Good morning and welcome to Sirius XM annual meeting of stockholders. I would now like to turn the conference over to Patrick Donnelly. Please go ahead.
Jason, thank you. Good morning. I'm Patrick Donnelly, the Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of Sirius XM . Welcome to our 2020 annual meeting of stockholders. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we're 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. That basic information is also contained in the proxy statement for this meeting. Now, on your screen now to the right is the agenda for this meeting. After we go through the basics for the meeting, we will proceed according to this 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 question in the "Ask a Question" box on the meeting page. If you do not have your 16-digit control number, you've joined this annual meeting as a guest and 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 pertinent to the meeting matters will be answered after we conclude the business of this meeting. The question and answer period will be limited to 20 minutes. Questions regarding personal matters, including those related to employment or SiriusXM service issues, are not pertinent to this meeting and therefore will not be answered. Should you require technical assistance, support is available by dialing 1-800-449-0991 in the U.S. or 1-720-378-5962 for international callers.
These telephone numbers are also displayed on the meeting web page. If there are any significant technical issues hosting this meeting, we will adjourn and post information on our website, including information on when the meeting will be reconvened. With those basics behind us, I would like to open this annual meeting of stockholders by reporting that of the 4,378,596,200 shares of common stock entitled to vote, approximately 96% of the shares of common stock are present in this meeting in person or by proxy. I declare our quorum 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 that the mailing of our annual report, proxy statement, and proxy card commenced on April 21, 2020, to stockholders of record on April 9, 2020. Now, the Board of Directors has appointed Tracy Oates as the independent inspector of election at this meeting. She is participating in the meeting representing Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. 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, I would like to submit a certified list of stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting. The list of stockholders 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 Doorn.
Now, before I introduce our executives with us, all stockholders should note that the polls will be closing in the next minute, and stockholders should please cast any remaining votes now. First, I would like to recognize our directors, Ms. Joan Amble and Mr. Mark Carlton, who have joined us for this virtual meeting today. Several senior executives of the company are also joining us for this virtual meeting: Scott Greenstein, our President and Chief Content Officer; Jennifer Witz, our President, Sales, Marketing, and Operations; David Frear, our Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Dara Altman, our Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer. 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-K.
That Form 8-K will provide more detail on the voting and may vary slightly from those announced at this meeting. The preliminary results of the voting are as follows: Item number one, the election of directors. The following persons are hereby elected to serve as directors of Sirius : Joan Amble, George Bodenheimer, Mark Carleton, Eddy Hartenstein, James Holden, Gregory Maffei, Evan Malone, James Meyer, James Mooney, Michael Rapino, Kristina Salen, Carl Vogel, and David Zaslav. Of the 3.7 billion shares of common stock voted on the election of directors, each director nominee received a sufficient number of votes to elect the entire slate of directors. Item number two, the compensation paid to our named executive officers has been approved in a non-binding advisory vote by approximately 98% of the votes cast at this meeting.
Item number three, the appointment of KPMG LLP as our independent registered public accountants for 2020 has been ratified by approximately 99.5% of the votes cast at this meeting. The formal business of this meeting is now concluded. There being no further business to come before this meeting, I hereby adjourn the formal part of this meeting. It is now my pleasure to introduce the stockholders, James Meyer, our Chief Executive Officer of Sirius XM .
Thank you, Pat. Good morning, and thank all of you for attending our meeting today. I have a few brief comments on our 2019 performance, and then, after the meeting officially adjourns, Mr. Donnelly and I will take questions from investors. As we start, Sirius XM Pandora today is a very different company than it was even a little more than 18 months ago. By that, I mean we now have the power of two very powerful leading brands in North America, SiriusXM and Pandora, together under one roof. That gives us, at any given time, over 100 million listeners in North America, over 39 million self-paying subscribers, and at any given time, 64 million trialers or ad-based users as a funnel to feed the self-pay subscriber business. This is very powerful.
When you couple that with our relationship with SoundCloud, in terms of both our commercial relationship as well as now our minority shareholding position in SoundCloud, when you take the SoundCloud platform and its listener base in North America and combine it with SiriusXM and Pandora, we bring advertisers unprecedented reach of over 140 million listeners. We believe this is a very powerful platform to launch our subscription and advertising business as we move forward. As you look at 2019 performance, I'd just like to highlight a couple of the key points. First and foremost, SiriusXM self-pay net ads. We began the year with guidance that said we would add approximately, approaching 1 million subscribers in 2019. I'm pleased to say that we actually added 1.1 million self-paying subscribers on SiriusXM in 2019.
For pro forma revenue, and what I mean by pro forma, the combined of Pandora and SiriusXM, we indicated in our original guidance that our revenue would be $7.7 billion. Our actual revenue was $7.92 billion. Very pleased that we were able to surpass our target by that degree of margin. For our adjusted EBITDA, we gave a guidance of $2.3 billion. We actually finished the year at $2.43 billion. Very strong performance. In my opinion, if not the most profitable audio entertainment company out there, certainly a leader in audio profitability. Finally, free cash flow, our guidance was $1.6 billion, and we attained $1.647 billion. A very strong year in 2019. Really proud of what our team accomplished in 2019. A good lead-in to my next chart. We started in 2020 on a very strong note.
Obviously, we've all been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic that hit, at least, SiriusXM and Pandora, approximately March 15th, March 16th. Let me take a few minutes to tell you where we stand in that crisis. First and foremost, our number one priority during this crisis has been to keep our employees and the members of our team safe. I'm pleased to report that at this time, nearly all our employees are working from home. They're working quite effectively from home. We do have a small cadre of essential personnel that still need to go into our facilities to keep our services up and running on a 24-hour, seven-day basis. I'm also pleased to report that those employees are operating in a manner that we and they believe to be very safe.
Frankly, in terms of broadcasting our services, and by that, I mean SiriusXM, SiriusXM Streamed, Pandora Streamed, and our connected vehicle safety and security services, all of them have operated seamlessly, and we have not missed a beat. I could not be more proud of that. We were hit harder on the call center side of our business. We use call centers as an extensive part, obviously, of our care operation, but also as a key part of both our inbound and outbound marketing efforts. There, because of the shutdowns, we saw immediate impact to pull back in the staffing levels. That gave us a significant reduced capacity in the short term, and by that, I mean really in the latter parts of March and a good part of April. We now have several thousand agents working from their homes. Really, really great, quick recovery.
Also, by switching more volume into our IVR status, our chat, and our online service tools, we have our care levels and our level of customer support back to a level that I'm satisfied with. With the progress we're making here, I expect that in June, sometime here very shortly this month, in all operations of our call center and our inbound and outbound marketing operations, we'll be back to status quo, meaning those levels that we were at before the COVID-19 pandemic pressure hit us. It hit hard.
I'll speak in a couple of some specific comments in a moment about where, but because of the uncertainty of how long states would be shut down, how long the car factories would be shut down, what will be the mood of the consumer as we come out of these shutdowns, obviously, major concerns over what will be the unemployment rate going forward, we withdrew our guidance. I want to reiterate, we have maintained a very strong level of liquidity, and I have no concerns here that we will be, in any way, impacted in a way that would cause a significant problem. Let's face it, that's mostly driven from our strong free cash flow.
We also have maintained our dividend and intend to continue to maintain our dividend going forward, and we have resumed our share repurchases after our first quarter earnings call, which we had paused in an abundance of caution when the COVID-19 pandemic situation hit. I'd like to give you a couple of brief comments on how I see things today. I'll start with where we were hit the hardest and the earliest, which is our digital audio ad sales business. As you would expect and as has been reported, every media company has been hit in the ad sales area. We were no exception. Those cancellations came quickly, and April was a difficult period. May has seen some more stability. We're still waiting for a period where we return to a constant state of stability.
What I mean by that is where cancellations drop to what had been previous historical levels, and that we see a more finite way to plan what several months of our ad business will look like. I want to be clear, May was certainly better than April, and we're encouraged by what we see in June. The ad business in the second quarter, like for all media companies, will be difficult, but we expect that to improve some going forward. In terms of our subscription business, first and foremost, I want to comment on car sales. Here, the news is better. Let me just have some specific comments. First and foremost, new car sales in May were down over 30%. If you dig into that data and you look at actual retail car sales, which are far more important to our business than total car sales—what do I mean?
That's excluding, particularly, sales to the hard-hit rental car segment, which has been very, very hard hit by the pandemic. Retail sales in May were actually down approximately 15%. This is far better than what we had expected, and I see this as a very encouraging sign for car sales going forward. I cannot guarantee it. This is what we've seen in May, and at least through the first week in June, we have seen no change in that trend. On the used car side, surprisingly, the business has been even stronger than that. I would say that sales were down, but not near the degree that sales were down in April for new cars, and May was also strong.
While new and used car sales are below previous years, they are stronger than what our initial fear was when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and some of the scenarios we had prepared so that we could get a feeling, particularly for planning our business, what that could look like. I'm encouraged there. Perhaps as encouraging is, how do we monetize those trials, being in our conversion flows? Also, in early April, we saw significant disruption to the yield from our conversion flows, but I'm pleased to report that that disruption has improved significantly. We are still not back to last year's level, but we're closing the gap rapidly, and I'm now optimistic that we can perhaps close that gap to within 5% of last year in the periods going forward. Very, very encouraging news there.
On the churn front, which is very critical to our business, obviously, and I believe the nearest term monitor to how consumers feel about subscribing to our business, the news is also encouraging. Our churn in April and really trended even better in May. Our voluntary churn is up, but not to the degree that we had projected. When you look at our non-pay churn, we are very happy with the fact that it has not deteriorated to the levels we expected, and in fact, has maintained at a relatively flat level versus previous periods. When you combine that with the third piece of our churn, which is vehicle turnover, which is obviously mostly impacted by new car sales, our vehicle turnover is down significantly. Our overall churn is quite encouraging, and I would expect that those trends will continue as we move forward.
I think that while I can't, I don't have any magic crystal ball for what September through December will look like, as we look out over the remaining, let's call it, 75 days between now and the end of August, we don't see those trends changing in any way, and I think that's good news. From a customer support perspective, as I said, we are operating in the new normal. Our teams reacted very, very quickly to restore our lost capacity in our call centers. By the way, most of our call centers are beginning now to come back online and normal in the month of June. We will keep many of those things we put in place after we were hit with these shortages, due to the uncertainty of how we can predict what the pandemic may do going in the future.
As I said, I believe we'll return to status quo here sometime in the next couple of weeks. Finally, from where we stand today, what does all this mean? Today, I think as we look at self-pay net additions in the second quarter, they will be positive. That compares to recent analyst consensus of a negative 200,000 in the second quarter. I did want to pass along that bit of news, as my current feeling is where we are. The silver lining in the reduction of new car sales has been an increase in production penetration as we've seen a more favorable model mix, mostly towards trucks and SUVs. I'm also happy to report that while all of the auto companies are now coming back online, we see reports of their production and their sales every day.
In terms of them coming back up in their production rates, it is very consistent with what we believed they would come back online with. We do see them filling any inventory gaps very, very quickly. We are right on target for the 80% penetration rate that we committed we would be this year, which I also think is good news. Those are how I see things today. With that, Pat, let me turn it back over to you.
Jim, thank you. We have several questions this morning from stockholders that have been submitted both prior to this meeting and during the meeting. Jim, with your permission, I'd like to turn to several of those questions.
Okay.
Jim, one stockholder writes, "As a shareholder, I'm concerned about competition from 5G networks, new internet technologies, and live TV and driverless cars. Does management have the same concerns? If so, do you have any strategies for combating these new technologies?
Let me comment on that from a few fronts. It's a great question. First and foremost, it's always been my position that I don't believe that wireless connectivity into the vehicle is a bad thing for SiriusXM or Pandora. In fact, I think there are many parts of it that are a good thing. That's why we've invested so much money in SiriusXM 360L, and that's why we've worked so hard to convince the auto companies to make that a fundamental part of our entertainment experience in the vehicle going forward. I'll just remind you again, SiriusXM 360L is a seamless user interface, very simple to use, that combines both the power of our satellite broadcasted service as well as combining it with the ability of two-way connectivity in the vehicle that would come from wireless connectivity. When done correctly, it is a great experience.
In fact, it is exactly, in many cases, what I hoped it would be. By that, I mean when you're listening to our content and you happen to decide that you want to listen to something on demand or some other interactive part of that entertainment process, you can do that relatively easily. You actually don't know where the signal is coming from, whether it's coming from the satellite or over the two-way network, and you don't care. You just care that you're getting the entertainment that you want. SiriusXM 360L will serve as the workhorse for us going forward. I'm pleased to say virtually every OEM has now made SiriusXM 360L their plan of record. We're in the process, for instance, of a major rollout of SiriusXM 360L right now with General Motors. It was launched several months ago by FCA and the Dodge Ram trucks.
You will see then a very systematic step-up of the amount of new vehicles with SiriusXM 360L functionality step up every quarter going forward over the next several years as each automaker implements it. I think that gives us what we think is a great way to harness the ability of, quite honestly, whether it's 4G or 5G in the vehicle. In terms of competing sources of entertainment, I'll remind you, we've been competing. I've been with SiriusXM for almost 17 years now. During those 17 years, I can't tell you how many times I've answered this question. It's certainly a question that continues to need to be asked. One thing I've learned over that 17 years, and by the way, let's just take the live video question. By the way, we offered live video in vehicles as far back as I think the mid-2000s.
I have to tell you, the market appetite for that service was not particularly robust. That does not mean it may not be going forward. There have been countless devices that can be carried into the vehicle that allow seamless use of video in the car, whether that's cached or live. You know, all of us have children or grandchildren that we've handed a wireless device to use in the back seat of the car to keep them patient during a drive. You know what? During all of those years, the one thing we've seen is listening in the vehicle has continued to be strong, and I see no reason why listening to audio in the vehicle won't continue to be strong for many, many years to come.
Thank you, Jim. Jim, we have several financial questions from stockholders. First, to answer some stockholders' questions, stockholders were asking for specific numbers on our April and May revenues, subscriber acquisition costs, churn numbers. We will not be providing those today. We will, of course, be providing them with our earnings release for the second quarter. Jim, turning to some of these financial questions, one stockholder asks, "Does the board have a plan to raise our dividend this year?
Let me comment on the dividend. I'll start with the fact that the dividend, the approval of the dividend, the using the dividend as an effective tool of shareholder return is a decision made by the Board of Directors. I want to temper any of my comments saying, obviously, they're subject to the Board of Directors' approval. Since initiating our quarterly dividend in November 2016 at $0.01 per share per quarter, our Board has raised the dividend 3x by 10% each year. We feel really good about the stability of our dividend and our capacity to raise it if the Board should choose to do that in the future. I think that's my only comment on the dividend.
Jim, the next question comes from a stockholder who asks, "Does the company have any plan to restructure salaries or forfeit bonuses for executives to maintain and reward the rank-and-file employees?
As hard as the pandemic has been on the country, and believe me, these have been very, very difficult times. At Sirius XM, we took quick and immediate steps to reduce spending and to temper our hiring profile in a way that I believe will provide the cost relief that we need going forward, at least as we see the situation today in 2020. We were able to do that so far, and I want to reiterate, so far. I'll temper that with, while I think we have kind of good visibility about what things look like this summer, I think the million-dollar question is what will things look like in September through December, or really September through February, which would take us to the one-year anniversary of when the pandemic started.
During this period so far, we have not had to reduce, we have managed the reductions in our workforce through either not hiring new positions or not hiring positions as people have left. That certainly is my plan in the June through August timeframe. Within that, I will comment on executive compensation, and that is the biggest piece of my compensation, of my cash compensation. The members of the executive committee and the members of our core senior management, is the annual bonus in our case. Certainly, if our performance is not up to previous periods' performance, I would expect that fund for that annual bonus to not be as high as it's been in previous periods.
Jim, that was our last stockholder question. As we conclude, we'd like to thank you all today who joined us and for your support of our stockholders. Thank you all.
Thank you.
Conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.