Audio entertainment giant SiriusXM, the home of Howard Stern, said Thursday that it added 616,000 self-paying subscribers in its satellite radio unit in the third quarter, beating the 169,000 additions recorded in the same period in 2020 and exceeding its full-year growth target nine months into the year.
The company lost 59,000 net self-pay subscribers in its Pandora music streaming business though, ending September with 6.5 million total users.
The audio giant, controlled by John Malone‘s Liberty Media, said that its core SiriusXM business lost 828,000 paid promotional subs. The firm’s total SiriusXM users at the end of September stood at 34.3 million, including 32.0 million self-pay customers.
Third-quarter advertising revenue at Pandora jumped 32 percent to $404 million. “Ad revenue was boosted by strong monetization of $109 per thousand hours at Pandora, compared to $84 from the prior year period,” the company said. “Ad revenue also benefited from the acquisition of Stitcher in the fourth quarter of 2020.”
SiriusXM’s total quarterly revenue of $2.2 billion was up 9 percent from the year-ago period, with adjusted earnings before interest interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization up 9 percent to $719 million. Quarterly net income of $343 million rose from $272 million.
SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz said: “By adding a record 616,000 net new SiriusXM self-pay subscribers in the third quarter, we attained our prior full-year guidance of approximately 1.1 million net additions in just nine months. We are increasing all of our financial guidance for 2021 and expect to add more than 1.1 million net new self-pay SiriusXM subscribers this year, making 2021 our best for self-pay subscriber growth since 2018.”
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
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