XM Satellite Radio Director Pierce J. Roberts, Jr submitted his letter of resignation on Monday, February 13th. While the nature of the disagreement was not explicitly stateed, it is believe it primarily involved a disagreement between the strategic balance of growth versus cash flow.

Director Roberts has historically favored more stringent cost control in XM Radio, specifically involving lower marketing, programming and promotional expenditures. The other XM Directors, however, believe that high growth rate, market leadership and large base of subscribers are strategically important assets to ensure the long term value of XM and can be sustained while also reaching positive operating cash flow later this year.

Read the full resignation letter after the jump:

XM Satellite Radio just announced their Q405 and full-year 2005 results. In 2005, XM added more than 2.7 million net subscribers, to more than double subscription revenue to $503 million. XM also reiterated that they expect to be cash-flow positive in the fourth quarter of 2006 with $806 million in subscription revenue, and expect to exceed 9 million subscribers by EOY 2006 as well. By 2010, XM Satellite Radio is expecting to have more than 20 million subscribers.

2005 closed with exactly 5,932,957 subscribers (a 84% increase from 2004) with net additions for the 4th quarter being 898,315 subscribers. During the first week in January they then beat the 6 million subscriber number, just nearly missing their guidance for 2005, attributing slower than expected Holiday activations.

And now for the very closely tracked SAC/CPGA numbers (Subscriber Acquisition Costs and Cost Per Gained Acquisition):
Q4 SAC = $89 ($64 in Q404)
Q4 CPGA = $141 ($104 in Q404)

2005 SAC = $64 ($62 in 2004)
2005 CPGA = $109 ($100 in 2004)

Increased SAC/CPGA were attributed to higher marketing expenses to combat Howard Stern's move to SIRIUS Satellite Radio (or as XM calls it a "one-time competitive event"). In the first quarter of 2006, XM expects a more normalized market environment and projects that SAC and CPGA will decrease in 2006.

The conference call begins in about an hour. 

Very interesting report here (PDF). They consider the GM spike in sales a one-time thing (makes sense) and that XMSR is a very strong buy since they're at a low that hasn't been seen in years (makes even more sense).

Disclosure: In an effort to maintain any level of editorial/blogger integrity, I do not own, short or have any sort of interest in seeing either XMSR or SIRI go up or down. So there.

XM Satellite Radio has scheduled a conference call on Thursday, February 16, 2006, at 10am ET to announce and discuss its fourth quarter and full year 2005 financial results.

To listen to the conference call, you can either listen in on the webcast online, or call (877) 265-5808

Any speculations?