SiriusXM today announced its first quarter 2020 operating and financial results, including revenue of $2 billion, increasing five percent on a pro forma basis compared to the prior year period. The company’s net income was $293 million in Q1 2020, compared to $162 million in the prior year period.
“Since the start of the global pandemic, our top priorities have been ensuring our employees’ safety and well-being, and continuing to support our subscribers and listeners by providing them the best entertainment, news, and information in the audio space. On both fronts, I’m pleased by our response. We are streaming SiriusXM for free, and we have been in overdrive introducing new shows, channels and special virtual moments. In conjunction with NYU Langone Health, we’ve launched a 24/7 COVID-19 focused channel and hotline, an important complement to our Doctor Radio channel. We welcomed the healthy return of Andy Cohen, Howard Stern interviewed Governor Andrew Cuomo, and SiriusXM contributed $2 million to COVID-19 response charities, with a near-term focus on New York, San Francisco, and Detroit – the home of our two biggest employee bases and the primary community of our automakers. I’m also proud that we have joined with Music Cares to support our artist community and to donate advertising inventory to the Ad Council in support of COVID-19 informational campaigns,” said SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer.
“This challenging period has in fact inspired enormous creativity from our programming teams at SiriusXM and Pandora, but creativity and adaptability has not just been limited to our programming teams. Global stay-at-home orders swiftly and materially altered the way we work. We’ve navigated the material disruption of call center staffing by migrating thousands of team members to work-from-home in mere days, retooled marketing campaigns, worked quickly to support our automakers, and more. In short, we immediately took steps to ensure that our audio entertainment service would be uninterrupted, to provide the best possible customer service, and to continue to operate our business with the level of excellence you have come to expect from SiriusXM. I could not be prouder of the effort and performance of our teams throughout this period,” added Meyer.
“In the face of the economy hitting the brakes hard in March, SiriusXM’s first quarter results were very strong. Auto sales, advertising and customer responses to marketing campaigns all fell swiftly in the second half of March, yet we delivered increasing subscribers, solid revenue growth and 13 percent adjusted EBITDA growth to a first quarter record of $639 million. Just as it was a little over a decade ago during the global financial crisis, SiriusXM’s subscriber-based business model is resilient. We do not know what the shape of a recovery from this current crisis will look like, however, we are confident that our business will continue to generate substantial positive free cash flow. Once we have a better view of how and when the economy will restart, we plan to resume providing guidance,” added Meyer.
