Mel Karmazin
Analyst · Lazard Capital Markets
Thanks, Hooper. Thank you, all, for joining us today. This morning, I want to spend a few minutes discussing our operations, updating you on our guidance for 2011, reviewing the competitive landscape and discussing our balance sheet and how we think about the cash we are generating. We are very pleased to report another strong quarter of subscriber revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth together with improving margins and increasing cash flow. We added 118% more subscribers in Q1 2011 than in Q1 2010. Net subscriber additions of more than 373,000 represented the strongest first quarter subscriber growth in the 3 years since Q1 2008. Gross subscriber additions during the quarter were up 19% to 2,052,000 on the back of higher OEM sales and improved reactivations of radios. We ended the quarter with over 20.5 million paying subscribers, a new record, to maintain our position as one of the largest subscription entertainment businesses in the world. Revenue grew by 9% to $724 million, driven primarily by higher subscriber count during the quarter. Adjusted cash operating expenses grew by 6.5%. The increase in cash operating expenses are all growth related, higher SAC, which is a function of increased car sales, and higher revenue share and royalties. All other cash operating expenses combined were flat year-over-year. Our tight expense controls meant we were able to grow adjusted EBITDA by 15% to a record $181 million, more adjusted EBITDA than the company has ever recorded in a single quarter. This adjusted EBITDA record also resulted in the highest quarterly margin in our history at 24.9%, up from 22.1% for all of last year. We expect to see improving margins in the years to come with an adjusted EBITDA margin over 40% at maturity. We plan to get there by subscriber and revenue growth, coupled with our high incremental contribution margins and tight multiyear expense controls. Strong operating performance should then lead to what I believe is the most important yardstick by which any company's value can be judged, and that's free cash flow. And here, I'm pleased to report more good news, both in our performance and in our outlook for the future. First quarter free cash flow improved by a strong $110 million when compared to the first quarter of last year. This was primarily driven by higher adjusted EBITDA and lower capital expenditures, both of which we expect to continue. Our outlook for free cash flow for the full year has improved, and we now expect it to approach $350 million compared to our prior expectation. This will be a 66% increase year-over-year in free cash flow. Our self-pay monthly churn rate was 2%, which was flat year-over-year. Our conversion rate of 44.7% was down about 50 basis points year-over-year, driven by the changing mix of our radio installations among auto makers. We continue to work hard on improving these retention numbers further with a number of new initiatives that are in place right now. We expect that for the full year, churn and conversion will be approximately flat when compared with 2010. Content remains the name of the game for us. At the end of the day, access to the best radio on radio is what continues to grow our subscriber base. This year, we made a number of exciting content announcements, with some of the biggest names in music and entertainment: Tim McGraw, Metallica and Simon & Garfunkel. As we have done in the past around pop-culture events, we created a limited run about Charlie Sheen's antics, Tiger Blood Radio, which got us a huge amount of attention. We continue to work hard to have our SiriusXM 2.0 product ready to launch in the retail channel by the end of the year. We are committed to bringing more content and functionality to our subscribers, which will ensure satellite radio remains an outstanding value proposition in an evolving, competitive media landscape. With 2.0, we'll be expanding our audio content lineup with new channels, including a suite of new Spanish-language channels. With 50 million Hispanics in the United States, we see significant upside potential with our expansion here. We'll also be offering an electronic program guide to better inform listeners about great content on all of our channels, listeners will be able to buy music from their radios, and we'll be including more DVR-like functionality such as pause, rewind and replay, as well as record and playback capabilities. We want to deliver the best audio entertainment in the world to our paying subscribers, however and wherever they want it. Increasingly, this includes smart phones, tablets and other IP-connected devices. Listeners since the beginning of the year are already enjoying Howard Stern's content on the smart phone apps, and with the next NFL season, we will have that play-by-play content available on a mobile basis as well. We recently launched an iPad-optimized app that greatly improves the interface and listening experience for our users. It includes a multichannel view of what's on as well as album art and artist background information. We will continue to improve these products to show what is possible when world-class technology is matched with our SiriusXM musicologists, our deep library and our extraordinary lineup of content. The IP-connected mobile world, no doubt, has numerous strong competitors, but as I just outlined for us, it has also created huge new opportunities for us to connect with our subscribers. We are unique in that our subscribers have demonstrated a willingness to pay for our service at a price point that no other audio entertainment company in the world can match. This allows us to create and deliver premium content to them across all platforms in a way we believe is truly unbeatable. Since the merger, we have delivered solid execution, but we all know that with such performance comes great expectations for the future. We continue to be confident in reaching our guidance targets for the year: Full year net subscriber growth of 1.4 million subs; revenue of $3 billion; adjusted EBITDA of $715 million; and our recently raised free cash flow target of $350 million. Based on all the information we have today, many of you would expect us to increase our 2011 subscriber guidance significantly. The only reason we are not is the OEM supply chain uncertainty related to the tragedy in Japan. Year-over-year, our business has not notably been adversely affected by unemployment, high gas prices, increasing competition or the economy, but we are watching the Japan tragedy closely to see if it results in any supply issues. We monitor this issue daily. We are confident that there will not be any supply issues specifically related to our satellite radios. However, it is not entirely clear what challenges our OEM partners may -- they may experience. If they encounter no serious issues as an industry, we may deliver more subscribers in 2011 than we are currently forecasting. If they encounter difficulties and auto sales are lower than we anticipate, we will deliver more adjusted EBITDA than we anticipate to date as our SAC will likely be lower. If there is a supply impact in 2011, we anticipate that demand will be even stronger for us in 2012 than it is currently anticipated. Today, it is too early to tell. We believe we are being prudent, and we'll keep you informed as more information becomes available. You are also aware we have been driving our top line growth while being restricted by our commitment to the FCC that we would not raise our base price in the first 3 years following our merger. That commitment will expire in the third quarter of this year. SIRIUS has never increased our base price of $12.95 since we started service nearly 10 years ago. We have improved and significantly expanded our content over the years, and it would be appropriate for us to increase our pricing to enable us to maintain our position as the premier audio content provider in the world. We offer a number of packages that allow us to meet the needs of different consumers, and while we have made no final decision, and assuming that the FCC price restriction expires, it is likely that we will be raising prices in the future and that our ARPU will increase as a result. I'd now like to take a couple of minutes to talk about the competitive environment as we currently see it. Terrestrial radio continues to capture the lion's share of listening today. Approximately 79% of all listening in the United States is through the 12,000 terrestrial radio stations. Terrestrial radio is also today receiving approximately 80% of the revenue going to the U.S. radio industry, with Clear Channel being the dominant player. The hundreds -- or thousands of companies that are streaming radio via the Internet accounts for approximately 12% of the listening, with Pandora being the most significant of that group. Streaming is estimated to get approximately 5% of the radio revenue, 12% of the audience, 5% of the revenue, which is not uncommon for Internet business models. SiriusXM currently has 9% of all listening and 15% of the total U.S. radio revenue. Thousands of stations dividing up 79%, hundreds dividing up 12% and one company with 9%. Further, we are the only company in this space operating on a full subscription basis. We like our position in this market. I also believe very strongly that business model matters, and here, we really like our position. Clear Channel radio says in its 10-K that they reach 213 million listeners each week, and their revenue for 2010 was $2.9 billion. This means that Clear Channel generates $13.61 per year from each listener. Pandora, which is the leading company in the very crowded Internet streaming sector, in its S-1, reports $138 million in 2010 revenue and 80 million registered users and 30 million regular users. They are able to generate either $1.68 per year from their registered users or $4.59 per year from their active listeners. SiriusXM, last year, reported revenue of just over $2.8 billion and had approximately 20.2 million subscribers. We generated $141 in the year for each subscriber. $141 a year for us, $13.61 for the leader in terrestrial radio and $4.59 per year for the leading streaming radio company. I think this helps to demonstrate why we like our subscription business model as compared to anything else that exists today or anything we are aware of for the future. We will continue to invest in content and work closely with our OEMs to ensure that our position will even be better in the years to come. As I mentioned earlier, we are raising our free cash flow guidance for the year and see it approaching $350 million, up 66% from $210 million in 2010. This growing free cash flow performance will lead to increased financial flexibility in the future and more options for us to return cash to investors. To give you an idea of the magnitude, let's run through some simple back of the envelope math. We finished 200 -- 2010 with $587 million of cash and cash equivalents on hand. After the final payoff of our 3 1/4% convertible notes due in 2011 and early payoff of the 11 1/4% senior secured notes due in 2013, assuming no other early balance sheet transaction, we should finish the year with approximately $700 million of cash on hand based on our free cash flow guidance. Next year, with no debt maturities to pay off and approximately $100 million less in capital expenditures than this year, our cash on hand will grow at an even faster rate. With no action taken to improve our interest rates or return cash to shareholders, our cash on hand should easily pass $1 billion by the end of next year. Our net leverage ratio has improved considerably and you should expect that this will continue. At the end of the first quarter, our net debt to trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA was 4.1x, down from 6.6x at the same time last year. We think approximately 3x leverage of debt to EBITDA is an appropriate long-term number for the company. Since we will be close to that 3x target by the end of this year, the management and board will be considering all of the options for our cash. While we will always continue to invest in our business, the options are further internal investments or acquisitions and share buybacks or dividends. From my perspective, there is a clear ability to return capital to shareholders, although the timing and quantity of such return is not yet determined. I, for one, am looking forward to rewarding our loyal shareholders this way. Once again, our priorities for 2011 are to end the year reporting record revenue, record subscribers, record adjusted EBITDA and most importantly, record free cash flow. The competition is not standing still and neither are we. We have the greatest group of employees in the industry. Each and every one of them is committed to serving the needs of our subscribers through continually improving our programming and creating and deploying new technology to deliver that content and improve customer service. We are focused on giving our subscribers a compelling and premium service that is also a good value. With the exception of a potential short-term supply issue related to the tragedy in Japan, we remain extremely excited about our prospects for the remainder of 2011 and beyond. I will now hand the call over to David to discuss additional details about our first quarter results. And David, it's all yours.