Good morning, everyone. I'm Benjamin Swinburne, Morgan Stanley U.S. Media Research Analyst. Before we get started, I wanna note that important disclosures, including my personal holdings disclosures and Morgan Stanley disclosures, all appear as a handout available in the registration area, and on the Morgan Stanley public website. With that, I wanna please welcome Jennifer Witz, Chief Executive Officer of SiriusXM. Jennifer, thanks for joining us.
Thank you, Cam. Great to be here.
Maybe we can start the conversation with just an overview of your priorities and vision for SiriusXM over the next, call it, three, four years. What are the areas of focus and opportunity for you, and for the business over that kind of near to medium term?
Sure. I guess I'd just start by saying we are a scaled audio entertainment company in North America. Maybe for those of you that don't know us well, we have 33 million SiriusXM subscribers, 180 million cars on the road, 170 million listeners across our ad portfolio, and of course, we're the number one podcast network in the country. The foundation of the business has always been the in-car subscription business. As you know, it's represents the majority of our revenue and our free cash flow, and we have continued opportunity to enhance the subscription business at SiriusXM. We're looking at it as broadening the funnel, improving distribution, but also enhancing engagement, retention, and ultimately customer lifetime value as we focus on product, content, and pricing and packaging opportunities.
And hopefully we'll talk more about each of those. And then on top of this great foundation, we have a scaled audio advertising business where we have industry-leading reach and monetization. At least for 2026, it's about disciplined and value-led execution. This is a continuation of the strategy we put in place at the end of 2024 and executed on in 2025. I think you'll see us continue to focus on enhancing subscriber value, expanding our ads business, driving operational efficiencies, and growing free cash flow to our target in 2027 of $1.5 billion. We're also strengthening our balance sheet. That opens up a lot of opportunities.
We have line of sight at the end of the year to achieve our long-term leverage ratio, that means we'll have a lot more excess free cash flow next year to expand capital allocation and look at different opportunities there. In addition, we have spectrum assets, right? That we're pretty uniquely positioned, that opens up different kinds of opportunities for future monetization based on those. Really it's about, say, over the next three to four years, we'll talk about a lot of different opportunities, it is the combination of recurring revenue and scale on top of operating discipline and these unique assets that I believe and have confidence that will allow us to continue to strengthen our position in audio and also enhance our revenue trajectory, cash flow growth, and ultimately create shareholder value.
In the more immediate term, you recently gave financial guidance for this year, last month outlining kinda moderating revenue, adjusted EBITDA, growth trends with a slightly smaller sub-based offset by some pricing activity. What does success against those expectations look like this year and where might there be opportunity for you to outperform those expectations?
I think it starts with we're really pleased with where we landed in 2025. We over-delivered relative to the raised guidance we'd provided over the course of 2025. That, again, is executing on the strategy that we laid out at the end of 2024. For 2026, you know, you sort of summarized it well. We are changing the trajectory of the last few years. We have guidance that reflects relatively stable revenue and EBITDA, slightly lower subscribers, but also growing free cash flow, right? That last year we delivered $1.26 billion. Our guidance for this year is $1.35 billion, and next year, of course, $1.5 billion, and we would expect it to grow beyond that as well. It's success is, of course, delivering.
We wanna deliver on the expectations that we've outlined. Also it's not just about this year, right? It's laying the foundation for what we're gonna accomplish in the future to drive growth both in the top line and in free cash flow. I would say, you know, we have a lot of levers to pull to be able to execute on this year's guidance, but also making sure that we're focused on the long term too.
If we maybe zoom back out, how would you characterize the health of kinda the music audio ecosystem overall, and how are some of the priorities that you just talked about positioning SiriusXM to kinda succeed within that backdrop?
Look, engagement with audio has always been about four hours of a consumer's day, and, you know, that positions us really well. We are uniquely able to capitalize on the subscription monetization in the car, given our differentiated position there, and then in audio advertising more broadly, and mostly outside of the car. We're looking to lean into where we're differentiated and where we have strength. In the car, that's about, you know, driving subscription value. There are sort of two components about what's important to our customers, and that's ease of use and the breadth of the content that we offer. That's about live, exclusive, and human-curated content, which we do better than anyone else.
It's leaning into things like our live sports portfolio that no one else has the breadth across video or audio, has the breadth of what we have to offer there. We'll continue to capitalize on those opportunities. Really the biggest unlock in the car is for us to make sure that customers can find the content we have, right? Because we have such a breadth of content, but we need to make it easier for customers to explore and find that content as a way to improve both demand and retention over time. We'll talk a lot about engagement and the metrics that follow. Then outside of the car, more broadly on advertising, again, we have a lot to build on there, considering we are scaled and we have industry-leading monetization.
There's a way for us to continue to add to our portfolio outside of what we have today in both streaming and podcasting. You've seen us take a position in podcasting, really successful, network opportunity there. Beyond that, I think we have more opportunities to align with other platforms to help them better monetize in audio as well. I feel really good about where we are in audio.
One of the kind of recent, not so recent, but one of the meaningful developments within kind of audio music and the broader entertainment ecosystem, has been AI, and the impact that has had, could have, obviously a major theme of this conference. How do you see AI impacting the ecosystem across artists, consumers, business models? What does that mean for SiriusXM's offerings over time?
I think there's some familiar themes for AI. It's just an accelerant really across every part of the business. What we're seeing today, and I'm sure you all are seeing too, is just how it helps creators and platforms better produce and distribute content, how it helps marketers better target and measure, how it helps consumers find and discover new content. Then also just it's a better way to operate more efficiently across the business. As it relates to music, there's been a lot of discussion about AI music. For SiriusXM, I think we are really well-positioned to really almost not embrace AI as it relates to what content we're providing. We're all about human. Human curation. It's about the content that we decide to put on the platform.
It's the hosts and the talent that we have on the platform and how they engage and connect with our audiences. You know, there may be an AI song that we'll, you know, provide within the library, but we may have more opportunities really with AI music on Pandora. You see a lot of the music streaming services, taking in a lot of AI music. There hasn't been a lot of positive feedback, I think, from consumers in terms of the reception to that AI music. I, you know, I think it's less than 1% of engagement on Pandora and other streaming platforms as well.
We have opportunity to continue to explore and be flexible about AI music, I think on Pandora, more so than we might want to do on SiriusXM, just because we want to stay true to our value propositions for each of these services. Because we have these two different platforms, we can be opportunistic about how to take it up and take advantage of it.
Great. I want to drill into the business, maybe starting on the subscription side. The range of subscription offerings from Sirius, from a pricing and packaging perspective, has evolved a lot over the past few years, including Companion, which you just launched, as well as Play and Podcast Plus. Do you think sitting here today you have an adequately flexible array of offerings in order to kind of meet consumers with your the breadth of your content portfolio, or are more offerings in the pipeline?
We've had a lot of success with what we've introduced over the last couple of years, and there's really two objectives. One is we want to improve value at the top end for our premium prices that we have across our subscription packages, and we want to expand access or create more demand. In terms of improving value, you mentioned Companion. That was the latest effort we did to deliver more value to our subscribers, and we can talk more about that. You know, the real unlock I think is if we can expand choice, and that means providing different types of packages in the market, whether that's through distribution, like our extended duration program, which is with OEMs through dealers, where they're ordering three-year subscriptions that come included with a car.
That's opened up more demand because we're getting subscribers into our ecosystem that might not have otherwise converted, and they're listening and engaging with us. We have really great opportunities there or with Podcast Plus, where we're reaching new consumers on other audio platforms with a moderated portfolio of our podcast programming. We have things like low cost with ads, our Play subscription or music only, which really broaden the funnel. There's an opportunity for us to put those packages in front of customers so that they see a lower price point, come into the sales flows, but actually end up choosing different packages at higher price points that are more fully featured or have more content associated with them.
We want to continue to explore opportunities to build out our pricing and packaging structure, and I think because we've been successful, you may see us do more. Really now it's about executing on what we have to continue to deliver more choice for consumers, expand that demand, but also add value across our platform.
You talked about Companion on the earnings call last month and characterized it as kind of a step toward offering a suite of family plans. How are you thinking about the opportunity both with this preliminary offering, and with the opportunity for family plans more broadly across the year?
Look, Companion's been a big success for us. We launched a little earlier than we expected, which helped drive, you know, the performance we saw in 2025. We continue to see some solid momentum there. Again, it kind of comes on the heels of something we did in the fall of 2024, where we provided more access to content, particularly our talk content, our sports content to a broader set of our subscription packages. This allowed us to drive engagement more broadly across those content types. What we see for our customer base, maybe not surprisingly, is that engagement with more types of content across more devices and in more locations among members of the household drives better retention, right, and ultimate customer lifetime value.
When we added more content in the fall of 2024, that positioned us really well to do the rate increase that we did in early 2025, and we've seen enhanced retention as a result of adding that incremental value. We did the same thing in the fall, or at least in December of 2025 when we added Companion. It allows customers that have certain full-price packages to add either an extra car or an extra streaming login. For those customers, we've seen nice take rates on both of those. We've also started early, but we're starting to see improved retention as well. It's giving us a lot of confidence that this is the right path to continue to pursue. We'll, you know, right now it's actually a added value to current subscribers.
We haven't used it in acquisition yet. There are probably opportunities going forward to market that as a family plan and acquisition as well. Again, it's all about improving engagement and delivering more value to our core in-car audiences so that we can improve our longer-term revenue trajectory.
One, the other recent changes or offering evolutions that you launched late last year was continuous service, which transitioned subscriptions to be identified more with an individual or household and less affiliated with a vehicle. Could you elaborate on how you expect that to benefit the business over time, and whether anything else is coming there?
Yeah. This has been a long time focus for us in trying to modernize our product and technology infrastructure so that we're more customer-centric and less vehicle-centric. It opens up a lot more opportunities even on the bundling side of the business. For now, we launched this late last year, and it just makes it easier for our subscribers to transition between vehicles, right? That we have a lot of that activity. Most customers, you know, still have to call and move the subscription from one car to another. This makes it easier for customers to do that over time. I think in the future, we'll be able to open up more capabilities where we can just make that auto transfer.
For now, it takes the subscription that a customer has now and adds it on to, the new car post-trial, so whatever time is remaining. It keeps all of the account information, it keeps the streaming login in case there's a lapse of time between when they move between vehicles, and all of the listening preferences and things like that. Just removes friction. It also removes some of the leakage that we see typically when, not a lot, but when customers move between cars, there's that natural point of, like, maybe I won't subscribe, and now it just makes it easier for them to continue, and we would expect to see better subscriber metrics ultimately as well.
Is that a back-end change, or is that something that you transition someone onto going forward when they purchase a new car or start a new plan?
Right now, it's a back-end, you know, kind of platform change, and we'll be more proactive about how we market it to customers when we have, I think, more auto transfer capabilities in place. We've seen nice take-up. Customers are appreciating less friction in the process, and I think it'll ultimately drive better retention but also better customer satisfaction as well.
One of the other potential opportunities, I think, as a result not only of continuous, but it seemed like also just a more flexible array of packages, that Wayne referred to on the earnings call was the ability for all of that to kind of facilitate bundling activity, and maybe more flexibility around partnerships going forward. What do you look for in an attractive partner when it comes to those kind of arrangements, and what kind of deal structures are you focused on?
I mean, there were sort of two fundamental building blocks. One was making sure that we were customer-centric because it's easier to match, you know, a subscription from another platform to our platform if it's based on customer identity as opposed to car. Also having a broader array of packages at lower price points to match up with other subscription services. For us, it's about either content or distribution opportunities and aligning with other companies that have similar goals, right? We would want to make sure to deliver either, more demand opportunities or more retention opportunities or both. I think the logical array of partners spans, other audio services, perhaps on-demand music services, where, you know, we're a great discovery mechanism at SiriusXM, and on-demand subscription services provide, you know, that catalog and true library.
You could discover on SiriusXM and save down to a library. That it works really well if it's a true hard bundle with product integration. You know, that would really be a win-win, I think, especially for on-demand streaming services who maybe haven't captured the potential for reaching older audiences, which, you know, we are really well established in at SiriusXM. Also there's other content providers like video, where you might imagine it's an extension of you're watching content at home, and then you can listen to that same content in the car. You know, there's a logical set there. Then on distribution, we've done some select partnerships with telcos or broadband companies, and I think there's more we can do there.
Again, that could take the form of value add for them or as part of a loyalty program, and potentially demand generation for us.
You've guided to subscriber net losses getting a little bit worse this year relative to last year. As we think about all of the initiatives that we've been discussing, is it, is it momentum across what we've been talking about that gets you back to subscriber growth? What's the kind of path forward beyond 2026 on the net add side?
Right. I mean, part of the context we provided for 2026 was as a result of some of the pull-forward of the Companion subscription launch earlier than we expected, and how that's delivering value to subscribers. I mean, we've talked about continuous service, Companion subscriptions, sort of expanding distribution, maybe some partnerships. All of those will be key, I think, to ultimately improving subscriber demand, retention, engagement, and revenue as well. I think there's more to unlock across whether it's, you know, broadening the funnel with distribution or it's improving across product, content, marketing, and pricing and packaging. We've talked about some of the pricing and packaging improvements we've made. On the product side, 360L is core as we roll that out and deliver more personalization in the car.
We have also implemented versions on AAOS, which allows, it's a much more updatable platform, and it's fully featured, and we see better early days small numbers, but better conversion results there. On the content side, it's again leaning into what we do really well, and making sure that we're taking advantage of the opportunity to put the right content in front of the right customers, right? It's a lot about capitalizing on what we're known for. There's a lot of perceived value in our sports offering, our live news, in addition to music, which is core and habit-forming for our customers.
We want to make sure that the marketing improvements that we're putting in place, the new marketing channels, things like deviceless subscription, and the sales flows that just makes it easier for customers to engage and ultimately transact with us, to personalize marketing. A lot of the improvements that we've been putting in place over the last couple of years come to fruition this year, and we would expect to see a better result across all of our digital channels on the marketing side. Again, unlocking that, you know, improved engagement, which ultimately drives both better demand and better retention, ultimately, I think, puts us on a better path for subscriber results in the future.
We've been focusing a lot on kind of drivers and outlook around subscriber volumes. If we roll up everything that we've been talking about from a pricing and packaging perspective on the pricing front and overall ARPU growth, how do all these initiatives kind of roll up into an aggregate ARPU outlook for the subscription business?
Look, it's about revenue maximization, right? Which is both subscriber volume and ARPU or rate. We want to make sure that we're not making the wrong trade-offs there. On the subscriber side, we've talked a lot about the opportunities that we have to continue to drive momentum there. On ARPU, we're already seeing it to some extent, right? The third quarter and fourth quarter numbers were both better year-over-year. We expect to have a positive trajectory there as well. It really is about the two objectives in pricing and packaging, right? Which is expanding demand, putting lower price points in front of customers, but optimizing that tiering and package mix and making sure that we're upselling along the way.
It broadens the funnel, but then lets us upsell people into more fully contented packages. It's also about reducing our reliance on unpublished discounts, which, you know, as you know, these lower priced packages will help us do that in both acquisition and retention. Adding value to our full price packages really positions us for future and ongoing rate increases. I think all of these factors help put us on a positive trajectory for ARPU going forward. Again, we want to be really disciplined about how we look at ARPU relative to subscriber volume, and that's why we test very thoughtfully when we introduce new packages. And I think we have a strong revenue trajectory as a result.
Great. I want to turn to the advertising business. How would you characterize the success of overall industry growth in audio advertising over, call it, the past 3-5 years? What factors do you think have contributed to the industry, again, overperforming or underperforming relative to what you might have thought?
I mean, the industry's been relatively flattered about $16 billion, but of course, a large part of that has been terrestrial radio. You know, there's been a pretty significant share shift over the last several years from terrestrial into digital, and that's where we've really benefited, right? Starting with Pandora, obviously creating the digital audio advertising business and extended through to podcasting, where there's been a lot of tailwinds over the last few years. We've been incredibly successful at building that business and continuing to take share in digital audio advertising. Some of the reasons for that are, obviously, our investments that have paid off on podcasting and building out that premium network where we have the number one position in the country today. We're alongside incredible creators like Alex Cooper and Mel Robbins and Conan O'Brien.
And we just have such a great track record with talent that has given us the opportunity to add profitably to that network and expand our overall monetization there. We've launched Creator Connect, which is a fantastic product that allows advertisers really to invest alongside these creators in multiple channels: audio, video, or social. And that's expanding really rapidly. We have more opportunities to provide in-car targeted advertising as well, as we open up, you know, the SiriusXM broadcast inventory and make it more targeted. And then we've provided really unique ways for advertisers to capitalize on the demand for sports and live events. You know, we have a really differentiated position there. We also have kind of a, you know, quietly successful ad tech business in AdsWizz.
It's a, you know, scaled global full stack, audio ad tech platform and, you know, we have billions of impressions that run through there, and we've seen nice growth over the last few years related to that as well. I like our assets here. I think we're really well positioned to continue to take share, and also hopefully build the industry as well on the digital audio side.
Do you think that that improves kind of targeting, and ad tech supports a healthier audio industry ad outlook over the next...
Absolutely. I mean, we at least on the digital side, right, where you can bring real measurement and targeting, and just easier buying mechanisms because, you know, audio is underrepresented and under monetized. We've said that for a long time, relative to, you know, the four hours a day engagement. What we need to do is to make sure that advertisers can buy easily, certainly across our portfolio, which is, you know, SiriusXM and our podcast portfolio and music streaming, but also that there's better targeting and measurement. We've invested in a number of tools and platforms, you know, clean rooms and MMM solutions because advertisers wanna know that they're getting ROI on their investments.
I think that puts us in a really strong position given our tech stack and also, you know, our great sales resources as well.
Narrowing the focus a little bit, how's the ad market pacing today? Any changes for better or worse relative to when you guys reported earnings?
Pretty consistent with what we said, you know, a month ago. In the categories, you know, seem similarly strong. Pharma, tech, telco, you know, I think we're seeing some of the same trends. I mean, overall it's been positive, and I think the second half of last year, we executed very well, and we continue to see some of those trends, translate at least through the first couple of months. You never know with ads, but I'm hoping that, you know, we continue to see that momentum going into throughout the first half and for the rest of the year as well.
How's the low cost ad supported tier play been performing? Is that something that's been a material tailwind to that business since it launched?
That's really about subscription growth. Ultimately, it will provide more ad inventory, but right now it's about having that entry level price point at $7 that really gets more customers into the funnel. They end up taking different kinds of packages. It has helped us focus more on targeted ad opportunities in the car more broadly, which, you know, really applies to our non-music content across our subscription base as well.
Do you see it as more of a kind of top of funnel customer acquisition tool as you just referenced, or do you think the ad business there can scale over time?
I think it can scale over time, but I think it's more top of funnel acquisition, and also an opportunity for us, Ken, to maybe wean ourselves off of the unpublished discounts using it in retention. We're doing more of that testing now. It's, it's really fundamental to good, better, best in our packaging structure, and I think it's gonna be core going forward.
You called out the success that you've had in podcasting, that's an area where obviously you've invested into it. You mentioned Conan, you've also partnered with larger properties like Call Her Daddy, SmartLess. How do you think about the ROI from those investments, and how quickly do the financial benefits from those content deals kind of pay off?
Right. It's day one, right? We have a really disciplined execution in podcasting. The business stands on its own. The profitability has improved over the last few years, and, you know, it has, you know, nice growth margins. I think it's helpful in a number of ways to our overall business. We have great relationships with talent. It's another way for us to help talent and creators monetize more broadly, not just on SiriusXM through subscription, but through the broad distribution and availability. Remember, we're supporting their ads monetization no matter where they wanna be, whether that's Apple or Spotify or even on video platforms increasingly. It's been a great business on its own, and it also enhances our ability to sell alongside it on music streaming, or at SiriusXM even.
It also allows us to work with some of the creators to bring content that makes sense for the SiriusXM radio platform, and design it specifically for that. You know, Alex Cooper's music channel's doing really well on Unwell Music, or we have Conan O'Brien's channel, I think there's more opportunities for us to work with Mel Robbins, and other creators in the portfolio to reach new audiences on SiriusXM.
Awesome. In the time we have left, I wanna make sure to hit on kinda areas of efficiency and capital returns. Maybe on the efficiency front, you know, guidance for this year includes an expectation that you generate an additional $100 million of run rate savings by the end of the year. In the past few years, you've outperformed relative to kind of initial expectations on the cost efficiency front. What's helped you deliver those savings, and what gives you conviction in the runway there without sacrificing growth?
We over-delivered in 2025 with a tune of $50 million of in-year savings. We have another $100 million that we expect to deliver this year. Zac Coughlin, our new CFO, just joined, he's been very focused on, you know, driving the structured transformation program that we have in place. Really, it's about visibility and accountability, right? We, we executed on some of the, you know, earlier easy to implement cost reductions early on, and now it gets harder obviously. Part of it was the refocused strategy we put in place at the end of 2024, and making sure with Wayne Thorsen joining, one of his major objectives was let's make sure across our product and tech stack that we're investing in the things that have high ROI.
Our in-car subscription business and our ads business where we know we have momentum, we wanna lean into those and make investments there. We talk about growth savings quite a bit. There are opportunities, and we'll continue to focus on opportunities to invest in high ROI projects and programs. It's really about finding the right overall cost base for the business. There'll be incremental opportunities, I think, to reduce OpEx and non-satellite CapEx to our longer term goals. We wanna make sure we take advantage of the opportunities we have ahead of us too.
Another area of focus more recently, it seems like that's gaining momentum is the investor focus on what you mentioned at the top of our conversation, which is spectrum efficiency. It seems like the focus, at least in the near term, is more around those 5 MHz of spectrum on either side of the SIRI and XM blocks in terms of what might be freed up more quickly. Is that the right interpretation?
Yeah, I think we've been talking about it more in part because there's been so much attention on spectrum, and I think people forget that we have 35 MHz of continuous spectrum. Yeah, like the C and D, which is guard band, there's been more opportunities to use that so that it won't interfere with SRs, because it's five and five on either side. Of course, 12 and a half is our what we call low band or this old Sirius radios, and we're moving customers slowly from low band to high band as they buy new cars, high band being the XM portion of the spectrum at also 12 and a half.
C and D is easier to affect nearer term, but we don't believe we're getting enough credit really in the market today for the spectrum that we have. You know, we ultimately wanna make sure that we are delivering the best experiences for our subscribers, that future opportunities for monetization will likely focus on the car because that's where we have strengths. Maybe us, you know, delivering different types of content or more content or services, or it may be us partnering with somebody to do that, maybe more effectively. I mean, there's lots of... I mean, the technology keeps improving in ways that allow us to explore other alternatives, I think, too. More to come.
Yeah, to follow up on that, I feel like freeing up the ability to deliver more content is something that investors can envision, at least in some abstract way. Partnership's a little harder to imagine than external party. When you refer to partnership, what, you know, any care to put any meat on the bones of what might be?
Not right now.
Yeah. Okay. On the capital allocation front, you've spoken consistently in the past to kinda target leverage in the low to mid three range, getting into that range by the end of this year. Is your intent to kinda get to that range as quickly as possible, or is there a future in which you decide to kinda pursue a slower path of delevering?
End of year is right around the corner, and we have line of sight to that. We're very comfortable that we'll get to that target range. Then again, $1.5 billion of target free cash flow next year. If you think about, you know, the dividend as being, I think around $350, that's a lot of excess cash to deploy. Of course, we wanna focus on investments in the business that have high ROI. We don't see any near-term M&A opportunities, but that would be an option. Otherwise it's more capital returns for shareholders. Whether that's dividends or, share repurchases, you know, I think we'll have more opportunity to talk about that going forward.
Great. I think that, brings us to time. Jennifer, thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you.