USA Today's Matt Krantz doesn't like SIRI or XMSR as stock picks. He never has. His reasons? Too speculative. Without any profits he feels they're too difficult to value.

He concludes with this statement:

"The fact that investors willingly put their heads in the guillotine with these kinds of stocks amazes me. When will they finally learn that over-hyped shares of small companies that are losing money are a sucker's bet?"

What do you investors think? You're the ones who have lost the most (XMSR down 53% and SIRI down 39% this year).

[USA Today]

Wistron NeWeb (a key Sirius radio manufacturer) saw its revenues decline to a two-year low of US$25.4 million in July due to delayed shipment of its satellite radio products to Sirius Satellite Radio, according to analysts at local securities houses.

Wistron was unable to ship a batch of their next-gen of satellite radio products to Sirius on time in July as the products failed to meet FCC requirements. Wistron, together with Sirius, says they are expecting to fix related problems in two weeks and begin shipments to Sirius soon.

[DigiTimes] 

SIRIUS Satellite Radio has appointed Adrienne Calderone as Senior Vice President and Controller, replacing Edward Weber Jr. - SIRIUS' former Vice President, Controller and Principal Accounting Officer (who resigned in March).

Calderone will be the Chief Accounting Officer responsible for public reporting and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance (ugh) as well as overseeing billing and revenue assurance, general accounting, payroll, tax and financial operations. She will report to Executive Vice President and CFO David Frear

In a previous life, Calderone was Vice President and Controller of PanAmSat Corporation, one of the world's largest fixed satellite services providers.

Calderone, a Certified Public Accountant, is a graduate of The University of Massachusetts with a degree in Accounting.

SIRIUS Satellite Radio announced that its 2Q06 revenue has increased to $150.1 million (beating analsyst expections of $147 million). SIRIUS also increased their guidance for total year-end revenue to $615 million and subscriber count to 6.3 million (from 6.2 million).

During the second quarter SIRIUS added 600,460 net subscribers, bringing their total to 4,678,207 subscribers (that's a 158% YoY increase from 2005). Of those subscribers, 276,294 net subscribers came from retail (13% YoY improvement), and 324,574 net subscriber additions came from the OEM channel (16% YoY improvement).

SIRIUS' monthly ARPU was $11.16 in 2Q06, up from $10.50 from the same period in 2005. Part of cause for the increase is from net advertising revenue, which was $0.62 contribution - as compared to the $0.22 advertising contribution a year ago. Average monthly subscriber churn was at 1.8%, and SAC per gross subscriber was $131 (down from a $160 SAC a year ago).

SIRIUS posted a wider net loss of $237.8 million, or $0.17 per share for 2Q06, a wider loss than $0.13 per share for the same period last year. That's a wider loss than analysts expected who estimated a $0.15 loss per share. The adjusted net loss per share (excluding the impairment loss and equity charges) was $0.11 for the 2Q06 compared with an adjusted net loss per share of $0.10 for 2Q05.