It's time to get serious on Sirius

[Free Thinker]

Quote from hels02:

I haven't even looked at satellites since Loral/Globalstar went backrupt, dumped all the stockholders and took a whole lot of my money with it (and lo! It's still in business! LOR is at $22.69 right now, GSAT at 14.10. They're booming after going backrupt and stealing all the investor money and eliminating all debt. What a crock).

I looked at SIRI's financials, and they look incredibly similar to Loral/Globalstars right before they kicked all their investors to the curb. It'd be nice for them to start with a clean debt slate too. What would stop them?

even cramer said the other night siri probably will not make it unless they merge with xm. who knows.

 

[HolyGrail]

A better comparison would be to compare satellite radio to satellite TV. Both have two players. If you got in on the early stages of satellite tv you would already be retired. Satellite tv has to compete with broadcast and cable. Satellite radio only has to compete with broadcast radio. Satellite radio will be bigger than satellite TV because americans spend a heck of a lot of time in their cars and it is going to be forced upon them by dealers and car companies. Once you have satellite radio, you will not want to be without it.

This industry is going to be huge. You just have to be patient. That's why I'm swing trading with some shares and holding long term with others.

 

[HolyGrail]

Quote from vhehn:

even cramer said the other night siri probably will not make it unless they merge with xm. who knows.

That ought to be a reason to buy it.

 

[snooptrader]

Quote from lindq:

They've got Stern making the rounds of the talk shows just to keep his face in the public because he can't draw new subscribers.

Under 1M subs before Stern, over 5M now. Hmmm - I would say he has brought in new subs.

 

[HolyGrail]

I'll give you guys one more reason to own it for the long term.

The stock only has 24% institutional support. Why?

Mainly because many institutions cannot or will not
buy a stock below 5.00.

When this stock gets near 5.00 it will skyrocket from new institutional sponsorship. Of course you can wait until it gets closer to that number, but I would still buy some here.

 

[HolyGrail]

Quote from snooptrader:

Under 1M subs before Stern, over 5M now. Hmmm - I would say he has brought in new subs.

Stern is the only reason why I bought a satellite radio, but now that I have one, I will never be without one again.

 

[FullyArticulate]

Quote from snooptrader:

Under 1M subs before Stern, over 5M now. Hmmm - I would say he has brought in new subs.

That's spurious reasoning. Just because there are more subscribers today than there was before doesn't mean Stern drew an audience. Evidence of that:

XMSR outperformed adding subscribers for the entire period, and they didn't have Stern. In other words, Sirius LOST subscriber market share over the same period.

http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/an-indepth-look-at-gross-subscriber-numbers.html

 

[HolyGrail]

Quote from FullyArticulate:

That's spurious reasoning. Just because there are more subscribers today than there was before doesn't mean Stern drew an audience. Evidence of that:

XMSR outperformed adding subscribers for the entire period, and they didn't have Stern. In other words, Sirius LOST subscriber market share over the same period.

http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/an-indepth-look-at-gross-subscriber-numbers.html

Do you see that big peak in the chart. That is when they announced howard was coming to sirius. Look how far xm was ahead back then compared to now. They are not losing share, they are just not gaining it at the unbelievable clip that they were.

 

[lindq]

Quote from snooptrader:

Under 1M subs before Stern, over 5M now. Hmmm - I would say he has brought in new subs.

A glance at the chart before and after Stern says all that needs to be said. He is old news. He is NOT drawing new listeners, and the stock is not drawing new buyers. Sirius themselves just lowered subscriber numbers going forward. How much clearer do you need the picture to be?

The concept of satellite radio is nice. But their business model sucks.

 

[FullyArticulate]

Quote from HolyGrail:

They are not losing share, they are just not gaining it at the unbelievable clip that they were.

As long as XMSR is higher on that chart than SIRI, that means SIRI is LOSING market share! (That chart is subscriber ADDITIONS, not total subscribers)

In any case, both these companies have broken models. When they rack up 700,000 gross subscribers, but only 400,000 net, that means 300,000 people terminated their subscription in a quarter. That's not good. Eventually you run out of new people to sign up, and all you're left with is the old ones to cancel their service.