XM Satellite Radio has just issued a Form S-4 for the exchange of up to $600,000,000 Senior Fixed Rate Notes in aggregate principal amount of 9.75% senior notes due 2014 and $200,000,000 in aggregate principal amount of Senior Floating Rate Notes due 2013.

[Form S-4] (PDF) 

Mad dog in the fog has put together a graph showing the rate of growth of subscriber acquisition for XM Satellite Radio to reflect the reaching of 7 million subscribers.

XM Satellite Radio has reported their financial and operating results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2006. And while XM has recently surpassed seven million subscribers, they have yet again revised their 2006 subscriber guidance to end the year with total subscribers of between 8.2 million and 7.7 million.

For the second quarter 2006, XM recorded gross subscriber additions of 926,281 and net subscriber additions of 398,012. XM finished the second quarter 2006 with a total of 6,899,871 subscribers, representing a 56 percent increase over the 4,417,490 subscribers at the end of the second quarter 2005.

The subscriber guidance change is based on current "marketplace dynamics and regulatory uncertainties" concerning their plug-and-play radios. XM will refine these numbers when they get a "firmer sense of regulatory progress and availability of product." Even with this revised subscriber guidance, XM still expects to achieve positive cash flow from operations for the fourth quarter 2006 and the full year 2007, although its ability to do so becomes challenging toward the lower end of the subscriber range.

With yesterday's appointment of Nate Davis to serve as the XM Satellite Radio President and Chief Operating Officer, we now have learned more about the situation from XM's latest 8-K filing (PDF).

First off, as we know from the announcement yesterday - Nate Davis, 52, is a member of XM's Board of Directors, and he will remain on there. That gives Mr. Davis a bit more clout than any ol' President/COO. Hugh Panero, and Gary Parsons will continue as CEO and Chairman of the Board respectively, so there is no change in that sense.

As for changes in the Board, member Jeffrey Zients has replaced Mr. Davis on the Audit Committee and existing Audit Committee member Eddy Hartenstein has taken over as chair of the Audit Committee. Board member George Haywood has replaced Mr. Davis on the Nominating Committee.

Nate Davis will receive a base salary of $500,000 for the first year of the agreement, with increases to $550,000 and $600,000, in the first and second year respectively. Mr. Davis will receive a one-time signing bonus consisting of $150,000 and 20,000 shares of stock.

Mr. Davis will supervise marketing for both retail and OEM, product development, customer service, and finance. While Hugh Panero will directly oversee programming, sales and business affairs. No doubt this will be a topic of discussion on Thursday's conference call, so let's see what else we will find out.

XM Satellite Radio, today announced the appointment of Nate Davis to the newly created position of President and Chief Operating Officer.

Nate Davis is a seasoned telecommunications executive, having served in senior management roles at XO Communications, Nextel and MCI. He was President and COO of XO Communications from late 1999 through early 2003. During his tenure, XO became a $1.38 billion integrated communications provider offering voice, data, internet access, and web hosting services to all segments of the business market.

At Nextel Communications, Davis was the Executive Vice President of all technical operations which included engineering, operations, procurement, and IT. Davis also served as CFO of MCI Telecommunications, President and COO of MCImetro, and in a host of roles at MCI and AT&T earlier in his career. He most recently served as Executive In Residence at the venture capital firm Columbia Capital. In addition to continuing as a member of XM's Board of Directors, Davis serves on the boards of Mutual of America Capital Management Corporation and Charter Communications.

Davis received his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, his Masters in Engineering Computer Science at the Moore School at Penn, and a Bachelors of Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

XM Satellite Radio has scheduled a conference call for Thursday, July 27, 2006 at 10am ET to announce and discuss its second quarter 2006 financial results. Prior to the call, XM Radio's second quarter 2006 results will be released to the public.

To listen to the conference call via telephone, please call (877) 265-5808 or via a live webcast here.A replay of the conference call will be available after 11am ET Thursday, July 27, 2006 until October 27, 2006.

The June NPD Group satellite radio sales results are in - and while there's some continued decline with flat year-over-year retail growth overall, Sirius' retail growth was actually up from the year before.

Retail sales for the satellite radio industry as a whole were up only 0.3% YoY in June - that's down from 6% in May, 9% in April and a whoppin' 26% in March.

Sirius Satellite Radio's growth on the otherhand was up 18% YoY in June - down from 23% in May, and 54% in April. 

XM didn't fair so well. XM Satellite Radio's year-over-year growth was down 18% in June - with an 8% decline in May, and down 20% in April.

Is the overall satellite radio weakness in retail an industry problem? Or does the blame soley on XM shoulders?

"Too hard to tell, and probably a little of both – especially with signs of a weakening consumer.  However, XM did suffer product shortages to the company’s decision to correct the FM modulator issue.  SIRI decided to wait until the end of the quarter to deal with this issue in the “dead of the summer” (despite having publicly stated that they had taken care of the problem at the end of May)," said Jonathan A Jacoby in a recent Bank of America recent report.

These numbers don't come as much of surprise considering we already saw subscriber numbers earlier this month.

...so says Jim Cramer in his infinite wisdom. See, according to Cramer (who, for some reason, I actually used to respect) the satellite radio industry needs to have one and only one player in it. As a result, Sirius will emerge as the superior of the two and either: a) buyout XM or b) XM will go the way of AOL and diminish to nothingness.

Cramer. You sir, are an idiot.

Enough with the silly merger talk already. It's almost as tiresome as reading the hacky "Sirius-ly" tag in every newspaper headline. I've already ranted about why it wouldn't be a good idea, but to throw salt on the wound - Mel himself even stated that a merger was out of the question (that's right folks, the Reuters spin-machine was turned to high - gasp!).

Maybe a better way to look at this would be from one of Cramer's collegue's standpoint. In a duopoly, the natural order of things is for marketshare to gravitate to 50/50. Sirius has gained massive subscribers to bring itself to 40% marketshare in a very short amount of time.

Phenominal work, and it's obvious now that the move to sign on Howard Stern was a very smart one (a move made by Joe Clayton btw, not Mel).

But another thing to take into account is that with a higher subscriber base, comes higher absolute churn. "Net subscribers" can be a misleading number - I'd like to see GROSS subscribers as a form of gauging growth. I'm not diminishing Sirius' success (far from it), just saying that things are more complicated than "mine is bigger than yours" comparisons. Sirius' success doesn't spell the doom of XM, and it sure as hell doesn't mean that a merger is imminent.

So either Cramer is smoking something, or he's looking for attention by waxing poetically about mergers, or perhaps - he just doesn't get it. You decide.

XM Satellite Radio has just announced that they have added 398,000 new subscribers for the second quarter of 2006, bringing the total amount of XM subscribers to 6.89 million. This is quite a bit lower than many analysts estimated.

During Q106, XM added 568,000 subscribers.

"As we previously indicated, subscriber growth in the second quarter was limited by product availability and overall softness in the retail channel," said Hugh Panero, President and CEO, XM Satellite Radio. "As we approach seven million subscribers, however, XM Satellite Radio remains one of the fastest growing consumer entertainment products."

XM has scheduled a conference call for July 27th, 2006, at 10:00 AM EDT to announce and discuss its financial results for the second quarter of 2006.