Sirius XM ended 2012 with 23.9 million users and ended the first quarter with 24.4 million users. Today’s projection is to end the year with roughly 25.3 million subscribers.
If you want to know just how much difference the company sees between it and Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P) and terrestrial radio, the numbers are rather stark. Sirius XM showed $142.34 in revenue per subscriber in 2012. That compares to only $6.51 per active Pandora user and $12.91 per Clear Channel listener.
A driving force, no pun intended, is new car sales. Sirius XM says that of the 14.5 million new cars sold in 2012 the company had 67% penetration in them. The forecast used to derive the higher subscriber numbers appears to be based on expected car sales growth. The company used projections of 15.3 million new cars sold in 2013 and 15.9 million in 2014. From 2015 to 2017 it used 16.3 million cars on a static basis per year. Sirius even sees more than 100 million Sirius XM-enabled vehicles in operation in 2017 to 2018.
Financial guidance for 2013 calls for revenue of more than $3.7 billion, although we would point out that Thomson Reuters already has a consensus estimate of $3.79 billion and the street-high estimate is $3.86 billion. The company sees 2013 EBITDA above $1.1 billion and free cash flows of about $915 million. The self-pay net subscriber additions are put at about 1.6 million, and total net subscriber additions are targeted to be about 1.4 million.
Out of the company’s $2 billion stock buyback plan, Sirius XM said that it has repurchased a total of 209 million shares as of April 26. Its special dividend of $0.05 at the end of 2012 also came to a $327 million total payout to its shareholders.
Sirius XM shares are up two cents at $3.52, against a 52-week trading range of $1.80 to $3.59. Its market capitalization is currently listed as $22.4 billion.
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