Earnings Labs

Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (SIRI)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 22, 2015

$26.79

-0.06%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to SiriusXM's Third Quarter 2015 Results Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded. A question-and-answer session will be conducted following the presentation. 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 Holdings, Inc.: Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to SiriusXM's earnings conference call. Today, Jim Meyer, our Chief Executive Officer, will be joined by David Frear, our Senior 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 will 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 SiriusXM'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. I will now hand the call over to Jim. James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning. We had an extremely strong…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we'll take our first question from Vijay Jayant with Evercore ISI.

Vijay Jayant - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI

Thanks. Good morning. Looking at your website, there was sort of a dollar rate increase for certain tiers of programming. Can you sort of talk about – sorry, I'm thinking June 30, can you sort of talk about what the implications of that should be to ARPU and what percent of the base gets impacted by that? Thank you. David J. Frear - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. Vijay, as we've said for a long time, we have an awful lot of price plans in the system. And as opposed to just general across the board price increases, that you'll see us tinkering with the price grid from time to time that we have deeply discounted plans that we use in retention and acquisition activities that as we've been moving up prices on the full price service that we left those in place for a long time. So we've began to – we decided this time around to take them up a little bit and it is one of these things that, believe it or not, I think I've said this before, if you look at our rating engine. We have something like 22,000 price combinations in there. And so you can expect us from time to time to be tinkering with the price growth.

Vijay Jayant - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI

And just a follow up on the pre-1972 litigation related to New York and California, can you give us an update on what the status of that is? Thank you so much. David J. Frear - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, it's winding its way through the courts that we've had a decision go our way in Florida. The other side is appealing that we had initial decisions go the other way in New York and California that are – that we are appealing. And so it's working its way through the process and honestly it's going to take a long time.

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

Analyst · Evercore ISI

It's a long road.

Vijay Jayant - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI

Okay. Thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Jessica Reif Cohen with Bank of America.

Jessica Jean Reif Cohen - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America

Thank you. I have a couple of questions. The first Jim, I know you talked about a lot of the new programming that you've introduced. It feels like you've really stepped up the programming initiatives. Can you talk a little bit about what's behind that? James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: I don't know that we've – I think we've always been committed to be the programming leader and to provide our subscribers with the widest breadth of program that we can. I just feel like we're really focused on our game right now, and our team is continuing to develop some really I think clever and meaningful programming ideas. Our organization knows that there is no, literally, no programming suggestion that we won't evaluate. And I'm dead serious about programming is the core of our offer and we are going to be the leader. But I don't think there's been any notable change. I just think maybe a lot of hard work that's been going on for a long time happened to hit just kind of all at the same time.

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

Analyst · Bank of America

And also, it's like anything else. There's always an evolution process where a lot of these channels and ideas were in development for a long time. Andy Cohen for instance was very tied up at Bravo and those discussions were going on for a bit of time and then once he was a little more free on time, same thing with the all news new channel. We always wanted one of that, but we needed the right sort of back office to work with us to get there. So as Jim said, there's many ideas that are going on including some that are coming to fruition down the road as well, and this just all sort of hit at once, so occasionally you get that. James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: And Jessica, sometimes the leader is the problem, because I thought Yacht Rock was a dumb idea and then I ended up listening to it for almost every day for the 30 days it was on our servers. There's some clever stuff going on and I'm proud of what they're doing.

Jessica Jean Reif Cohen - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America

Yeah. That's amazing, it just feels like it's accelerated, but moving on, and maybe this is for Scott, I'm not sure, but the advertising growth is extraordinary, for any of us who follow the media sector, can you talk about what's driving it and what some of the categories are?

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

Analyst · Bank of America

Sure. So, if you look at it from, we'll cover it in two ways. Categories first, if you look at between Howard, news, sports, comedy and yes, there is a fantasy component and a fantasy sports component in there that we're getting the wave on, but right now, we have a critical mass that is finally at a level where the advertising community realizes that this is not only working and they've all – all is too strong. A lot of them have had their toe in the water for a while and getting tremendous results at ad agencies from the clients, et cetera. And so they're back in much, much heavier right now. The other thing is, which you can't underestimate, we're looking at programming differently, clearly on the non-music side. So, when you look at the Headlines news channel that was something we believe an all news channel was always going to work. So the content goal, like it's always been was number one. But, we knew from our news advertising and that came out of the box and already has significant advertising revenue attached to it. So the old model of only content is now matched with the content first, but the new – the advertising right behind it. So we're pretty excited with that. The other thing is, there's a lot of things we haven't done. We haven't sold powered by or sponsorships on any of these channels. We have live events constantly. Our Town Hall series has a request a week practically on it to be a sponsor and advertiser. So, there is a lot of highway still to go beyond the traditional advertising model.

Jessica Jean Reif Cohen - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America

Very exciting. And just – I've one last question. But the used car or the secondary car market opportunities are obviously humongous. Your now – I guess, I think, I heard Jim say 18,000 dealers, can you talk about the other two-thirds of the market, what you're doing with the independent dealers in the consumer-to-consumer market? James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. So we're – my comments I meant I said, I think this is the single biggest subscriber opportunity, growth opportunity we have over the next many, many years. And, we're not going to let this one go by. Okay. We're going to be very, very focused and in my nomenclature use every club in the bag. I hinted at, I think, where we're going next, which is virtually every car that's in operation in this country is insured, and a high percentage of them are financed. All of those are insured or financed starting with the VIN number and then the owner, which to us is a very valuable way to be able to understand who owns those cars. So that's just one area where we've been working for awhile to gain ground. As I said in my comments we've broken through with one major insurer which we'll be talking about more later. And you'll see more from us on that area and we're learning a lot more, whether it's credit unions or things like that that we can work with and then finally, there are quite a few, call it, purchase services or co-ops that operate in that independent dealer structure that we're learning about how they manage their back rooms and I see opportunities there for us to get the data. So we're just going to keep going everywhere we can to make sure we're getting a timely supply of that data and it's a very high focus for us.

Operator

Operator

Okay. And we'll take our next question from Bryan Kraft of Deutsche Bank.

Bryan Kraft - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

Hi. Good morning. I just wanted to ask you two things, one just if you could talk about maybe about the magnitude of the increase we should expect for content cost next year given the renewals and maybe getting to a more normal stage where these legacy contracts renewals are no longer providing benefits. And then also wondering just what you think of what TuneIn is doing? They seem to have signed contracts similar to what you guys have with the NFL and Major League Baseball, do you think this is – do you think they're for real? And more broadly, how insulated do you think you are from your content suppliers providing content to streaming providers like TuneIn or others? Thank you. David J. Frear - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Okay. So on content cost, when we come around to give you guidance for next year I think that that will address that. We aren't providing that at this point, so we're just going to defer that for a couple of months. On the TuneIn side.... James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. So number one I'll go on record right now and tell you the plans I've heard that TuneIn plans to launch which is maybe an all sports package at $8, $10 a month. I personally think it'll be a hard road to home, okay. And for me today, I'm not particularly focused on TuneIn right now. That said, the major sports holders and by the way nothing has changed here. It is funny, I was having a conversation with one of our directors who was very instrumental in the early days of SUNDAY TICKET on DIRECTV. And the conversation we were having is how thinly the rights continue to get sliced and sliced over time. And look I don't blame them for the way they run their business and you should assume that will continue. I think our model is about a whole lot more than just packaging live sports together and bringing the product to the customer. Our customers want a wide array of content, a wide array of content. And number two, and no one should forget this, easy to use really matters a lot, okay. There is a reason over 200 million people listen to terrestrial radio. Freeze one of them, but easy to use is another one of them. And it's an area where we're working really, really hard. And that's kind of my comments there. Scott, do you want to add anything else?

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

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

Yeah, just one other thing – the other thing. Over many years, we've developed complementary 24x7 lead channels that are very definitive and very well set both in the sports community and in the fan subscriber base community. And we continue to believe that it's much more live games have always been everywhere in different ways for years. What makes it is what you surround it with and how easy it is to go back and forth when you're not just interested in the live games, first, to business channels and then often to news and music and other things. And so we're still fairly confident that our menu of offerings is fine weighted. James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, to be clear, I would prefer these guys didn't license these guys. But I understand why they did. It doesn't make me happy, but it's what they do.

Bryan Kraft - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

Okay. Great. Thank you for the thoughtful answer.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from James Marsh with Piper Jaffray. James M. Marsh - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Great. Just two quick questions here for David. First, David, I was hoping if we could circle back and discuss that change in regulations from the FCC regarding marketing calls to cellphones. And maybe could elaborate on what changed there and how you might expect to kind of replace that previous effort? And whether there might be any impact on cost or sub-growth? And then just secondly related to expenses, you mentioned fixed expenses down 1%. Just what could change that trend going forward or how sustainable might that be? David J. Frear - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, generally I don't think fixed expenses are going to continue to decline as we grow, right. But we are, I think,, over a long period of time you've seen us really laser focused on cost efficient growth and so you should expect that in the future. We do anticipate to continue expanding the EBITDA margin. To be honest, we were all pretty surprised by 38.2% in the quarter, but we believe in our 40% plus target. On the FCC rules that came out, it's got to do with what constitutes an automated telephone dialing system. And without being – without judging the quality of the rules issued. We don't write the laws, we just follow them. So rules came out on a day, we really didn't have any notice of what was going to be in the rules. And so we and our vendors read hundreds of pages of material and worked our way through a process that would leave us compliant. Now, the way that you can think about it is that we basically now –…

Operator

Operator

And we'll go to our next question from Brett Feldman with Goldman Sachs. Brett Joseph Feldman - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thanks for taking the question. You were noting earlier how most of your success in the used car funnel is still coming out of dealerships where you're already operating. So it's just an enormously cost efficient way to win customers in that segment since you don't have to spend a lot more, you're in the channel. So as you really start thinking about some of the initiatives where you're targeting the rest of the market where a lot of used car sales happen, how do we think about spending that you're going to have to incur? Could that potentially put an upward pressure on SAC for example? David J. Frear - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: It won't put any pressure on SAC that – SAC is really driven by subsidies on new car installations, right. So, I guess, the question is would you find more in marketing costs and the answer to that is probably, yes. But there is a good news part of that story, that as we reach out to these alternative channels, what we're really doing is we're driving the higher trial starts. And so while the dollar is being spent in marketing costs, sales and marketing costs may rise. They're actually driving trial starts and so it's like all of the other customer marketing costs that we've been incurring for years, which are really oriented towards driving trials and conversions that will manage that but what we're really doing is increasing the size of the funnel, which is I think very bullish in this sort of business. Brett Joseph Feldman - Goldman Sachs & Co.: And, just as a follow-up. As you…

Operator

Operator

We'll go to our next question from Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley. Benjamin Daniel Swinburne - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thank you. Good morning. Jim, just going back to those pros and cons of connectivity and as you navigate speaking about two way services and evolving your product, what do you take from through the Apple Music experience so far, I mean if you look at the numbers there, they came out with a lot of fanfare and we're all trying to figure out sort of the demand in the U.S. market for interactive on-demand listening versus broadcast radio, do you take much from what you see in the market from competitors and inform how you think about the strategic direction of your company? James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I mean Apple does just fine without my advice. So I actually think the number they achieved was a pretty – from being in the subscription business now for 12 years, I don't think 6.5 million is a trivial number, but I have no idea how many of them are in the U.S. and what they're made up of or anything like that, and frankly has not really been what I focused on. I think there is no question that stream – and by the way I've been very, very, I think, clear about what I think. I think streaming is a technology, not a competitor, and I think streaming will be a fundamental part of what we offer our subscribers over the next decade, okay. And I think frankly it has as much benefit to us as anybody, particularly on the frontend of the equation. So while I think it's really interesting to be able to enhance the entertainment experience and all of those…

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our final question from Barton Crockett with FBR Capital Markets. Barton E. Crockett - FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Okay. Thanks for squeezing me in there. Just one kind of thing you mentioned in passing, I want to make sure I understand, I think you said something about an insurance impact, when you were discussing G&A. Was this anything notable that we should think about? David J. Frear - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: We've had – as you know, just from watching things, we've had a whole bunch of lawsuits in different areas over the last couple of years and we're like other companies, we buy coverage for various things. We did for things we started processing with the insurance companies last year earlier this year that we finally got some recoveries through in the course of the third quarter, it was big enough to be worth noting, but not big enough that I would – that I've incorporated now into some fundamental changes in our economics going forward. Barton E. Crockett - FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Okay. All right. And then, one other kind of bigger question on the topic of connected cars. Could you update us, I mean, how many of these things are actually being sold now, cars that are having Internet bundled into them? And, is there any change in kind of what you were seeing before that, the connected car buyers, if anything, a more loyal subscriber to Sirius? James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, the easier part which is today, we still don't see – we don't see any meaningful – we can't find any meaningful impact on our conversion or churn, when you take a group of vehicles, that's quote unquote, connected and a group of vehicles that's quote unquote, not connected. That doesn't mean, it might not one day, we don't see it today. Your first question is a harder one and I actually can't recall and I can't recall the number right now off the top of my head. It's something we track and maybe David or Hooper can get back to you later on that.

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

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets

It's probably – I think, it's approaching 40%, but we'll circle back around to you. James E. Meyer - Chief Executive Officer & Director: That would have been my guess – but we'll get back to you. Barton E. Crockett - FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Okay. That's great. Thanks a lot, guys.