Good morning. I'm Patrick Donnelly, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of SiriusXM. Welcome to our 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. As a result of the continuing effects of the COVID pandemic, we are conducting this entire meeting virtually. This virtual meeting format is new to many of us.
So let me take a few moments to run through some of the basics about this meeting. This basic information is also contained in the proxy statement for this meeting. On your screen now is the agenda for this meeting. After we go through the basics for the meeting, we will proceed according to the agenda to the business of the meeting. This virtual meeting has been designed to provide the same rights and advantages as a physical meeting.
Stockholders will be able to vote and present questions during this meeting through this site. Stockholders will also be able to submit questions during the meeting by typing in your questions in the ask a question box on this meeting page. If you do not have your 16 digit control number, then you've joined this meeting as a guest and you will not be able to vote, ask questions or access the list of stockholders as of the close of business on the record date. Questions pertaining to meeting matters will be answered after we conclude the business of this meeting. Questions regarding personal matters, including those related to employment or service are not pertinent to this meeting and will not be answered.
Should you require technical assistance, please dial the support number displayed on your login page. If there are any significant technical issues hosting this meeting, we will adjourn and post information to our website on when the meeting will be reconvened. I would like to open this annual meeting with stockholders by reporting that of the 4,102,000,413,322 shares common stock entitled to vote, approximately 87% of the shares of common stock are present in person or by proxy. I declare a forum present and call this meeting to order. The polls are now open.
Any stockholder who has not voted and wishes to vote today may do so through the facilities of this website. I have an affidavit from Broadridge Financial Solutions that the mailing of our annual report, proxy statement and proxy card commenced on April 20, 2021 to stockholders of record on April 8, 2021. The Board of Directors of SiriusXM has appointed Tracy Oates as the Independent Inspector of Election at this meeting. She is participating in the meeting representing Broadridge Financial Solutions. Ms.
Oates has taken an oath of office to execute faithfully the duties of inspector with strict impartiality and according to the best of her ability. Now before we move to the remaining business and the introduction of our representatives from KPMG, all stockholders should note that the polls will be closing within the next minute. Stockholders should please cast any remaining votes now. The certified list of stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting as of the record date can be accessed through the link on this page below the meeting materials. With us today from KPMG, our independent registered public accounting firm is Andrew Redrup and Stefan Van Dorn.
I now declare the polls closed. Before I announce the summary results of the vote, I should inform you that the final results will be reported shortly on a current report on Form 8 ks. That Form 8 ks will provide more detail on the voting and those results will vary from those announced at this meeting. The preliminary results of the voting is as follows. Item number 1, election of directors.
The following persons are hereby elected to serve as directors of SiriusXM. David A. Blough, Eddie W. Hartenstein, Robin P. Hinkenluper, James P.
Holden, Gregory Dean Fe, Evan D. Malone, James E. Meyer, Janelle Proko, Michael Rapino, Christina M. Salin, Carl E. Vogel, Jennifer C.
Witz and David M. Zaslav. Of the 3,300,000,000 shares of common stock voted on the election of directors, Each director nominee received a favorable vote from over 95% of the votes cast. On item number 2, the appointment of KPMG as our independent registered public accountants for 2021 has been ratified by approximately 99.9% of the votes cast. The formal business of this meeting is now concluded.
There being no further business to come before this meeting, I hereby adjourn the meeting. It is now my pleasure to introduce Jennifer Wicks, the Chief Executive Officer of SiriusXM.
Thank you, Pat. Good morning all and thank you for attending our meeting today. I will begin with a few brief comments on our business performance and outlook. Then once the meeting officially adjourns, Mr. Donnelly and I will take questions from investors.
Everything we do at SiriusXM and the heart of our value proposition to consumers rests with our outstanding premium content. It spans every genre of music, plus sports, news, talk, entertainment and comedy. And now of course a significant emphasis on podcast as well. In the past year, we have added exclusive new content from Kevin Hart, Marvel, Drake and more. Our addressable reach now stands to an incredible 150,000,000 listeners in North America across users of SiriusXM, Pandora, Stitcher and SoundCloud.
Our technology is embedded in over 80% of new cars being produced this year and we have a rising presence in used cars as well. Today, we are working very hard to drive digital engagement outside of the car and we are making significant progress in that goal. The resiliency of our business was especially evident in 2020 as successfully navigated the challenges of a global pandemic. We were able to protect and support our employees while also continuing to produce and deliver outstanding content for our listeners. Our business generated strong cash flows throughout the year.
Our subscriber base proved to be very loyal and actually we were able to deliver more self pay net subscriber additions at SiriusXM than our original pre pandemic 2020 guidance. We also took steps to enhance our long term position in podcasting in 2020 with the acquisitions of Simplecast and Stitcher. Truly a remarkable set of achievements and I'm very proud of our team for Q1 2021 results show this track record of performance is continuing this year. We added 126,000 net self pay SiriusXM subscribers, representing an 83% increase from the Q1 of last year. We reached our best ever first quarter churn rate of 1.6%.
We achieved strong ad revenue monetization at Pandora and we grew our off platform advertising revenue by 48% year over year, even excluding the effects of the Stitcher acquisition. In April, we announced our acquisition of 99 Percent Invisible, which furthers our podcasting content and development capabilities. Just last week, we announced an innovative content relationship with Tik Tok, which will include the launch of Tik Tok Radio this summer on SiriusXM, along with playlist collaborations on Pandora with Tik Tok creators. These are just a few examples of our commitment to continuously offer a variety of premium programming and services to meet the needs of our diverse customer base. Lastly, with the creation of SXM Media, we will further leverage the synergies of our advertising resources to provide even greater value and a full service offering to advertisers, content creators and publishers.
With respect to our full year guidance, we feel very confident about all of the guidance we have given the public for 2021. As I discussed at a public equity conference last week, I would characterize our subscriber guidance at this point as conservative even with somewhat limited new car supply industry. We will continue to look at our performance versus this guidance and update in due course. But I can tell you right now the consumer environment remains very healthy, which we see in demand for auto sales and in our own low churn rate and the advertising market is strong across most categories as well. We are well on track to meet or exceed our full year goals And I thank you for being SiriusXM's stockholders and attending today.
With that, I will turn it back over to Patrick Donnelly.
Jennifer, thank you. We have several questions have been submitted by stockholders both prior to the meeting and during the meeting. So Jennifer, we'd like to turn to those questions now. Wonderful. Jennifer, our first question comes from a stockholder who asks, in lieu of paying dividends, why don't we pay down the debt and increase stockholder value?
Well, given our strong recurring cash flows, we believe the business is levered actually appropriately in the 3 times to 4 times EBITDA range. This is a very manageable level of debt and does not restrict our financial flexibility. We generate significant cash flows every year and we've had a long track record of returning capital to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. The regular dividends we pay are only about 15 percent of the free cash flow we've told you to expect this year. So the dividends also are not a burdensome commitment.
So I see no reason we can't continue meaningful capital returns in some form, dividends and or stock repurchases for the long term, but ultimately capital allocation decisions are up to our Board of Directors.
Jennifer, our thank you. Our second question comes from a stockholder who asks, would you please state your complete commitment to free speech and against the cancel small interest groups?
SiriusXM has had a long history of airing a broad set of diverse voices from all spectrums of our society. And while we will never tolerate obscenity or violent speech, we do give professionals on our platform almost total freedom to express their beliefs. I believe that the best content comes from truly authentic voices and it's not in our interest to censor those voices. So we're going to continue this long track record of supporting diverse voices of all kinds on our platforms and giving our listeners the best content possible.
Jennifer, our next question comes from a stockholder who asks about our rental car strategy. And she provides, I find it necessary from time to time to rent a car. Occasionally, I'm pleasantly surprised to find the rental car has an of SiriusXM subscription. More often, the vehicle has the proper receiving equipment, but the SiriusXM period is expired. Should we not be maintaining SiriusXM service to these vehicles so long as they remain in the rental fleets, plus add 90 days to start when the car is sold to an individual?
By taking this approach, would we not be exposing considerable numbers of potential subscribers to the benefits of our subscriptions?
We do have a variety of approaches with rental car companies. They're based on what we and the rental car companies think are best for our collective customers and our businesses. We've had these in place for many, many years. In some cases, we focus on the sampling opportunity for consumers. And in other cases, we focus on revenue opportunities by selling daily or weekly service to the customers who rent these cars.
SiriusXM does today have broad brand awareness in the United States. So sometimes we do elect to deemphasize sampling and focus on monetization, but we're always working on getting that balance right. So your comments and suggestion are noted.
So, Jennifer, our next question is a product question. One of our stockholders writes, what is SiriusXM doing to make high resolution streaming audio available to customers and competing with services such as Tidal?
We spend a lot of time looking at how to optimize audio quality, whether we're talking about our satellite delivered content in the car or we're talking about our streamed content outside the car on mobile or connected devices. And we will carefully consider increasing the audio quality of our streams if there is a market need. But I can tell you today that when we do our research, this is not one of the most urgent concerns of our subscribers or our trialers. But we certainly are watching the competitive developments here closely.
Jennifer, our next question is a corporate governance question. A stockholder has submitted a question. What was the percentage of board meetings attended by each director last year?
All of our directors attended 75% or more of the meetings of the board and each committee that they serve on.
Jennifer, we go back to another product question that a stockholder submitted. Stockholder asks, what are your plans to incorporate your technology into EV vehicles in the future? And what process do you have already in plans to incorporate your technology into other vehicles such as planes, buses, etcetera?
We don't really see any fundamental difference as to whether a car is electric or gas powered or ICE. We want to operate as many car buyers as possible the chance to sample and subscribe to SiriusXM service. Our penetration rate of new cars in the Q1 of 2021 was just over 80%, which was up 5 full percentage points compared to the Q1 of 2020. This is an excellent indication of OEM's commitment to installing SiriusXM across their vehicle lineups. And in all cars, whether they're electric or traditional ICE, the operating systems are evolving and we are aggressively staying on top of these changes to make sure our service works well in future cars and retains an excellent in dash placement.
The other part of the question, we already offer data and audio
Jennifer, I have another product question for me from a stockholder. This stockholder writes, do you plan on offering video to cars and homes?
Well, today we do offer video in our SiriusXM streaming products. We have thousands of clips and full episodes of our talented SiriusXM hosts and shows including Howard Stern, Jeff Lewis, the morning mashup on Hits 1 and many more. And we have artist performances as well in video. This is added value we provide for our subscribers in certain of our subscription packages, but we also use this video for promotional purposes across our social properties as well. As automakers consider adding more video capabilities, especially in the future in autonomous cars, we will look for opportunities to expand this.
Jennifer, we have another corporate governance question from a stockholder. This stockholder writes, why do you have 13 directors? Have you considered reducing the size of the Board?
Well, if you look closely at our Board and the skills of each of its members, you will see that each individual brings experience and perspective that are valuable to our business and operations. We have a Board that brings a wealth of expertise, including satellite, auto industry, subscription, technology, media and M and A experience. We recently did reduce the size of our Board, but I do not believe the question is really about the number of Board members. Instead, for stockholders, I think the question for any board should be, do the members have the right expertise? And in our case, I believe the answer is yes.
Jennifer, our next question is a broad strategic question that comes in from a stockholder. This stockholder rights, where do you see the company in the next 3 years strategically? I'm a patient investor.
Well, of course, we don't give financial guidance beyond the current year, but I can certainly share our primary strategic priorities. First, we are very focused on maintaining a valuable and unique content lineup that is the best in audio. This is what our subscribers pay us for. 2nd, we are maintaining and will continue to grow our strong in car presence with high penetration rates, increasing incorporation of 360L and prominent in DASH placement. 3rd, we're expanding the use of SiriusXM out of the car with our existing satellite subscriptions and new digital subscribers.
This is key to retention and growth of our subscriber base. 4th, we will deliver strong advertising revenue growth through solid monetization on and off platform, which includes not only improving the trajectory of Pandora MAUs and ad hours, but also growing our podcasting footprint. And 5th, we'll leverage our unmatched business model to deliver significant EBITDA and free cash flow for our stockholders. And we'll continue to be disciplined in our investments as we always have been, but we won't be afraid to make bets where appropriate, be those investments in our existing businesses from an organic standpoint or in external opportunities.
Jennifer, that was our last stockholder question. As we conclude today's meeting, I would like to thank all of you attended today. Thank you for joining us and we hope to see you next year at our 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Thank you.
Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.