Audio entertainment giant SiriusXM, the home of Howard Stern, said on Tuesday that it added self-paying subscribers in its satellite radio and Pandora units during the second quarter and raised its financial forecast for the full year 2021.
The company added 118,000 net self-pay subscribers in its Pandora music streaming business, ending the second quarter in June with 6.5 million total users, compared with nearly 6.4 million as of the end of March.
The audio giant, controlled by John Malone’s Liberty Media, said that at its core SiriusXM business self-pay subscriber net additions came to 355,000 in the latest quarter, compared with 264,000 in the year-ago period. It lost 378,000 paid promotional subs. The firm’s total SiriusXM users at the end of June stood at 34.5 million, including a record 31.4 million self-pay customers.
Second-quarter advertising revenue at Pandora rose 82 percent to $383 million, with the company citing “strong monetization” and the acquisition of Stitcher in the fourth quarter of 2020.
SiriusXM’s total second-quarter revenue of $2.16 billion was up 15 percent from the year-ago period, with adjusted earnings before interest interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization up 14 percent to $700 million. Quarterly net income of $433 million rose from $243 million.
SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz said: “SiriusXM added an impressive 355,000 net new self-pay subscribers in the quarter, putting us on track to add 1.1 million self-pay subscribers this year – our best since 2018 – and we are increasing all of our financial guidance.”
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
