To provide more color on the advertising business, we're seeing the most softness in the travel, auto and retail sectors. Categories tend to be early indicators of shifts in consumer sentiment. Broader economic uncertainty, including concerns about tariffs has driven more spending towards short term performance driven marketing channels. At the same time, we're seeing pockets of strength in sectors like pharma and telco, which have helped offset some of the broader weakness. Big picture, we continue to see strong opportunities to invest in our ads business, particularly across high growth areas like podcasting, programmatic capabilities and emerging video formats.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

Subscription revenue in the Pandora and off platform segment remained relatively flat and the segment's gross profit totaled $139,000,000 for the quarter, maintaining a 29% margin consistent with last year's first quarter. Looking at CapEx, spending for the quarter totaled $189,000,000 As previously communicated, we continue to expect non SAC CapEx to remain in the $450,000,000 to $500,000,000 range for 2025, boosted by repeater and broadcast infrastructure replacements and partially offset by lower IT spending. Lastly, during the quarter, we returned $116,000,000 to stockholders, including $91,000,000 in dividends and $25,000,000 through share repurchases. We ended the first quarter with a trailing net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of approximately 3.8 times and continue to prioritize a balanced approach to capital allocation. Our long term leverage ratio target remains in the low to mid three times range.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

We remain focused on maintaining financial flexibility and taking a smart consistent approach to capital deployment. Finally, we are reaffirming our 2025 full year guidance, approximately $8,500,000,000 in revenue, dollars 2,600,000,000.0 in adjusted EBITDA and $1,150,000,000 in free cash flow. This reflects the company's continued confidence in our strong operational execution and cost management. Backed by robust free cash flow, continued operational efficiencies and disciplined strategic investments, we feel great about our ability to generate long term sustainable value for shareholders across a variety of economic environments. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator for Q and A.

Operator

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. Our first question is from the line of Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan.

Sebastiano Petti
Sebastiano Petti
Senior Research Analyst at JP Morgan

Just

Sebastiano Petti
Sebastiano Petti
Senior Research Analyst at JP Morgan

thinking about the full year guide, Tom, you sounded pretty confident in the levers in the business cost cutting opportunity. Just help us think about there's no tariff impact, as you guys mentioned on the call. The price increase is now fully baked. ARPU comps are getting easier for the year and cost efforts are beginning to scale. Margins in the first quarter were flat year over year.

Sebastiano Petti
Sebastiano Petti
Senior Research Analyst at JP Morgan

The guide implies 140 basis contraction. Why isn't there upside to the 2025 EBITDA guide? What are we missing here? And then as we're thinking about the impact of digital, you reiterated a couple of hundred thousand impact from click to cancel as well as the turn off of the digital dialing back marketing efforts there. Can you perhaps maybe size the quantum of the digital loss within the first quarter as we're kind of thinking about it?

Sebastiano Petti
Sebastiano Petti
Senior Research Analyst at JP Morgan

Because I think previous comments were first half is perhaps weaker year over year before improving in the back half of the year in terms of the self pay net add cadence. So just wanted to make sure if that's still the right way to think about it. Thank you again.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Tom, you want to pick up the EBITDA?

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

Yes. So Sebastiano, when you look at the overall EBITDA, we've had a lot of moving pieces in there. There's obviously, when you look at the revenue side and against the cost savings initiatives, we're on course ending Q1. I mean, I think we've done pretty well as far as where we positioned the business. And I think the cost savings will continue along the line, and we're obviously heavily focused on maintaining the margin for the full year.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

So when you look at the numbers, I think we feel comfortable with how the numbers roll up right now. And I think there's not a lot of changes. We have some things moving back and forth. The cost savings are on target, like I said in the script. I think we feel pretty good as far as where EBITDA is positioned right now.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Yes. Think the guidance is, was designed very thoughtfully as you can imagine to take into account trends on subs, revenue and cost savings. And as Tom mentioned, there is going to be continued improvement on the cost side heading towards this $200,000,000 run rate exiting 2025 savings number. We also had some impacts in the first quarter of lower sales and marketing that we may choose to reinvest later in the year. We did discuss in earlier comments about the launch of low cost with ads and so there could be some reinvestment of some of those savings later in the year.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

But the biggest opportunity for upside relative to the guidance likely is in costs overall. And then on your question about click to cancel, so that doesn't go into place across The U. S. Until two weeks from now. We do have it implemented across a number of states and so we have some expectation about the impact of that.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

That's been that's embedded in our current numbers. And obviously, we had very strong churn performance in the first quarter, and it's included in that. And we do think that rolling it across The U. S. Will have incremental impact on churn this year.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

It's one of the three things we highlighted as having an impact on net adds this year beyond what's going on in the core. In the core, we would expect net adds to actually improve year over year, but for these three impacts of click to cancel, the streaming, net add reduction and the pull forward from using shorter term promotions post conversion in trial in car. So the first quarter we did say, if your question is really about streaming net adds, the first quarter streaming net adds were negative and that was offset by better, so lower losses on the in car side of the business. And again, we feel really good about the subscriber trend line that we've talked about and overall guidance for the year.

Sebastiano Petti
Sebastiano Petti
Senior Research Analyst at JP Morgan

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kakamura with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

Kutgun Maral
Director at Evercore ISI

Good morning and thanks for taking the questions. SiriusXM subscriber result showed quite a healthy improvement compared to last year. I think churn specifically was very encouraging. And what's out to me was that non pay and voluntary were both lower year over year. And you noted that there's been minimal impact so far following the recent price ups.

Kutgun Maral
Director at Evercore ISI

I'm I'm not sure what more you can say, but any additional color would be much appreciated because of all the concerns around the macro and competitive backdrops and how we should be thinking about the trends going forward? Thank you.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Sure. We are very encouraged by our first quarter results and just how the metrics have trended even more recently. Obviously, we're watching things like cancel demand, cancel rate on the voluntary side, non pay entry rates, cure rates and demand metrics. And we really haven't seen anything to give us any pause. And I think a lot of it has to do with just our loyal core long term subscriber base where we have been seeing higher satisfaction and value even than ever before and consistently low churn.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

And I think that just decreases some of the potential impact from economics uncertainty on our subscription business. Just internal and external research both confirms very high satisfaction and engagement with our service among our subscribers. We see strength also in our engagement data, which we have more and more of obviously with 360L and listening outside the car through the app, where we saw very healthy engagement in the first quarter. And then again, we just monitor the metrics, but we really haven't seen anything of concern. And this is, of course, even or despite the rate increase that we implemented across full price packages in the first quarter.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

So we really feel good about where we are on the subscription side of the business.

Kutgun Maral
Director at Evercore ISI

That's great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next questions are from the line of Stephen Cahall with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your questions.

Steven Cahall
Steven Cahall
Managing Director, Senior Analyst - Media, Advertising & Cable at Wells Fargo Securities

Thanks. Jennifer, I was wondering if you could give us some more color on your new ad supported tier. So is the subscriber acquisition process there any different versus your current paid tier? And is there any difference in how the COGS work for that in terms of like revenue share and royalties? I guess what I'm trying to get at is, it sounds like this should be EBITDA accretive.

Steven Cahall
Steven Cahall
Managing Director, Senior Analyst - Media, Advertising & Cable at Wells Fargo Securities

Is it margin neutral? Is it margin accretive or something different? And how significant maybe could that be this year and next as you start to lean into it a little more? And then maybe just another one on the self pay net add outlook. Is there any way to just think about how we tie up all the things that are not related to in car core trends?

Steven Cahall
Steven Cahall
Managing Director, Senior Analyst - Media, Advertising & Cable at Wells Fargo Securities

So between click to cancel, the promo impact and the streaming only impact, are we talking kind of single digit hundreds of thousands of subs? Is it bigger or smaller than that? We just kind of love to understand that. And is that pretty much done after this year and then we don't have to worry about those things from 2026 on or do those linger? Thank you.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

I'll start with your second question, Steven, on just the three things. So the way we've been talking about it is that just without them, it would be we would be better year over year in terms of self pay net adds. But the three things we've highlighted that you mentioned result in about a couple hundred thousand incremental negative net adds this year. Some of those we would expect to roll into next year, but clearly something like short term promotions pull forward some churn. So that gets better when you look at year over year comps in 2026.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

And then we believe we have a number of initiatives in place to help improve the trend line. That's certainly our goal for '26, including things like low cost with ads. And I'll let Wayne comment more on it. He's been key to kind of getting this off the ground. But I'm really excited about how the team has rallied around this initiative as we focus on opportunities to really super serve our core in car audience.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

I mean, as you know, the time spent listening in car, 80% of that for 35 years old and up is AMFM and SiriusXM. So we have a real opportunity here to take share from AMFM with the right price points and packages. So Wayne, do want to talk more about that?

Wayne Thorsen
Wayne Thorsen
EVP & COO at Sirius XM

Yes. Thanks. And as you can

Wayne Thorsen
Wayne Thorsen
EVP & COO at Sirius XM

tell we are really excited about this addition to our business. Our plan is to roll this out in the coming months but in a very targeted way so while at the same time testing a few different prices and packages. We're expecting to land in the high single digits in terms of price and as Jennifer noted this is going to be available from the beginning in almost 100,000,000 vehicles and available to all new car trialers. So the addressable opportunity is quite large, but we're going to be using our new marketing capabilities to target in a very thoughtful way on how this is offered and to whom. So the goal here is to offer this to cohorts that we've identified who do not convert as well or who are generally more price sensitive.

Wayne Thorsen
Wayne Thorsen
EVP & COO at Sirius XM

And so the goal here overall is to increase yield in our overall funnel and looking forward to reporting back as we make a little bit more progress.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Yes. And then just to your margin question, yes, our margins are very high as you know, our variable margins across all of our packages and I don't see this as being any different. I would expect it to have more impact next year than this year because we're still in test phase and ramping up later this year.

Operator

Thank you. The next questions are from the line of Jessica Reif Ehrlich with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question. Jessica, your line is live for questions. Perhaps you're muted.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Managing Director at Bank of America Securities

Don't we Sorry. Yes, sorry. Can you hear me now?

Hooper Stevens
Hooper Stevens
Senior Vice President & Head of Investor Relations at Sirius XM

Hi, Jessica. We've got you.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Managing Director at Bank of America Securities

Yes. Okay. So sorry about that. Good morning. So two things.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Managing Director at Bank of America Securities

One, advertising is clearly going to become a more important component of revenue. What changes are you making, if any, to your sales approach, whether it's direct sales, programmatic, etcetera? And then the second thing is just in podcasting. You've made an investment. And can you just talk about how you are monetizing across different platforms, the talent that you have?

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Managing Director at Bank of America Securities

And how much bigger do you hope or plan to get?

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Sure. I'll start, Jessica. First on podcasting, it's one of the larger investments we've made over the last few years and I'm really pleased with how we've executed here. As you know, it supports certainly the ad side of our business, but we also have exclusive content on the SiriusXM side of the business and we've launched the Podcast Plus subscription, is distributed across multiple other channels. But on the ads business, it has the largest impact and you saw the numbers in the first quarter, revenue was up 33 percent.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

So we feel really good about the trend line here. And a lot of that does have to do with selling across channels where creators are pushing their content. So whether that's audio podcasts, video podcasts, video clips or social, we've been able to offer packages to advertisers to extend their reach alongside the creators that they respect and value and ultimately improve their campaign performance. So we've had really strong interest in that among marketers. I don't see that dampening at all given the general environment, which is maybe impacting other parts of the ads business more than podcasting.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

There's just a very strong trend line there. There's of course always more we can do in terms of bringing more self serve solutions and better bringing targeting and measurement into our portfolio so that advertisers can really buy across the portfolio. So going to your first question about our sales approach, direct is still a very significant effort for us. And I think the programmatic we've had long term success with and continue to see strong demand there. It's especially helpful to have our the capabilities there in an environment where marketers might be sort of waiting to deploy budgets.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

And we certainly saw that at the end of the first quarter where programmatic started to rise towards the end of the quarter and continue to see sort of late bookings. So having those capabilities in place is incredibly helpful. But again, there's more we can do to build out self serve capabilities so that we can be more appealing to a broader set of marketers.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Managing Director at Bank of America Securities

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Steven Lachek with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Stephen Laszczyk
Stephen Laszczyk
Vice President at Goldman Sachs

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Jennifer, maybe on pricing, I'm curious if

Stephen Laszczyk
Stephen Laszczyk
Vice President at Goldman Sachs

you could talk a little

Stephen Laszczyk
Stephen Laszczyk
Vice President at Goldman Sachs

bit more about the receptivity you're seeing to some of the pricing increases. It sounds like the value exchange that you pushed down late last year, early this year has really been helping on uptake. And just curious on the back of that how perhaps we should think about the pacing of pricing increases on ARPU throughout the year? And then just to double click on advertising on more of a real time basis, curious what you're hearing from your advertising partners as they settle in here past the first few weeks of tariff volatility? How have trends early into the second quarter compared to what you saw coming out of the first quarter?

Stephen Laszczyk
Stephen Laszczyk
Vice President at Goldman Sachs

Thank you.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Sure. And the rate increase went into place in early March and across our full price packages. And it was anywhere from $1 to $2 depending upon the package as we wanted to align prices with our all in pricing we put in place the middle of last year. So fairly significant for us and we've seen very little negative impact. Of course, it's still early, but we do have majority of our subscribers on monthly plans.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

So it is pretty fully rolled out as we go into the next few months. I think a lot of times we see the reaction when we send the notices out about the rate increase as opposed to when the increase actually goes into effect. And so we have a pretty good read on consumer response. And it is exactly what you mentioned, I believe that has helped us through this, which is we push a lot of value down to those packages in the fall and we actually saw a lot of engagement with that newly added content among those subscribers. So again, feel really good about this.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

I think in terms of the ARPU comps, as we said, first quarter was tough as it just went into place late in the quarter, but we would expect the trend line to get better as we go throughout the year. And then on the ad side, I'll let Tom talk about the categories, but I would just say, it's hard to get a read on it. Clearly, the news changes every day, every week. And I think we're just pleased with the portfolio we have to be able to optimize across broadcast streaming and podcasting and certainly kind of the dynamics on podcasting make us very attractive to marketers overall. You want to talk about the categories?

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

Yes. Morning, Stephen. So looking at the categories, when you look at where we are in ad sales, Jennifer articulated appropriately. I mean, I think the we saw we're seeing we're cautious, but you look at the we had a fairly solid quarter in Q1. We're seeing a little bit of pullback on the travel and the auto and some level of the retail.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

So we are seeing some softness on that side, but we are also seeing strength on the telco side in pharma. So we have a broad portfolio. We are obviously in this period of tariffs and volatility. Our sales team is working hard and trying to react to the market space. So it will be ongoing and we'll continue to press it.

Stephen Laszczyk
Stephen Laszczyk
Vice President at Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you both.

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Barton Crockett with Rosenblatt Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Barton Crockett
Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Okay. Thanks for taking the question. I was wondering if you could maybe elaborate a little bit more on the statement that you don't see real kind of risk from tariff impacts on the car market. I understand the confidence, I'm just wondering if you could unpack, you said you looked at a lot of some scenarios, if you could unpack the scenarios you looked at and how you came to that conclusion. And also, think you were very particular in your verbiage that you don't see an impact this year.

Barton Crockett
Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Is part of this that with your long kind of trials that some of the impact would be pushed into next year? Is that part of it? If you could explain that would be helpful. Thank you.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Sure. I'll start on this one. So I think certainly, as we've seen in the past, with a reduction in car sales, the near term impact is generally less vehicle related churn, right, as our generally subscribers are not trading in cars and therefore canceling their subscription and going on a trial. So that's what we would expect in the near term. And then the question is really how does the how to lower auto sales, if that's truly what happens, continue in the future years, right?

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

So what's the trend line? And if there was a very long term notable reduction in auto sales, then I would be more concerned for the business. But our expectation is that new car sales, if there is a reduction, will be in part offset by used car sales. We have a very strong representation of used car sales in our funnel. We've added data partners to help us identify when those cars trade hands and we're able to increasingly offer trials and we've seen that materialize and have been better gross adds essentially in our business.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

And so I think from a subscriber standpoint, there could be some near term positives and then maybe some slight longer term negatives financially without the SAC, it will be positive. But in general, we would believe that the new car sales reduction would be in part offset by used. Even without that, we still have high confidence in the financial and subscriber metrics for this year and likely next year as well.

Barton Crockett
Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Okay. And if I could just follow-up, I'm just curious if you could elaborate a little bit more on what you're hearing right now from your automaker partners in terms of things are very fluid. If you could give us any more recent update on what you're hearing from them in terms of their expectations for new car sales and the possibility of an offset from used car offsetting some of the new car pressure potentially?

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

I mean, we're hearing, I think what you're hearing just the public statements and obviously the I guess April SAAR will come out later today I believe, but March was There's been a lot of pull forward in terms of consumers buying ahead of an expectation of perhaps price increases. So I think we're watching the public news as much as you are and obviously it continues to evolve. But again, I think some pull forward also offsets any potential negative that might happen over the course of the year.

Barton Crockett
Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next and final question is from Cameron Manson Parum with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Cameron Mansson-Perrone
Cameron Mansson-Perrone
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Thank you. One follow-up just on price hike, pretty encouraging churn result in conjunction with that. Jennifer, I'd be curious to hear, should we expect looking beyond 2025, should we expect still that you continue kind of in every other year cadence to price taking? Or does the response among the subscriber base this quarter recently changed the way you're thinking about kind of the broader pricing philosophy longer term? And then for Tom, you're pretty clear that tariffs, you don't expect to have any impact on OpEx base subs, but I'd be curious, I'm assuming for your satellite contracts, those are largely contracted, but for the non sat CapEx, any thoughts on risk or not to any tariff impact there?

Cameron Mansson-Perrone
Cameron Mansson-Perrone
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Thank you.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

So I'll start on pricing. Our goal is kind of every other year and we will continue to evaluate that. There may be opportunities to take price on certain packages, but not all of them, so that there's some form of a price increase every year. But we haven't established what we're going to do going into next year. We're watching obviously reaction really closely.

Jennifer Witz
Jennifer Witz
CEO at Sirius XM

Well, I have a lot of confidence in the loyal nature of our subscriber base. I think we want to be mindful of the economic environment clearly. And I think part of what we're doing is, as you can tell, increasing the breadth of the pricing and the packages that we have in market so that we have the flexibility to offer consumers who might be more price sensitive one of those lower price packages that is on an ongoing rate as opposed to a short term promotional discount. So again, building out this broader pricing and packaging structure, I think, helps us meet demand and help with retention across a number of different segments. Tom, do want address CapEx?

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

Yes, sure. Yes. So Cameron, so looking at CapEx, on the satellite side, you're right. The satellite infrastructure and IT systems are principally U. S.-sourced.

Thomas Barry
Chief Financial Officer at Sirius XM

So we don't see a lot of risk there from a tariff standpoint. Some of the terrestrial repeaters are actually come from Canada. But for the most part, we feel limited, very limited exposure on the sat side. The non sat side is a lot of labor and other components. And I think in the last six months as Wayne has assembled his team and arrived, we spent a lot of time going through non SAC CapEx, and we feel that we've stress tested the components of it, we feel very comfortable with the tariff impact.

Cameron Mansson-Perrone
Cameron Mansson-Perrone
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Very helpful. Thank you both.

Hooper Stevens
Hooper Stevens
Senior Vice President & Head of Investor Relations at Sirius XM

Thanks everybody for participating today and we'll look forward to speaking to you soon. Take care.

Executives
    • Hooper Stevens
      Hooper Stevens
      Senior Vice President & Head of Investor Relations
    • Jennifer Witz
      Jennifer Witz
      CEO
    • Wayne Thorsen
      Wayne Thorsen
      EVP & COO
Analysts
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Key Takeaways

  • Management confidently reiterated full year guidance of ~$8.5 billion in revenue, $2.6 billion in adjusted EBITDA and $1.15 billion in free cash flow despite broadening economic uncertainty.
  • The subscription business delivered solid year-over-year improvement in self-pay net adds, reduced in-car churn and minimal impact from a March rate increase, driven by record customer satisfaction and higher in-car engagement.
  • A new ad-supported subscription tier will launch later this year in nearly 100 million vehicles to attract price-sensitive listeners and leverage SiriusXM’s advertising capabilities without diluting premium offerings.
  • Advertising and podcasting remain growth drivers, with podcasting revenue up 33% year over year, nearly 1 billion downloads in Q1 and robust uptake of the Creator Connect solution across audio, video and social.
  • The company has achieved over $30 million in cost savings toward a $200 million run-rate target, maintained a 30% adjusted EBITDA margin, returned $116 million to shareholders and ended Q1 with ~3.8× net debt to EBITDA.
A.I. generated. May contain errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Sirius XM Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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