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Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (SIRI)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Jul 28, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Please standby, ladies and gentlemen, we are about to begin. Good day and welcome to Sirius XM's First (sic) [Second] (00:06) Quarter 2015 Results Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. A question-and-answer session will be conducted following the presentation. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Hooper Stevens, Vice President, Investor Relations and Finance. Mr. Stevens, please go ahead. Hooper Stevens - Vice President, Investor Relations & Finance, Sirius XM Radio Inc.: Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Sirius XM's second quarter earnings conference call. Today, Jim Meyer, our Chief Executive Officer, will be joined by David Frear, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, management will be glad to take your questions. Scott Greenstein, our President and Chief Content Officer, is also be available for the Q&A portion of the call. First, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during the call might 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 on 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 Sirius XM's SEC filings. We advise listeners not to rely unduly on forward-looking statements and disclaim any intent or obligation to update them. As we begin, I would like to advise our listeners that today's results will include discussions about both actual results and adjusted results. All discussions of adjusted operating results exclude the effects of stock-based compensation, certain one-time items and historically…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we'll go first to Brett Feldman with Goldman Sachs. Brett Joseph Feldman - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Good quarter and thanks for taking the question. I want to go back to churn. Obviously, it was one of the highlights of the quarter. You indicated you're not so sure that you're going to be able to sustain such a low run rate, which I think is understandable. But could you maybe just walk us through historically what have been the moving parts in terms of what drives churn and maybe just give us some sense as to where you think you can come out for the rest of the year? David J. Frear - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So the churn is included in the guidance. So we're just going to point you back to the guidance on subs. In terms of the drivers of churn I mean it's three primary components: you have non-pay, you have vehicle turnover and you have other voluntary churn. And where we've seen a real departure from expectations is in the other voluntary, and there're just fewer people that are going out and effectively choosing that free option that Jim talked about than we had expected. It's a good beat, we're glad to have it, but very difficult to predict how people are going to act going forward. So we've had a long-term expectation of churn in sort of the 1.8% to 2% range. We are beating that this year. We hope to continue to beat it, but we're cautious on the outlook. Brett Joseph Feldman - Goldman Sachs & Co.: You'd noted some of the positive trends in the economy, and it seems reasonable that that likely helped the performance in the quarter. Let's just be optimistic and assume that economic trends continue to go well. Would that change anything about how you go to market? Would you maybe actually advertise or promote more aggressively because the return might be better. Would you revisit pricing? Just trying to think about if things keep going well outside the company, how things could change inside the company? James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Look, Brett, I think we constantly evaluate those things. And I can tell you David and I and our teams look at them a lot with a lot of different options. We've developed frankly other options going forward that we haven't made decisions on. But I think – and I think in my comments and David said it in his, having a strong economy helps a lot, okay? And so we certainly feel good wind at our backs at this point, and I think that's all I got to say on that. Brett Joseph Feldman - Goldman Sachs & Co.: All right. Thanks for taking the questions.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Jason Bazinet with Citi.

Jason Boisvert Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Broker

I just had a question regarding how you all are thinking internally about the tradeoff between your price point, the ARPU, and the impact on gross adds and churn. Do you feel like you've got that sort of nailed and you have a good sense in terms of the utility that consumers ascribe to this? Or is it still sort of a bit of a juggling act as you're try and to find optimal tradeoff? Thanks. James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: I've been involved with some subscriber businesses for a while, and I think it's always a juggling act in tradeoff. And I think one of the reasons is is the economy also certainly plays an impact in this and shifts over time. I think we've learned an awful lot. Jason, back to your question, an awful lot. I think our marketing organization and the amount of analytics we're now applying to our businesses at a different level of sophistication than where we were even a year ago in terms of evaluating those tradeoffs, but I will admit to you there's still a lot to learn going forward particularly as we begin to get into this very, very big deployment from approximately 75 million vehicles to 150 million vehicles, and the much wider demographics associated with that about how are we going to position our price points to best optimize, and I want to repeat this, to best optimize the strongest EBITDA performance.

Jason Boisvert Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Broker

Right, okay. And, could you.... James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Other subs are revenue are ARPU, EBITDA.

Jason Boisvert Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Broker

Understood. And if I can ask just one follow-up. As music becomes more pervasive to other platforms, you spend a lot of time talking about sort of a – the sort of special events and things you're doing from the Grateful Dead to boxing matches on an on. Do you think there are opportunities to go acquire additional talent that might be on terrestrial radio, while it's available before the market heats up and gets more competitive to sort of take advantage of your strong free cash flow and your scale and size? James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. I think there is always a chance to acquire strong new talent, and we're constantly – I wouldn't just – I frankly wouldn't just say terrestrial radio for that. And we challenge ourselves hard on that, and honestly, it's something you should hold us accountable for going in future as well. It's what our subscribers pay for; they pay for variety, and so, yes, I think there are other opportunities, but I'm not going to mention where.

Jason Boisvert Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Broker

Understood. All right. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

We'll take our next question from Amy Yong with Macquarie Securities. Amy Yong - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: Following up on the ARPU question, I think you've recently raised prices for XM Select. Can you just talk about the ARPU trajectory and maybe how we should think about that versus some discounting efforts that you might offset? Thank you. David J. Frear - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Amy, nothing has really changed for us that we think with the price grid from time-to-time, and so we – and we don't actually manage to an ARPU number, it's something that we, quite honestly, as a management team we rarely look at. We're looking at other drivers in the business and ARPU ends up being a calculation. But all that being said, as we've said before, media prices go up over time and you should expect ours to go up over time as well. Amy Yong - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Jessica Reif Cohen with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Jessica J. Reif Cohen - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Hello, thanks for... sorry about my voice. I have two topics. One is on SX17. Can you talk about the underlying costs like as you go into the rollout and the timing of the benefits 2017? James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I'm not – I think I have said most of what I want to say about the timing because it's going to be contingent on our auto partners – rollout and our auto partners prefer to keep those rollout plans confidential. I will tell you SiriusXM 17, the development of it is fully funded within the guidance we've given you for this year, and I certainly don't expect it to be a reason why next year's guidance would be different than what you normally would think it would be, okay? And so, we're investing heavily, but we're investing within the parameters, I think you would expect for us going forward. Jessica, we'll have more to say at the CE Show in January. We're putting a lot of effort into this. You know very well that you've been a very patient follower of this company for many, many years. This stuff takes time, okay, which is one of the reasons why occasionally when I read about how fast everybody thinks every new entrants going to enter the vehicle, I kind of get a little skeptical because I've lived it for 12 years. This will take time.

Jessica J. Reif Cohen - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Absolutely. And then the second topic was on advertising, yet another amazing quarter. I mean your growth is so far above most media. And I think you said last quarter that it was part – a good part of it was Fantasy Sports. Can you just give us some color on what's really driving that growth, where is it coming from?

Scott Greenstein - President and Chief Content Officer, Sirius SM Holdings, Inc.

Management

It's coming from all over sports, our news products, and comedy and some other things. What's going on, I think, as the base is growing and more and more advertisers are trying the product, frankly the old fashion answer is they're getting the results they want, it's a very smart affluent audience with the credit cards and they are getting great responses and they keep coming back. Fantasy continues to grow as big as it is, it continues to grow, and there'll be more action in that. But generally, I think the platform's matured as a true alternative vehicle for advertisers and it wasn't always seen that way and it is now. So, we are optimistic on it.

Jessica J. Reif Cohen - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley. Benjamin Swinburne - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thank you. Good morning. I have two questions. First, David, you talked about the trial funnel, I think you said it was 8.2 million which is a really nice increase, and I think it actually – the growth rate accelerated in Q2. Can you help us think about the benefit in the used channel there, and did anything happen in the quarter that really helped it accelerate from Q1 and Q2 or any color you can give us and sort of what's happening under the hood, pardon the expression around used, so we can think about that piece of the puzzle? David J. Frear - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, the growth in used is fantastic, right, which in some way as you'd kind of expect with the sort of built-out distribution network we have – gathering sales information just the organic growth with cars turning over in the marketplace. So we are seeing great growth there. And then with the increased growth, it's really satisfying to see the conversion rate hanging in there, in the low 30s. I mean we've been saying for a couple of years now that we're surprised at the level we're at there. I'd stop saying it because I think after three years, I'm saying I'm surprised, I should – very sound stupid, so. But yeah, used is going great, it's a great tailwind for the business. Benjamin Swinburne - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Great. And then, Jim, I wanted to ask about maybe a bit of a random question, about your artist and labor relationships. And how big of an advantage is – how you're viewed by the industry on the promotion front?…

Scott Greenstein - President and Chief Content Officer, Sirius SM Holdings, Inc.

Management

Sure. So from the beginning, I mean now at times it's again similar to ad sales, it gets a little easier as our base is bigger and we have a track record in performance, but from the beginning whether it's E Street Radio or Jimmy Buffett or Eminem and some of those, and then on the younger scale the biggest DJs in the world have been involved and most of them have regular shows with BPM in Electric Area. The artist community has always seen a nature of both the uncensored and the ability due to our volume of channels to be able to play virtually any cut that we want to. So the artist relationship, I mean there is a lot of things we could talk about. But I would say that's among the strongest assets of the company. Even in light of Apple and other announcements and beats and things like that, you can't find any media company in the world that has more musicians on a regular basis both working here in addition to having a direct relationship. Not to mention, everyday, there is a major artist up here on promotion. So I think that's among the strongest assets we have as a company right now. James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: And I think one other point is it's not just our relationship with the true music stars out there. There is an insatiable appetite of emerging talent to get their music played and we think we've done a great job of shifting through four customers as opposed to customers to have to shift through to identify who we think are great, emerging, really great talent. If you look at the amount of artists we've broke over the last 12 months to 24 months, it's truly an impressive list. So I think it's at both ends that we're pretty confident. Benjamin Swinburne - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thank you, all.

Operator

Operator

We'll take our next question from Barton Crockett with FBR Capital Markets. Barton E. Crockett - FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Okay. Thank you for taking the question. I wanted to talk a little bit more at the subscriber guidance. You guys and your guidance would be adding, I think, 676,000 subs in the back half, after adding 1.12 million in the first half, now that would be a much lower back half than first half than, I think, I've ever really seen from you guys. And I was wondering mechanically what's driving that? Are you assuming that new car sales slow a lot or that churn picks up a lot or is it really just kind of a conservatism that drives your guidance? David J. Frear - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: We do expect auto sales to sort of flatten out, right? The lift relative to prior years has got to be declining. Hey, and you might remember, we had a monster fourth quarter last year, and so I think when you're looking at the year-on-year comps that the expectations of growth in the top of the funnel have got to moderate a little bit. Then, look, we've got this bigger subscriber base so that the actual number of accounts churning is going to be larger. So, I think it's just the math. James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: And I think David has been clear. The wild card going forward frankly, not just for the second half of the year, but going, going forward is what our churn will be, and I just don't expect 1.6 million to be the normal, okay? I'd love it to be, and boy, I'd love to be sitting here a year from now and having all…

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Kannan Venkateshwar with Barclays.

Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Management

Thank you. Just a couple from me. So, first on the music royalties. There seems to be a slight increase in your music royalty fees starting June of this month. So, just wanted to understand if the royalty (41:30) settlement is a part of that, and how you are thinking about it from a pass-through perspective? And secondly, the inevitable balance sheet question. From the buyback side of it, given the increase in revolver, and given the kind of visibility you have going forward for the rest of the year, how should we think about the use of capital given that you still have a lot of room under your guidance? Thanks. David J. Frear - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I don't – there won't be any change in our capital return policy. We've been going along at a good clip and we don't anticipate any change in that. On the music royalties, maybe what we can do, Kannan, is take it offline with you. I don't – other than the fact of accounting for the settlement that I don't really see much that's out of line in these results. But why don't we take your first question offline.

Kannan Venkateshwar - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Management

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll take our next and final question from James Ratcliffe with Buckingham Research Group.

James M. Ratcliffe - The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.

Management

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Two, if I could. First of all, on the higher install rate, can you give us a little more color about what's driving that? Is it automaker mix or different – mix of different tiers or just, all else being equal, automakers are choosing to expand satellite radio to a wider array of their vehicles. And secondly...

Scott Greenstein - President and Chief Content Officer, Sirius SM Holdings, Inc.

Management

It's – just let me answer that one first. It's really simple. It's automakers expanding the commitment within their vehicle lines. And I mentioned in particular who are the two that are increasing. They started – we started those discussions with them years ago and they are now coming to fruition as – in particular about Honda and Toyota take their corporation rate up.

James M. Ratcliffe - The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.

Management

Got it. And secondly, given the significance of the connected car for the business going forward, do you anticipate any impact at a positive or negative from the recent publicity around the Chrysler hacks going in through the connected car system into the actual auto function themselves? James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, look, I have spent a lot of time dealing with automakers, in particularly, the technologists on the automakers side, our teams spend a ton of time. This is an area they've always been petrified of. It's a reason why – and I have talked about it before on these calls that for their true connected services like safety and security or using software to update vehicle warranty things like that, they want a very secure path involving an embedded secure modem. I think in this case, it's a case of a situation they didn't – that arose they didn't anticipate. There will be more of that in the future, but I think the automakers are very committed to making sure they keep those doors close, and I don't want to expect it in any way to slow down their product lanes going forward.

James M. Ratcliffe - The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.

Management

Great. Thank you. Hooper Stevens - Vice President, Investor Relations & Finance, Sirius XM Radio Inc.: Thanks for participating today.

Operator

Operator

And that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation.