By: Lee Distad
Something that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in the CE trade media is that since the merger between satellite radio companies Sirius and XM, the combined stock SIRI has been absolutely hammered on the Street, hitting an all-time low last Friday of $0.36 a share, from a pre-merger price of $2.50.
Granted the equity markets have taken a beating worldwide, and every CE and tech company has seen their market cap take sometimes-severe haircuts. At issue for Sirius in particular is concern over their ability to grow their subscriber base, as well as to be able to service the debt issues that are coming due early next year. Talk about avoiding delisting from NASDAQ by engineering a reverse split – exchanging shareholders’ multiple shares for one share at a combined valuation, something that seldom goes well, have further alienated shareholders.
On the CE business front, given how well CE manufacturers have played ball with Sirius (not to mention XM), and the millions of devices in homes and cars that are Sirius-equipped, while it’s still remote, it would be a damn shame to see them go under.
Then again, talking to reps for the various HiFi brands, consumer feedback seems to indicate that Sirius is more popular for mobile applications, than home audio. According to a couple of sources at the big Japanese audio companies, Ethernet audio has proven to be a more popular feature on their AV receivers than Sirius.
What do you think? If Sirius goes under, will you notice? Let us know in the comments.
Granted the equity markets have taken a beating worldwide, and every CE and tech company has seen their market cap take sometimes-severe haircuts. At issue for Sirius in particular is concern over their ability to grow their subscriber base, as well as to be able to service the debt issues that are coming due early next year. Talk about avoiding delisting from NASDAQ by engineering a reverse split – exchanging shareholders’ multiple shares for one share at a combined valuation, something that seldom goes well, have further alienated shareholders.
On the CE business front, given how well CE manufacturers have played ball with Sirius (not to mention XM), and the millions of devices in homes and cars that are Sirius-equipped, while it’s still remote, it would be a damn shame to see them go under.
Then again, talking to reps for the various HiFi brands, consumer feedback seems to indicate that Sirius is more popular for mobile applications, than home audio. According to a couple of sources at the big Japanese audio companies, Ethernet audio has proven to be a more popular feature on their AV receivers than Sirius.
What do you think? If Sirius goes under, will you notice? Let us know in the comments.
2 comments:
Everything ever written about sirius is negative except their growth, growth always wins. Who will not make it is AM/FM, they are getting murdered now. As far other competition- cell lines work fairly well but the price is just not comparable, it will be $30-$50 just to get a connection, but you still have no good platform or content, internet is only free when they can run pop up ads --that will not work in a car. As far was a city wide wifi, we are decades away. Its a winner by default, there really is no competiton, 5 years fron now they will have 50 million subscribers and it will be a cash cow. 5 year Profits should be $3 billion per year.
Well I sure hope they don't go out of business considering I have a life time subscription.
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