New York – SiriusXM plans to add on-demand
and personalized radio services this year to its Internet-streaming service,
and the broadcaster will roll out Satellite Radio 2.0 service through
automakers for the first time this year.
That was the word from CEO Mel
Karmazin in announcing the company’s second consecutive year of profitability.
Net income rose in calendar 2011 to
$427 million, up from 2010’s $43.1
million and compared with a 2009 net loss of $352 million.
Full-year
revenues hit a record $3.01 billion, up 7 percent, and full-year net subscriber
growth hit 1.7 million, up from 2010’s 1.42 million net adds to mark the
highest number of annual net adds since the Sirius and XM merger in mid-2008.
The company ended the year with 21.9 million subscribers, up 8.4 percent from
year-end 2010’s 20.2 million, the company reported.
Fourth-quarter
net adds hit 542,966, up from a year-ago 328,789. The quarter’s net income hit $71.3
million compared with a year-ago $81.4 million net loss. The quarter’s revenues
grew 6.5 percent to $783.7 million from a year-ago $735.9 million.
In
other metrics:
–SiriusXM
tuners were factory-installed in 67 percent of new vehicles sold in the U.S. in
2011, up from 62 percent in 2010.
–The
company posted a record 8.7 million gross additions in 2011, in part due to its
growing emphasis on reactivating OEM satellite radios in used cars but also due
to a 12 percent increase in new-car sales.
–The
company’s new-vehicle conversion rate of promotional to consumer-paid
subscriptions slipped for the year to 45 percent from 46 percent.
In its 2012 forecast, the company
said it expects to add 1.3 million net new subscribers, down from 2011’s 1.7
million, thanks in part to a forecast 8 percent rise in new-car sales to 13.7
million, the phase-in of a rate increase that began Jan. 1, and higher revenues
from reactivating OEM radios in used cars. The company forecasts 2012 revenues
will rise almost 10 percent to $3.3 billion.
To help boost revenues and remain competitive
with free terrestrial radio and Internet radio, the company sometime this year
will launch on-demand programming for users of its Internet streaming service
to PCs, home audio equipment, and smartphone apps. Consumers will be able to
access a continually updated music library and listen on their own schedules,
said Karmazin. The company will also offer personalized radio over the Internet
so consumers can tailor content to their own preferences. Both services will be
added for free to the company’s streaming service, which costs as little as $3.50/month to
satellite-radio subscribers.
Also to boost subscriptions, automakers will
roll out Satellite Radio 2.0 service in 2012, but SiriusXM didn’t say how soon
that would happen or how many automakers would participate this year.
Satellite Radio 2.0, not
available in previous-generation tuners, expands the broadcaster’s lineup by 22
channels, with eight more to come in the future. New channels already available
include the new SiriusXM
Latino suite of Spanish-language programming.
Also in the OEM market, SiriusXM
plans satellite radios that offer features currently available on its $249-suggested
Lynx aftermarket dock-and-play tuner, which became available late last year.
Although the company didn’t specify which features would migrate to the OEM
side, Lynx’s features include time shifting to record and store up to 200 hours
of programming, ability to simultaneously record multiple channels, and pause
and rewind of live programming. Lynx also accesses on-demand Internet-streaming
content via Wi-Fi when docked at home or, when running on its internal battery,
when used in a Wi-Fi hot spot.
