David Frear, SIRIUS Executive VP and CFO, will present at the Friedman Billings Ramsey 9th Annual Growth Conference on Thursday, June 2, 2005 at 9:00 a.m. ET.

You’ll be able to listen to a webcast of it here.

SIRIUS Satellite Radio will hold its Annual Meeting of Stockholders on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 at 9:00 a.m. ET.

You’ll be able to listen to a live audio webcast of the meeting here at the same time.

TheStreet goes into an indepth review of how SIRIUS’ content-driven strategy is impressive for PR, but not so impressive with investors. It’s a really great article looking at how both XM and SIRIUS are attacking from different mindsets to gain marketshare.

A big bombshell is this little snippet:

“…even if Sirius’ subscriber base grows to 6.3 million, it will need to return to the capital market for more money by the end of next year to support its business. That means an additional dilution of current shareholders, and it will be compounded if the company pays Stern in stock instead of cash.”

Definitely a good read.

UPDATE: A concerned reader has mentioned to me that I seem to favor the conclusions drawn by this article. I definitely did seem pretty damn convinced by it, I have to admit (c’mon, it’s convincing dontcha think?).

Two things the concerned reader points out:

1. The comment about running out of cash contradicts SIRIUS’ often stated position that they will be cash fow positive before burning all its cash.

2. The entire analysis seems based on the view that content is not the most critical factor which is at best a dubious assumption.

Both very valid points, and it’s pretty damn important that I point them out. What’s your take on it?

The boys over at MSN Money aren't very kind to SIRI in this article, but it's an interesting read and may be a dose of reality to some stock owners to read something like this. Then again, I'm sure most investors already know this stuff and have made up their mind regardless of what the media is saying (and hats off to that).

One of the big questions people were asking at the NYC Geek Dinner (dishes05), and several time via private email, was whether I'd recommend SIRI stock or not. So I just sorta want to snip that in the bud right now.

Honestly, I don't own any XMSR or SIRI stock (though I probably should seeing how much of my time this stuff takes up), mostly because I'm broke but also because I don't feel I know enough about the Wall Street side of the industry. I listen to the conference calls, read the inteviews, tune into the stock news, and watch the videos - but when you get into the real stock-talk stuff, I go numb.

So whether I'd recommend one stock or another? I'll leave that to the more intelligent people out there. All I have is my own personal thoughts that Sirius isn't going anywhere for a while, and that the Satellite Radio Industry as a whole will only grow. Adopting from terrestrial to satellite is getting easier and easier for the general public - and I think now we're getting away from the "early adopters" and closer to critical mass. It's not hard for Joe Sixpack to say "Gosh, my radio sucks, I want to listen to some real country music!" and to go out and buy a plug-and-play unit. It's Radio, only Better. Easy message to consume. I recently heard that some analysts are actually expecting there to be 55 Million subscribers in 10 years - an aggressive, but maybe not too far off estimation. All we need to do is get over this initial hump of grabbing new content to broadcast, and the rest is profit. There's no fiber to lay down or infrastructure to build (well, maybe we could use a few extra towers to get signal to the nooks and crannys out there), just cooler receivers and better content to come - which after a while will only get cheaper and cheaper for both the manufacturer and the consumer.

So, to actually answer the question, an investment the either XMSR or SIRI would be a smart one if you're in it for the long-haul.