Sirius XM gains 4% after earnings beat, $1 billion special dividend
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Sirius XM Holdings (NASDAQ:SIRI) is 3.9% higher after its fourth-quarter earnings eked out a beat Tuesday and the company declared a special dividend to return $1 billion to shareholders.
Revenues rose 4% to $2.28 billion, capping off a full-year revenue gain of 8% to $8.7 billion.
It swung to a net profit of $318 million from a year-ago loss of $677 million (the prior-year quarter seeing impact from a $976 million noncash impairment tied to Pandora).
The company added 1.152 million net new self-pay subscribers in 2021 (up 27%) to land at a record 32 million. Total subscribers reached 34 million, and paid promotional subs fell by 1.833 million (due to "continuing impacts of new vehicle trial structures with certain automakers as well as lower vehicle shipments due to reported semiconductor supply shortages").
Self-pay monthly churn for the full year improved by about 5 basis points, to 1.6%.
Meanwhile, the special dividend of $0.25 per share (about $1 billion in aggregate) was made possible by "our outstanding cash generation and flexible balance sheet, and it reflects our continued confidence in SiriusXM's strong operating performance," says Chief Financial Officer Sean Sullivan. The company's returned some $18.37 billion in cash to stockholders since December 2012, it says, and it has about $2 billion remaining on an $18 billion repurchase authorization.
It was an "outstanding year" across the board, says CEO Jennifer Witz. "We added more than one million net new SiriusXM self-pay subscribers for the tenth time in the past 11 years; this growth continues to be sustained by a fifth straight year of improving churn. Once again we outperformed all of 2021's public guidance, and now our strong financial position enables us to declare a special cash dividend to our stockholders."
Revenue breakout: Subscriber, $1.7 billion (up 5%); Advertising, $495 million (up 4.4%); Equipment, $53 million (down 11.7%); Other, $38 million (down 5%).
For 2022, Sirius XM is guiding to self-pay net subscriber additions of about 500,000, along with total revenue of about $9 billion, EBITDA of $2.8 billion, and free cash flow of $1.55 billion.
Check out the earnings call transcript for more detail on the quarter.