i hope Jacoby carries around breath mints, that guy talks more horse sh*t than anyone.

Funny how he never said that about XM

Why does he always have to rain on my parade?

Funny how he never said that about XM

XM doesn't count dealer demo period radios as subs, do they?

this guy first states last year and even this year how superior XM is due to the OEM channel--Now as sirius ramps up, its not a good thing--Hes not even consistant in his finding and sounds more like someone making decisions based on emotion--we all know how those go

One thing i dont find good though is the near non-existance of retail--The million plus in 4th Q holiday sales sirius got whether it was last year or Howard 1st season was due to retail-NOT Oem
Id cut prices now, and get the new receivers out in mass with an aggressive marketing campaign for the holidays--If they can move 500-600k in retail, PLUS OEM, it would be a great quarter

Jacoby is a stooge for Xm, and has investment interests which he should disclose. Believe it, after the merger, his constant haranguing will end.

He's just pointing out that Sirius's numbers are misleading as they count unsold cars and cars still in free trail period as paying subs. Bitch all you want but it's Sirius's questionable accounting that's the problem, not the pesron pointing it out.

Jacoby is prob a pest too..prob believes 0.0 have more listeners to stern.
think he walks into board meetings and goes "hoo hoo i invented banks!" or "howard USED to be funny" or "i USED to listen to howard" or the endless bullshit lines all the pests have memorized from the script 0.0 have written for them

tool

Jacoby is prob a pest too..prob believes 0.0 have more listeners to stern.
think he walks into board meetings and goes "hoo hoo i invented banks!" or "howard USED to be funny" or "i USED to listen to howard" or the endless bullshit lines all the pests have memorized from the script 0.0 have written for them

tool

Jacoby is prob a pest too..prob believes 0.0 have more listeners to stern.
think he walks into board meetings and goes "hoo hoo i invented banks!" or "howard USED to be funny" or "i USED to listen to howard" or the endless bullshit lines all the pests have memorized from the script 0.0 have written for them

tool

The XM board of directors found nude photos of him and a little doggie named "Mongo"....

On the show this morning..... Opie said the merger has been approved by Congress???

PFREAK---do you know what the percentages are for unsold autos??? Then you would have to subtract them from the figure to get the amount you feel is the right figure--(hint--if you do alittle research you will find out its alot lower then you think)

Sirius does not count "free demos" as subs. The OEM partners pay up front for the subscription, therefore the vehicle is counted as a subscriber.

Its real simple guys. If im a contractor and you pay me in January for a job I will be starting in June, I have your money so your account is "paid in full!"

Got it?

Jacoby is negative??? What??? I don't believe it!!! LOL This is shocking!!! I would never believe Jacoby could ever be negative??? LOL

The real question is will Jacoby be negative when they have 20 million subs and the stock is soaring? My guess is yes he will be negative!

Jacoby -- SIRI's performance has to be considered in light of the number of true subscribers they added.

While much was made of XM's "negative" retail adds for this quarter, for all the noise made about SIRI's great retail performance, they added ONLY 64,000 net at retail. The rest came from the OEM channel, which as we know, don't represent subscribers but represent only cars that were built with Sirius in them.

Neither company's Q3 looked very good. But if you take into account SIRI's smaller subscriber base (meaning less loss to churn) and the fact that their OEM subs don't reflect as churn for a full year, even though we know half or more will (AFAIK, SIRI has still refused to disclose its OEM take rate, which strongly suggests it is less than XM's), SIRI's Q3 was unimpressive as XM's was. Consider further that merger related costs are expensed at XM and capitalized at Sirius and the picture becomes clear.

This was no banner quarter for Sirius.

This is the same person that said Sirius's retail lead had ended after the "Howard bubble" ended in April 2006. Oops.

I love how he keeps on bringing up the subscriber count as if its news - everyone knows by now that they choose to recognize the OEM subscriber when they get paid vs when the car gets sold. This isn't exactly a big secret. If you want to account for the difference, just delay the Sirius subscriber counts by one quarter, since the average car sits on the lot for about 3 months before it is sold.

Should we "not be fooled" by XM's 315k subscriber growth since their SAC and EBITDA were worse than expected? How is ramping up OEM good for XM and bad for Sirius?

I believe the last 3 times Jacoby has come out with a negative note the stock has gone up that day. I am kind of surprised the stock is down so far today. I seriously doubt anybody really cares what Jacoby says anymore. I never hear him on any Sirius earnings calls. I am even surprised Ryan made a post about it.

Didn't Jacoby have a $2.25 without a merger and $2.75 target with a merger just a few months ago?? I would be interested to read what the other analysts say in the next couple of days.

>>>>I seriously doubt anybody really cares what Jacoby says anymore. I never hear him on any Sirius earnings calls. I am even surprised Ryan made a post about it.

The Siriots don't care because he isn't saying what they want to hear. But the reality is that Jacoby is, and has been, one of the better analysts of the sector. This was a lousy quarter for both companies.

But SIRI's apparent retail leadership (for which they paid Stern 750 Million) brought them only 64,000 new subscribers in Q3. Were it not for the new model cars arriving on dealer lots, SIRI's Q3 numbers would have been horrible. Keep in mind that XM's #s not only DON'T count these vehicles as subs until they are sold, for the newer standard equipment deals (Hyundai and Nissan, which are rolling out HUGE numbers), they don't even count them during the promo period.

There is no doubt that if you adjusted the numbers, XM with all its troubles, blew the doors off SIRI. I think somebody needed to say that, and Jacoby is apparently the only one with the gumption to do it.

I missed the CC, so I didn't catch a number for parking lot subs or family plans, so these will be educated guesses...

Sirius's averaged around 7.3 million subs over the quarter. I'd guess that around 750k of those are parking lot (counted as OEM) and around 1.5 million are family plans (counted as retail). That leaves 5.05 million for the other 3 subscriber categories: primary rate retail, self-pay OEM, and on-the-road promo OEM.

Retail subs probably averaged about 4.46 million, so there are about 3 million primary retail subs. That leaves around 2.05 million OEM promo or self-pay subs on average. The split is probably something like 1.1 million OTR promo and 950k self-pay.

Expressing those as percentages, 41% primary retail, 21% family retail, 10% parking lot, 15% OTR promo, 13% self-pay OEM. Subscriber revenue per unit-month was $10.32, so the sum of the products of those percentages with their accompanying SRPUs will total $10.32.

Subscriber revenue is defined as subscription plus activation amortized over 42 months (or about 35 cents/month, barring free/discounted activation deals). Family retail SRPU is easy: $6.99 plus $0.35=$7.34; multiply that by 21% and those subs contribute $1.54 towards total SRPU. Parking lot subs contribute nothing.

That means that the remaining 69% of subs contribute the remaining $8.78, for an average between them of $12.72. I'd guess that the subscription revenue per month for retail primaries is $12.70, thanks to the discounts on longer-term subs, so those are earning $13.05 per month, contributing $5.35. I would suspect that the OEM self-pays have a similar, if not higher figure (say $13.15), contributing $1.71. That leaves the OTR promos contributing $1.72, or $11.46 per month.

Think about that for a moment. Sirius receives $11.46 per month of the promo term, paid when the car is built (booked to deferred revenue and amortized over the OTR period). DCX, the largest OEM install deal (and will have that title for the foreseeable future, as who knows what Ford's install rates in '09 and beyond are), it stands to reason, pays Sirius $130-$140 per radio, a radio which Sirius subsidizes to the tune of maybe $110 (given that overall SAC has been decreasing as OEM gross adds have ramped up, a figure of $100 is probably more realistic). Sirius is $20 ahead of the game whether the radio converts or not.

Compare this to XM's main OEM deals, with GM and Honda (who together will probably always account for a majority of XM's quarterly OEM gross adds), which feature a subsidy of around $40-$50 and with the OEM paying either $20 or $26 (depending on whether they specify 2 months at $9.99 or 2 months at the post-2005 rate of $12.95). XM at minimum needs 1.5 months of self-paying service (after revshare) per radio before XM is ahead in any way, shape, or form. If the conversion rate is 50%, then the converted radios need to stay with XM for at minimum 3 months before they cover their sunk costs and those of the failed promos. If the conversion rate dips to 30%, then the first 5 months of self-paying service is going to be dedicated to swimming to the surface.

Stack, ya, Im totally in agreement here. If you just adjust Xm's numbers a little, multiply by them by 3 or 4, and they really did "blow the doors off SIRI".

Stack, I think you are basically correct. Jacoby sees the truth in the way SIRI counts subs vs XM. This is why you really cannot compare the two, they are totally different.

The fact that SIRI missed their revenue numbers, and their churn is higher than XM's and climbing is not encouraging.

The quarterly report was like a dead herring in the moonlight, it shines but it stinks

Ariel

From the transcript:

Sirius's parking lot subscriber base was 10% of 7.142 million subscribers after Q2, and 11% of 7.667 million subscribers after Q3.

Do the math, and Sirius added ~129k parking lot subscribers in Q3 - if you back those numbers out of the net adds, Sirius added 396k actual subscribers in Q3, which is still a decent lead over XM's 315k.

396k isn't anything to write home about, but it's enough to prove Stack wrong once again.

Yes, both quarters suck - but why do you suppose that is, Stack? If satellite radio is a true duopoly with insufficient competition, how does the industry only add a grand total of 50k retail subscribers over a 3 month period? What happened to the 475k deactivations for Sirius and the 637k deactivations for XM? Are they traveling in complete silence now?

Jacoby is the classic analyst prick, who is always wrong, yet he is persistent. Amazon had the same problems years ago when there were a few analysts who insisted that the company would go bankrupt because of its debt and spending... when they announced free shipping the analysts just about had a shit fit.

Look at it now. The analysts love it and those old gomers that pissed all over it are gone. The life of an analyst is short, mostly because it is the shittiest job on Wall Street, so they just leave...

It may take a year or two, but Jacoby too will leave...

Everybody knows Mel lies and makes the numbers do what he wants... Just watch what happens when or if (when) the merger goes through....