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Sirius XM is one of the biggest audio entertainment companies in North America. Its flagship satellite and streaming radio service offers exclusive music, sports, talk, news, and comedy programming. It also operates an expansive podcast network and owns music streaming platform Pandora. The company was formed through the merger of industry pioneers Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio in 2008.

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Q1 2025

Sirius XM Holdings (SIRI): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Sirius XM Holdings

sirius xm holdings

Greetings. Welcome to SiriusXM's second quarter 2026 earnings call. If anyone today should require operator assistance, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Jennifer DePizzo, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to SiriusXM's second quarter 2026 earnings call. Today's discussion will include prepared remarks from Jennifer Witz, our Chief Executive Officer, and Zac Coughlin, our Chief Financial Officer. Following their comments, we will open the call for questions. Joining us for the Q&A portion are Scott Greenstein, our President and Chief Content Officer, and Scott Walker, our Chief Advertising Revenue Officer. I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during the call may be forward-looking statements, as the term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These and all forward-looking statements are based upon management's current beliefs and expectations and necessarily depend upon assumptions, data, or methods that may be incorrect or imprecise. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.

For more information about those risks and uncertainties, please view SiriusXM's SEC filings and today's earnings release. We advise listeners to not rely unduly on forward-looking statements and disclaim any intent or obligation to update them. As we begin, I'd like to remind our listeners that today's call will include discussions about both actual results and adjusted results. All discussions of adjusted operating results exclude the effects of stock-based compensation. Additionally, we have posted a supplementary earnings presentation and trending schedule on our investor relations website for your convenience. To provide an opportunity for as many analysts as possible to participate during the Q&A portion of the call, we ask that you please limit yourself to no more than two questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jennifer.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. As we reach the midpoint of 2026, our strategy is clear and our solid execution is delivering results. We remain focused on advancing the three strategic priorities we established in December 2024. Strengthening our subscription business through exceptional in-car listening experiences, accelerating the growth of our advertising business, and leveraging the scale of the SiriusXM portfolio to drive greater efficiency and long-term shareholder value. What gives us confidence today isn't simply the financial performance we delivered this quarter, it's that we're seeing tangible evidence our strategy is creating an even more durable business. We're building deeper subscriber relationships, expanding monetization opportunities, improving operating efficiency, and reinforcing competitive advantages that we believe will support sustainable long-term growth.

In the second quarter, we returned to positive net subscriber additions, increased ARPU, and achieved the lowest churn in SiriusXM's history, supporting 1% growth in revenue. Our continued focus on efficiency also drove further margin expansion, as a result, adjusted EBITDA grew 3% and free cash flow increased 48% year-over-year, demonstrating our ability to convert disciplined execution into stronger financial performance. Reflecting the strength of our H1 performance and our confidence in the business, we're raising our full year 2026 guidance for revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow by $25 million each. Before Zac reviews our financial results in more detail, I'd like to highlight a few areas where we are seeing solid execution. Starting with our subscription business, we delivered our strongest second quarter subscriber performance in four years with self-pay net additions of 22,000.

Companion plans, continuous service, and extended duration automotive dealer programs all contributed meaningfully, helping offset slightly lower conversion rates. Our confidence in Companion plans continues to grow. We're thoughtfully expanding the program where we see the greatest strategic value. It's strengthening retention, customer satisfaction, and revenue while incremental customer relationships continue to more than offset limited ARPU dilution and modest cannibalization. At the same time, we're becoming more disciplined in promotional acquisition, reducing discounting to improve subscriber quality and strengthen long-term economics. While these actions may temper near-term net additions, they position us to generate higher lifetime value and more durable growth. Looking to the H2 of the year, subscriber trends will reflect a different seasonal pattern than investors have historically seen. Beginning in the fourth quarter, the year-over-year benefit from continuous service will begin to normalize as we anniversary its rollout, resulting in more challenging retention comparisons.

Combined with our disciplined acquisition strategy, we continue to expect modestly lower full-year self-pay net additions. The benefits of this approach are already evident. Continuous service helped drive self-pay churn to approximately 1.4% during the quarter, while underlying churn also improved year-over-year independent of this initiative driven by lower vehicle-related and non-pay churn. Combined with continued ARPU growth, these results demonstrate we're building a more resilient subscription business with pricing durability and higher long-term customer value. We remain focused on broadening how customers experience SiriusXM, connecting them with more of the music, sports, news, talk, and entertainment that matters most to them across more devices, more listening moments, and more members of their household to deliver a more personalized, engaging experience that strengthens retention and becomes increasingly essential over time. Exclusive content and unforgettable live experiences have always set SiriusXM apart.

In the second quarter, we continued to build on that advantage. Every new channel, artist performance, live event, and creator collaboration advances our vision for the future of audio, making SiriusXM a home for fandom. In Q2, we expanded our Artist First programming with new full-time channels from Morgan Wallen and Green Day, alongside limited-run offerings including the Eagles, U2, and Miles Davis Radio. We also continued bringing fans closer to the artists they love through one-of-a-kind SiriusXM-only events, including performances by Kenny Chesney, Hilary Duff, The Black Crowes, and Whiskey Myers, a live "SmartLess" taping, and a special FIFA World Cup performance by Carlos Vives.

Our Front Row series complemented these experiences by bringing audiences closer to the biggest moments in entertainment, with special conversations featuring the casts of "The Devil Wears Prada 2" and "Toy Story 5," along with an intimate album preview with Olivia Rodrigo on Hits 1. Across news, talk, and podcasts, we're strengthening our portfolio of trusted voices and compelling storytelling. We expanded our partnership with ABC News by launching the ABC News Live and 20/20 True Crime channels while bringing "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" and "Start Here Weekend" to P.O.T.U.S. We also welcomed "The John Kasich Show" and hosted Vice President JD Vance on "The Megyn Kelly Show," underscoring our commitment to thoughtful conversations and diverse perspectives across the political spectrum.

In podcasts, we renewed partnerships with Comedy Bang! Bang! and The School of Greatness and announced "A History of the United States in 100 Objects," a landmark original series produced with BBC Studios and the award-winning team behind "99% Invisible." Sports remains one of SiriusXM's most significant competitive advantages and an increasingly important driver of engagement. More subscribers are tuning in to sports than ever before, with sports streaming up 14% year-over-year and growing across every platform, including our expanding 360L audience. During the quarter, we delivered comprehensive coverage of the Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open, and every round of the NFL Draft and NBA playoffs. We extended our longstanding NASCAR partnership, welcomed Giants all-star Logan Webb to MLB Network Radio and Kenny Beecham to SiriusXM NBA Radio, and served as the audio home of the FIFA World Cup.

We're also expanding our presence in one of the world's most passionate fan communities with the launch of WWE Radio. Together, these investments strengthen SiriusXM's position as the premier audio destination for sports fans. Building on that success, yesterday, we announced Sports Pass, a new subscription designed specifically for today's always-on sports fan. It offers a simpler, more flexible way to access our industry-leading sports programming at a compelling price point, making our unmatched sports offering accessible to even more fans. We're complementing the launch with a new agreement with Audacy, adding leading local sports stations from 22 major markets across the country and giving listeners seamless access to both national coverage and the hometown voices they care about most, further strengthening the value of our sports offerings and broader subscription portfolio. Collectively, these initiatives represent far more than programming investments.

They reflect our conviction that the future of media belongs to companies that create enduring relationships with audiences. Our approach is built around a powerful flywheel. Exclusive access drives participation builds community deepens loyalty fuels growth, and growth creates new opportunities to deliver even more exclusive content, experiences, and access. SiriusXM is uniquely positioned to lead because we combine premium talent, passionate fan communities, immersive live events, first-party audience intelligence, and SiriusXM Media's unmatched cross-platform reach in ways few others can replicate. Ultimately, we're transforming listening into belonging. We're already seeing this strategy deliver measurable impact. This year, we'll produce more than 400 live events, generating over 2,000 hours of original programming and more than 3 million sweepstakes entries for free access to these events and other major artist tours.

95% of those who attend our exclusive events say the experiences increase the value of their SiriusXM subscription. Perhaps more importantly, these experiences deepen engagement well beyond those who attend. That's the power of fandom, bringing listeners closer to the people and moments they love while creating a stronger, more differentiated SiriusXM. Creating deeper fan connections isn't just about the content we offer. It's also about how we deliver it. As 360L expands across nearly every major OEM lineup, we're creating a more intelligent, personalized in-car experience that makes it easier for subscribers to discover and enjoy the content they love. We're seeing meaningful adoption of these capabilities. OEM subscribers now average approximately 24 hours of listening each month, while those who also stream through the SiriusXM app engage more than twice as much. Discovery is also accelerating, with listening through our personalized artist stations increasing 50% year-over-year.

When you combine exclusive content, immersive experiences, and a more intelligent product, you create a subscription service that's more valuable to customers, easier to monetize, and better positioned for long-term growth. The same strategy that's bringing fans closer to the content and creators they love is driving momentum across our advertising business, where revenue increased 5% year-over-year to $454 million. Our open ecosystem approach and strategic investments in advertising technology continue to cement our position as a leader in audio advertising. Partnerships with major players such as YouTube, Apple, and Amazon significantly extend our addressable reach, increasing monetization opportunities and giving marketers access to premium inventory with the ease and targeting capabilities businesses need to invest with confidence. At the same time, our differentiated portfolio of podcast, sports, and live talk programming continues to drive demand.

Podcasting revenue grew 30% year-over-year, driven by rising CPMs, increased sell-through, and an ongoing appetite for our culture-defining content. During the FIFA World Cup, for example, we leveraged our coverage across satellite, streaming, and podcasts to create bespoke sponsorship packages for major brands, including Bank of America, Lowe's, Verizon, Xfinity, and McDonald's, demonstrating how our premium audio lineup and cross-platform capabilities create value for both content partners and advertisers. Finally, the successful launch of SiriusXM-11 at the end of June advanced our next-generation satellite fleet and reinforced the long-term resilience of our network. Investments like these ensure we continue delivering the premium, reliable in-car experience that remains a key competitive advantage for SiriusXM. Taken together, these investments are creating a stronger SiriusXM, one with healthier subscription economics, a faster-growing advertising platform, and durable competitive advantages that position us for long-term growth.

We're encouraged by our execution, confident in our strategy, and focused on creating sustainable long-term value for our listeners, partners, and shareholders. Before I turn the call over to Zac for more detail on our financial results, I'd like to acknowledge that we announced this morning that Wayne Thorsen has decided to leave the company. We appreciate Wayne's many contributions to SiriusXM and thank him for his service. We wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

Thanks, Jennifer, thank you everyone for joining us today. Our H1 results reflect disciplined execution and reinforce three key themes. First, we delivered revenue growth supported by the durability of our subscription business and momentum across advertising. Second, we expanded margins through disciplined cost management while continuing to invest in our strategic priorities. Third, we translated that performance into higher earnings and strong free cash flow. Turning to the quarter, consolidated revenue increased 1% year-over-year to nearly $2.2 billion. Subscription revenue grew 1% to $1.6 billion, reflecting the benefit of our February pricing actions and the resilience of our subscription business. Advertising revenue increased 5% to $454 million, driven by the continued momentum in podcasting, programmatic advertising, and technology fees, underscoring the strength and diversification of our advertising platform. That momentum also translated into higher profitability.

Adjusted EBITDA increased 3% to $691 million, with margins expanding 1 percentage point to 32%. Higher subscription and advertising revenue, combined with disciplined expense management, more than offset increased sales and marketing investment supporting the continued growth of our advertising business. Our cost transformation initiatives also continue to progress as planned. Year-to-date, we've captured $74 million toward our target of delivering an incremental $100 million in gross cost savings this year, including $48 million in operating expense savings and $26 million in CapEx savings. Higher revenue, expanding margins, and disciplined expense management also produced strong earnings and cash flow. Net income increased 17% to $239 million, while diluted earnings per share grew 23% to $0.70, free cash flow increased 48% to $593 million, driven by higher adjusted EBITDA, lower cash taxes, as well as favorable timing of vendor payments and capital expenditures.

Turning to our segment results, SiriusXM revenue was $1.6 billion, slightly higher than the prior year period. SiriusXM subscriber revenue increased 1% to $1.5 billion, reflecting a 1% increase in ARPU to $15.32 following our February pricing actions. SiriusXM advertising segment revenue grew 8% to $41 million, supported by robust demand across sports programming, particularly around the FIFA World Cup 2026. More than 6% of both self-pay and trial streaming listeners tuned into World Cup coverage during the tournament, with the championship match attracting 11% of all streaming listeners. Equipment revenue declined 22% year-over-year to $36 million, reflecting higher memory costs associated with our hardware modules. While this continues to pressure equipment revenue and margins, it reflects a broader semiconductor market dynamic rather than anything specific to SiriusXM.

Despite that headwind, SiriusXM gross profit increased 2% to $981 million, with gross margin expanding 1 percentage point to 61%. Turning to subscriber trends, we delivered our strongest second quarter subscriber performance in four years. Self-pay net additions totaled 22,000, an improvement of 90,000 from the prior year period. Companion plans contributed 123,000 incremental self-pay net additions, while continuous service and expanded dealer programs helped offset slightly lower conversion rates. Our confidence in companion plans continues to grow. More than 80% of users say the offering increases the value of their subscription, and more than three-quarters say it makes them more likely to remain subscribers. Combined with the continued benefits of our continuous service initiative, these efforts help drive self-pay churn to approximately 1.4%, the lowest level in our history. As Jennifer discussed, our subscriber outlook remains unchanged.

We continue to expect modestly lower full-year self-pay net additions than last year as we anniversary the rollout of continuous service and continue to reduce promotional acquisition offers and discounting. While these actions will moderate reported net additions, they support our strategy of improving subscriber quality, increasing lifetime value, and building a stronger, more durable subscription business. Turning to Pandora and off-platform, we delivered another quarter of strong, profitable growth. Segment revenue increased 4%, to $543 million, while advertising revenue grew 5%, to $413 million, driven by approximately 30% growth in podcasting, 29% growth in programmatic advertising, and 20% growth in technology fees, partially offset by softer streaming music advertising. That momentum reflects the continued strength of our advertising platform and the investments we're making to expand its reach and capabilities.

Our Amazon Demand-Side Platform integration is making our premium podcast inventory more accessible to advertisers, while more broadly, we're increasingly seeing advertisers buy across multiple platforms, underscoring the value of our integrated advertising offering and our ability to deliver scaled cross-platform campaigns. Looking ahead, we expect to begin the broader commercialization of YouTube Audio later this year. Early advertiser demand and live campaigns are helping us enhance measurement, refine execution, and validate the offering ahead of a broader rollout that we believe will expand our audience, deepen advertiser engagement, and create new monetization opportunities. This continued operating momentum drove segment gross profit up 6%, to $163 million, with gross margin expanding 1 percentage point to approximately 30%.

Capital expenditures were $130 million, down from $145 million a year ago, primarily reflecting lower satellite investment as we continue to wind down our current satellite investment cycle following the successful launch of SXM-11. We continue to expect non-satellite Capital expenditures of approximately $400 million-$415 million this year. With the planned launch of SXM-12 next year expected to complete our current satellite investment cycle, we anticipate Capital expenditures will normalize, providing an additional tailwind to free cash flow over time. Our strong cash generation continues to support a disciplined capital allocation strategy. During the quarter, we reduced total debt by $292 million, including the early repayment of our term loan, while returning nearly $97 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. We ended the quarter with net leverage of 3.4x adjusted EBITDA, reaching our long-term target range of low to mid three times.

Our capital allocation priorities remain consistent. We'll continue investing in the business where we see the highest long-term returns, maintain a strong balance sheet within our leverage target, and return capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. We ended the quarter with approximately $996 million remaining under our existing repurchase authorization and continue to believe our shares represent an attractive long-term value. We'll also remain disciplined in evaluating opportunities to create additional shareholder value, including through our spectrum assets and other strategic opportunities. Taken together, our H1 performance gives the confidence to raise full-year guidance by $25 million across revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow. We now expect approximately $8.525 billion of revenue, $2.625 billion of adjusted EBITDA, and $1.375 billion of free cash flow for the year.

This increase reflects the strength of our underlying business while continuing to absorb higher memory costs, which have increased several times this year and are partially offsetting the flow-through of our strong operating performance. The durability of our subscription business, the momentum in advertising, and the consistency of our cash generation continue to provide a strong financial foundation. We're confident in our outlook and remain focused on executing our strategy, allocating capital thoughtfully, and delivering sustainable long-term shareholder value. With that, I'll turn it back to the operator for Q&A.

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star one from your telephone keypad and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. As a reminder, to allow as many as possible to ask questions, we ask you please limit yourself to two questions. Thank you. Our first question will be coming from the line of Bryan Kraft with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your questions.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking the question. I was wondering if you could comment on any progress you've made toward finding a way to monetize a portion of your spectrum portfolio, and if you have any sense for the timing of reaching an agreement with a partner and what a partnership could look like, just given that you'll need to continue using that lower Sirius band for much of the next five years. Then secondly, now that you're at the leverage target, Zac, what kind of pacing could we expect for share repurchases going forward? Thank you.

Thanks, Bryan. Good morning. We continue to see licensed spectrum as an added optionality and long-term value driver. As we've discussed in the past, we have 35 MHz of contiguous spectrum. It serves as critical infrastructure in support of the business today, as you've noted, including supporting the delivery of our service to 35 million subscribers across the U.S. and Canada. There's been a lot of activity in the market recently. Much more attention, obviously, on the value of spectrum. It's a scarce strategic asset, and we believe it provides us with meaningful long-term optionality. The technology and regulatory landscapes continue to evolve. We are taking a methodical approach at looking at opportunities that support our current business, also preserve our flexibility and position us to deliver the highest value for shareholders. Our strategy hasn't changed here.

We believe the most attractive path to value creation is through partnerships, incremental opportunities that will allow us to monetize spectrum while preserving this flexibility going forward. We've previously shared that we continue to have discussions with potential partners around a range of different opportunities.

Great. Thanks for the question, Bryan. Just to sort of ground everybody, we ended the second quarter with net leverage of 3.4x. Reaching our target leverage range of low to mid-threes, we've communicated previously. That's an important milestone for us, as it gives us much greater flexibility in how we deploy our free cash flow. Now looking forward, our first priority remains the same as it has been, investing in the business in order to deliver strategic and financial priorities. We continue to believe this has the highest ROI. Beyond that, though, with our balance sheet now in target range, our capital allocation priorities will shift toward returning capital to shareholders through dividend and share repurchases. On the dividend side, remains an important component of our capital return framework and definitely reflects the durability of our subscription business, confidence in the outlook.

We believe our current dividend is at the right level. We therefore expect share repurchases to become an increasingly important use of excess cash flow. We'll be disciplined in our execution and opportunistic, of course, based on valuation and the market conditions, and of course, within our broader capital allocation priorities. We ended the quarter, as we said on the call, with just about $1 billion in remaining authorization. We think our shares are attractive long-term value. I think you'll begin to see somewhat in the H2 of this year an increase, and then definitely the story for 2027 likely to move towards much more significant share repurchases. I think just to sort of land.

In an ordinary course of things, we do remain opportunistic, of course, in pursuing additional value creation, whether through strategic investment as potential spectrum opportunities, as Jennifer talked about, or other initiatives. Nothing is on our radar on the moment there. I think what we're really happy about is our strong and consistent free cash flow gives us the flexibility to invest in growth while still meaningfully returning capital to shareholders now that we're inside the leverage range.

The next question is from the line of Stephen Laszczyk with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your questions.

Hey, great. Thanks for taking the questions. Jennifer, Zac, on the guidance raise, I was curious if you could maybe talk a little bit more about the puts and takes for the raise this year. What are you seeing play out better than expected, either through the subscription business or the ad business? It sounds like on the expense side, there's some added expenses around technology. Just curious if you'd help us size the impact there and how we should be thinking about that into the H2.

Of course. Thank you, Stephen, for the question. We're really pleased with our second quarter performance following what was also a very strong first quarter. Revenue growth versus last year and importantly, growth in both SiriusXM and on the advertising side. EBITDA growth combining that revenue improvement with disciplined cost management and strong free cash flows. Cash flow up 48% versus last year in the second quarter. That's a really strong base. The underlying metrics are also very strong. Positive self-pay net adds we saw for the quarter, ARPU higher than last year, record low churn in our SiriusXM subscription business. On advertising, strength in both sell-through and CPMs. As we look forward into the H2 of the year, we see most of those strong trends continuing, which is what's allowing us to raise our guidance for revenue, EBITDA, and cash flow.

That's despite a meaningful second half headwind from higher memory costs. The memory suppliers have raised prices multiple times over the last nine months, driven by that broader semiconductor market dynamic. That was a small impact in the H1, and we expect it to be more meaningful in the H2, so that's incorporated into the guidance in our outlook. Otherwise, the underlying business performance remains strong.

The only thing I'd add on related to subs, Stephen, is we continue to be pleased with the performance and the strong take rate we've seen on companion subscriptions, our continuous service initiatives, and contributions from our extended duration auto dealership programs. As we look at the rest of the year, the fourth quarter has a tough comp on when we launched continuous service, so we're just being cautious as we set the context for subscriber performances here.

Thanks. That's great. Then maybe just secondly, if I could ask on the YouTube inventory, it sounds like commercialization is set for later this year. I'm just curious if you could talk a little bit more about what you've learned so far after having your hands on the YouTube inventory or seeing under the hood behind the YouTube inventory, then any plans or working approaches to monetize that into the back half of the year when we could expect that to really start scaling in the financials.

We are, as we've talked about, this is a test and learn period for us. We are in the early stages. We've literally had thousands of conversations about the YouTube opportunity with customers, I think the early stages are really about validating this takeaway that YouTube is truly a listening opportunity. This multimodal behavior where listeners are engaging in visual engagement but also listening as well. That is something that I think is a takeaway that everyone is recognizing. We're really in the early stages of product validation, understanding the measurement capabilities, and really building the commercial pipeline. We remain confident that this is a tremendous opportunity for advertisers, and to bring unparalleled reach. I mean, we're now at the stage where we can claim 255 million monthly active users, 90% of the adults 13+.

That is something that I think is really resonating with the market, and we're excited to bring this to commercial readiness later this year. I would just reiterate that we are in the Q4 buying cycle right now. We are looking at this period as a test and learn phase and really excited about the opportunity to bring this in the upfront discussions that we have with advertisers and agencies as they look ahead to 2027 planning.

Our next questions are from the line of Barton Crockett with Rosenblatt. Please proceed with your questions.

Okay, great. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to drill a little bit more deeply into the commentary about still expecting lesser kind of subscriber additions despite the growth that we had here in this second quarter. In particular, it sounds like you're expecting kind of maybe more kind of a headwind in the back half than maybe we were seeing before. I'm just wondering if that's the case, if there's been any change in kind of the pacing versus what you were expecting before. Also, if you can kind of give us a sense of the size of the impacts. Excuse me. Some of the things that are impacting in terms of the continuous service and the companion. If you could size the level of impact from that on the subs, that'd be helpful.

Thanks, Barton. On Companion, we've provided some numbers over the last few quarters, 80,000 net adds in Q4, 124,000, I believe on Q1, and 123,000 in Q2. We've been very pleased with the continued sort of solid take rates we're seeing there among our most loyal subscribers. I just would expect that that might slow down as some of the marketing matures there. We've mentioned that we are looking, given the sort of metrics we're seeing around this, it's been very positive, I think, for the overall business in terms of increasing household engagement, that we are looking at opportunities to potentially expand that. We have not solidified those yet. I would expect, again, the contribution from Companion to potentially decline over the course of the year.

As we've talked about with continuous service, we launched the initiative in the fourth quarter of last year, and we had a fairly meaningful contribution from that in terms of removing friction as customers move between vehicles. That also will slow as we continue to progress through the year. We're going to be seeing the anniversary of that, obviously, in the fourth quarter. Nothing's changed in our expectations for this year. As we reiterated, we still expect slightly lower self-pay net additions this year versus last year, and nothing's changed about our expectations essentially for the quarters. We are being cautious for some of those reasons about the timing of when the initiatives were launched and also just generally about the auto market. There is maybe some softness. The second quarter is actually pretty strong in terms of SAR.

There is mixed messaging, I think, in the market in terms of consumer confidence, we just want to be cautious as we enter this third quarter where the trial starts will be a meaningful contribution to conversions in the fourth quarter.

Okay. If I could just also ask one other kind of drill deeper question on YouTube. Our understanding is that YouTube's going to dramatically increase your presence with younger audiences. I was wondering if you could speak to that and speak to maybe some potential to elevate podcasts in general and your position in podcast in the advertiser kind of mindset and budget allocation as we go into next year.

It's a really great point. We talked about the distribution of the audience in the last call, and one of the really amazing benefits here is just how much the younger generation under the age of 35 is using YouTube as a listening platform in addition to a visual platform, particularly with podcasts, but also with music. The increase in addressable reach against that younger demo, which is high demand and interest for a wide variety of advertisers, is multiples higher than what we see today. Your second point about the podcasting component, we have a broad breadth of podcast content today. We have the largest podcast network in the U.S. with the most shows in the top 20, and we're really focused on building that part of our business. This YouTube component also adds increased reach against podcast listening.

Nearly half of the overall consumption that is happening on YouTube is to podcast content, which gives us increased breadth and scale. We see this as an opportunity to not only go deeper with advertisers across different categories who are targeting that younger demo, but also in other areas like multicultural, sports content, et cetera, which we're seeing increased demand for as well.

Our next question is from the line of Jessica Reif Ehrlich with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. I wanted to dig a little bit deeper on advertising. Unfortunately, I'm going to go back, I'm sorry, to YouTube, but you did cite increasing opportunities, and I just wanted to explore, first, on YouTube, if you could give us some color on the economics, including possibly guarantees on your part. Also, the content that's included, they just announced a deal with Peacock beginning next year, so obviously podcasts and music, but does it encompass that content, which will include NFL, SNL, et cetera.? Your press release talks about news advertising declining. Do you think that is a permanent decline because it's too controversial? Really just more color, I guess, on advertising generally. Second on content, you quickly mentioned an Audacy deal. Is that for their stations that are just sports or is there other content included? Thank you.

That sounds good. I think, Jessica, no apologies for asking us about YouTube. We're always happy to be talking about that particular one. Maybe I'll just cover the economics first, hand over to Scott and Scott for the other pieces. I think as Scott has talked about, everything we've seen over the last 90 days with the YouTube deal supports our perspective that we believe the YouTube agreement's going to be an important source of future growth. I think it's important, though, to note while we don't expect meaningful financial contribution for the rest of 2026 or the H1 of 2027, we do believe this becomes much more significant in revenue and earnings opportunity in the H2 of 2027 as an advertiser adoption scales.

We haven't yet quantified the size of that opportunity as Scott and the team are continuing to learn about the composition of that inventory. We're 90 days into that. We view this as a structural opportunity to increase our roughly 10% of the approximately $18 billion U.S. audio advertising market. We expect the revenue generated through this partnership to carry healthy contribution margins because we are leveraging the existing sales organization, ad technology, and campaign operations that Scott leads today already. Maybe, Scott, I'll turn it over to you to answer some of the other pieces around the composition of ads.

Thanks, Jessica. On the content, remember the inventory that we have, the exclusive opportunity to bring to market is really any time YouTube and Google identify that the user is primarily listening versus watching. That means across any content where that may be happening. Your example of podcast content, music is intuitive, but beyond that, it could be a long-form interview, it could be sports programming, it could be entertainment category content, like you mentioned, SNL, NFL, et cetera. Any channel or any content where the listener might take their phone with them, put it in the pocket on a commute, and start listening where they were watching prior, is an opportunity to deliver an audio ad to that consumer, which delivers better value for the advertiser because it's more natively connected into that experience.

It brings that additional opportunity for us to expand our capabilities as well. Hopefully that answers your question. On the news front, news has always been somewhat controversial in terms of how advertisers want to be adjacent to that content. There are advances in targeting and semantic understanding of the content itself, that help news publishers and podcast content within the news category, bring the brand safe content within the news to bear and avoid any content adjacencies that advertisers want to stay away from, whether it's geopolitics or other things. We continue to invest. We have a lot of news partners on our platform, including NPR, The New York Times, et cetera. We continue to see that as an opportunity for advertisers if leveraged in the right way.

Sure. Quick. Jessica, one thing, as the video sports rights continue to get disaggregated, we have tried to curate and really consolidate as much sports rights as we can. Right now, we certainly have more than anybody else under one roof.

The Audacy deal was to add a piece we were missing, which was local sports talk. While we have very strong national voices in Stephen A. Smith, Chris "Mad Dog" Russo, and many others, in addition to the league talk channels that are 24/7, we've now added 22 of the most passionate markets across the country for sports talk. If someone misses their local team, that's just the play-by-play. Often they miss the companion sports talk and local host. We'll have all of that now under it. It really does complete our sports offering on that. There are other channels that we can use and do, and may in the future do that if there's passion for news channels or something like that. Really the essence of that was to build Sports Pass into the definitive home for sports programming.

Thank you. Can I just ask one follow-up on news? My understanding is that the demographics of news are really very strong. Is that correct? Because that audience should be monetized.

It is monetized on Sirius on all our news channels, and anything that we will put up in news will be monetized. That isn't an issue, and our demo is obviously very compatible with news programming that would come out of the Audacy deal.

Our next question is in the line of Steven Cahall with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your questions.

Thank you. On the YouTube deal, I was just wondering if you could go a little deeper into how you see the gross profit contribution sort of scaling up. I know you talked about it being more meaningful by the end of 2027. I'm wondering if there's a minimum guarantee component to this and what you need to do on the hiring side to sort of scale into profitability. I would just love to understand that arc better. On the spectrum opportunity, I think Wayne had previously said that you wouldn't intend to force migrate any subs off of the lower 12.5 MHz band. I'm wondering if that's still an absolute. I know Wayne's not going to be with SiriusXM anymore, and it seems like spectrum valuations just could be getting bigger.

I don't know if you have opportunities to do things like offer those sub streaming subscriptions. Just wondering if your thinking there has changed at all. Thank you.

Yeah, no, I'll take the start there. I think on the YouTube economics, overall it's structured similar to other ad rep deals that we have. I think to the point on our ability to scale this, we're being, again, cautious with the scaling of this in the first 12 months, just to make sure that we can get our arms around this. We see the opportunity to still be sizable over time. We do see this as being important both from a revenue perspective and from a profitability side. To the question on required hiring, I think one of the important parts, and I'd mentioned with the 10% market share already, Scott and the team already lead a scaled audio advertising platform. That includes the organization, ad technology, campaign operations, all of those.

We'll be obviously supplementing those to make sure that we can support the new scale that we're building here. I think one of the reasons we're so confident on the profitability of the deal also is because of that infrastructure that's already in place.

Look, I would say the opportunity here to grow overall share of market, to Zac's point, in terms of the overall existing audio market, but also to expand it is real. We have an opportunity not just to retain and expand our existing relationships with brand advertisers, but open up to new categories. We talked about the younger demo, we talked about the multicultural opportunity, but also to go down market to mid-market SMBs, et cetera, that allow us to tap that local opportunity, which is a large, if not majority percentage of the overall spend in traditional radio today. We will hire to capture that market opportunity, and expand our footprint in terms of coverage against those new advertiser sectors. We will do so methodically and in the way that we have in the past.

Yeah. Stephen, just on spectrum. Look, I think the WCS that we have, the 5 MHz on either side of our SDARS bands, is licensed spectrum that is a bit more actionable in the near term. Again, it serves as guard band against potential adjacent terrestrial interference, in our SDARS's band. We are evaluating multiple paths there, including the support that we must provide for public safety initiatives, but other new partnerships or in-house services, as well as longer term strategic opportunities on the low band or the Sirius 12 and a 1.5 MHz that you referenced. I don't know, I guess a scenario could emerge where we would "force migrate." As you know, those customers are moving over time to vehicles with highband or even wideband chipsets.

I think we will have the opportunity to continue to follow that evolution and find the appropriate timing. I don't believe it restricts our ability to do anything, because of course, we could do something alongside that process. We're very conscious of being supportive to our customers and obviously want to continue to provide the service however we can, and streaming is certainly an option there. We'll be methodical about that decision.

The next question is from the line of Clay Griffin with MoffettNathanson. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Good morning. Jennifer, the capabilities that helped you all enable continuous service, how are those manifesting in the win-back opportunity for folks that are not changing vehicles? Just curious if the YouTube arrangement conveys any data or targeting rights that might help in that effort.

Interesting question. Can you clarify that? I'm not sure I understand.

Well, just moving from sort of a vehicle-based subscription to a user base, a customer base. Over time, does that give you more capabilities to target folks for win-back opportunities to bring them back in as subscribers? That's sort of the premise.

Oh, okay. I see. Yes. With continuous service and just generally moving to an identity construct that is based on the consumer as opposed to the vehicle, it does give us a lot more opportunities. Just even in the sales flows, we've talked a bit about this in the past, just removing the need to sort of immediately add a car. I think we're capitalizing the fact that customers can stream our service and are actively streaming our service across many different devices, and they can add a car, remove a car, when convenient or if they're trading in a car and moving to another car. That kind of service continuity aspect is really important. As we see a fair amount of leakage as customers leave one car and then to get a trial on a new car.

We actually expect to implement auto transfer capabilities for those where the matching's very clear, as early as later this year. I think to your point about win-back and better customer information, in general, we just have better customer information overall. Obviously, on the SiriusXM side, we almost always have name and address and vehicle, and now increasingly, we have more listening data that we could employ to better use in win-back campaigns.

The next question's from the line of Jason Bazinet with Citigroup. Please proceed with your question.

At risk of embarrassing myself, I'm going to ask this question. You said earlier, any time, any sort of content YouTube has, if YouTube thinks the consumer's listening versus watching, it's included in the ad inventory. Where I get confused is if I'm a YouTube customer and I'm on my phone and I hit the right button to turn the video off, YouTube just sort of shuts down. If I'm a YouTube Premium customer and I don't get ads, I can hit that right button and I can listen to YouTube in audio form. I don't quite understand how what am I missing? How does YouTube infer that you're listening as opposed to watching, given that construct that exists on YouTube today?

It's a great question, and honestly, it's one of the questions that we've been getting a lot as we've been educating the market on this opportunity because it's not intuitive, to your point. There are a couple of use cases here that you may not seem, like I said, intuitive. I'll give you a few examples.

YouTube Music is an obvious one. YouTube Music has no visual component. That inventory is included here. Two, YouTube on a smart speaker device. It happens more often than you think. There's also a variety of signals that Google is building into their algorithm to determine whether a user is primarily listening. Even in the car, users may not minimize or background the app. They may swipe it to minimize the screen. They may leave it up while it's connected via Bluetooth or into their aux jack in their car. They just might put it into their pocket, without pausing, and letting the audio play. In all of those scenarios, it does make intuitive sense that an audio ad would be a better solution as opposed to a visual ad, when the user is not engaging with the screen.

From a performance perspective, and just from a user experience perspective, audio makes more sense, which is why there's a unique opportunity here.

That's super helpful. Thank you for clarifying.

The next question is from the line of Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Thank you for taking the question. I guess maybe closing the loop on Spectrum, could you perhaps tell us or give us an update? Have the conversations related to potential partnerships and opportunities picked up since the April, May timeframe when you last updated us, given to Steven's question, the activity in the market seems to have picked up. Another question, more strategically, I think you have talked about in the past and today as well, about the segmentation approach. As it pertains to the Play tier, can you update us where you are in that? Is it any more or less exciting as you think about the portfolio of opportunities or portfolio of content and packaging that you currently offer?

Could you help size, how big is that base? Is it a meaningful contributor to net adds thus far since March? Thank you.

Sure. Thanks, Sebastiano. I'll start with Play. I think where we found the most benefit is leveraging the lower price point to attract customers into the funnel in marketing, with customers tending to take higher priced packages. It's not a meaningful number of subscribers. We're also testing where we could use it most beneficially in retention, so in saves. I think that's one of the reasons, some of the indicators we saw from Play and generally other indicators around sort of sports passion are some of the reasons that we look to launch the Sports Pass subscription. As you know, many of our subscription prices are well above $20 a month, and we do believe there's more demand to tap into at lower price points.

We don't want to rely on unpublished discounts for our full content set at less than $10. We have Sports Pass at $5, we have Play at $7. I think what we'd like to do is find more opportunities, really tapping into fandom, where we can uniquely deliver content that no one else can, live, alongside specialized, whether it's sports or other genres where we have really compelling content and tap into some of these audiences whose needs may be met on the music side with other services. I do think there's room for more demand creation, and we can also use them in retention. Especially as we're getting more and more data as to what our customers are listening to. I would say that's the path on Play and other content-related subscriptions. Back to spectrum.

Conversations continue, again, I think this is a long-term option, and we are looking to maximize the value for the company and shareholders alongside the different portions of our licensed spectrum. There's been just a lot of attention, clearly, in the market from a technology standpoint over the last several years. New entrants and direct to device and other sectors as well as now and obviously enhanced launch capabilities across the providers there. A lot of market activity, M&A, the SpaceX IPO. Then on the regulatory side as well, we've just seen a number of moves by the FCC to support direct to device and other new use cases, including support for TT&C in our SDARS band, which, again, we're very supportive of as well.

All of these trends give us confidence that our licensed spectrum, again, is this added optionality and long-term value creation for the company.

Our next question is from the line of Kutgun Maral with Evercore. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Two, if I could. First, I wanted to, Jennifer, you just mentioned fandom, so I wanted to hone in on that if I could and see if maybe you could expand on the broader fandom strategy and live events. Seems like an untapped opportunity for digital audio players more broadly. I know that the industry is very focused on it. Any more color on the strategy here and what you hope to achieve would be appreciated. Then second, just kind of going all the way back to self-pay net adds and asking more of a higher level questions. It was great to see the momentum in the quarter, though I recognize, as you've talked about, the comps get tougher in the fourth quarter.

Maybe stepping away from quarterly trends, I think I'm just trying to better understand underlying momentum in the business. When I go back over the past few years, it feels like there's been a constant wave of one-time or non-recurring factors that have impacted subscriber trends. Some of this is due to the great initiatives that you had that have extended the durability of the business. From the outside, it's just kind of hard to tell how much of any quarter's strength is structural versus initiative-driven and potentially likely to fade in next year's comps, for example. I'm not looking for explicit guidance, necessarily, but just your read on the multi-year trajectory once you strip out some of the puts and takes on the core business would be appreciated. Thank you.

Sure. Thanks, Kutgun. I think on the subscriber side, we have put a number of initiatives in place. In some ways, that is an effort to find new acquisition opportunities outside of our traditional conversion funnel. Those are things like expansion of our dealer programs, whether that's extended duration plans or just adding more dealers to the network, bringing in more data as to ownership changes so we can widen the funnel. Also, things like Podcast Plus, where we're actually getting subscribers on other audio service platforms for our podcast content. There are a number of initiatives that I think are helping us widen the acquisition opportunities. Then, of course, on the retention side, we had just record low churn, obviously, in the quarter at 1.4%.

I think the right sort of view there is that 1.4%-1.6% is probably the right range for the longer term for the business. Even within that, I still see opportunities for us to improve engagement and retention, in part because we just have so much more data and we just haven't really leveraged that in the past. We have about 20% of our self-pay subscribers now on 360L. Of course, more customers are streaming as well, so we have that data. That really plays into, I think, a bit your question on fandom, which I'll come back to in a minute. I think I understand your point on long-term trends, but we are focused not just on self-pay net adds, we are focused on the overall economics of the business and creating better overall customer lifetime value.

Sirius XM Holdings (SIRI) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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