Merged Sirius XM sees growth for sat radio, despite low stock price

Sirius XM shareholders shouldn't be too glad right now about Sirius' merger with fellow satellite radio provider XM, admitted company CEO Mel Karmazin, who later said he had been expecting court opposition to the merger.

"The only group that should not be pleased so far is our shareholders," Karmazin told analysts yesterday.

When the merger finally closed on July 29, Sirius' stock dropped 16 percent, and it has continued falling ever since. Near the end of trading on the NASDAQ exchange Thursday, shares of Sirius XM were trading at only $1.40 -- a one day drop of about 3.5%. Compare that to Sirius' trading price of nearly $70 per share during the year 2000.

But Karmazin sloughed off the bad news quickly, moving on to brighter notes including Sirius' profitability in its last quarter as a standalone company, and the prospect of future growth for pay radio.

With regard to future products from Sirius XM, users should keep their eyes peeled during the last quarter of this year for an offering the combines "the best of both packages," according to Karmazin.

During its last quarter before the merger, Sirius grew its revenues to levels 25 percent over the same quarter last year, to a total of $283 million, said CFO David J. Frear.

The merged Sirius XM is the largest radio company after ClearChannel, according to Frear. "Ninety percent of homes are paying for television service. Today, only 20 percent of homes pay for radio," he added. "Despite facing all those challenges in the last couple of quarters, Sirius delivered record quarter gross ads."

Karmazin pinned a lot of the blame for the combined company's current troubles on a long delay in regulatory approval for the merger. "Regulatory approval took too long," according to the CEO. Sirius and XM had "reason to believe that some who opposed the merger would run to court," he contended.

Although some analysts voiced concerns over the terms of the company's latest debt financing, secured at about the time the merger went through, the CEO suggested that the terms were worth it just to make sure the financing got approved.

For his part, Karmazin has managed to take advantage of the falling stock price by buying 2 million shares at $1.37 each. But the CEO explained that he'd been prohibited from buying shares in the company for the past two years, while negotiations with XM were still in progress.

When Sirius and XM were first chartered, they were banned by regulators from merging, in order to preserve competition. But the two companies eventually convinced regulators that the competitive picture for satellite radio has changed over the past couple of years, due to the advent of many new rival digital technologies.