SiriusXM Caps Year Of Regrouping With Better-Than-Expected Q4 Results​on January 30, 2025 at 2:58 pm

SiriusXM, which has been trimming staff and regrouping in several areas in a bid to reverse subscriber losses, reported better-than-expected results in the fourth quarter.

The satellite audio firm posted earnings per share of 83 cents and revenue of $2.19 billion. Both metrics exceeded Wall Street analysts’ consensus forecasts.

The results followed reports on Wednesday that the company is laying off about 100 employees, a bit less than 2% of its total workforce. The move comes nearly a year after a previous round of cuts affecting about 3% of staff.

Speaking to analysts on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Jennifer Witz said the company’s management team has “sharpened our strategic focus on SiriusXM’s strengths and differentiators, with an emphasis on robust margins, free cash flow generation, and capital returns.”

She said the core goals are to “continue to enhance our subscription offering, leverage the strength of our ad business, and accelerate efficiencies and optimization across the organization and our cost structure.”

The company ended 2024 with 33 million subscribers. In the fourth quarter, the company added 149,000 self-paid subscribers, 18,000 more than it did in the fourth quarter of 2023. For the full year, subscriber levels dipped by 296,000, but the decline was less than the downturn of 445,000 in 2023.

SiriusXM sought to get out in front of the quarterly numbers in December, issuing a revised 2025 forecast for $8.5 billion in revenue (below what analysts had been expecting) and affirming it is “doubling down” on its core automotive market. About 90% of subscribers engage with SiriusXM in vehicles. The December announcement also included the news that the senior-level exec who oversaw a problematic revamp of the SiriusXM mobile app, was departing the company.