Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (SIRI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

November 18, 2025

US Communication Services Media Company Conference Presentations 35 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#1

Great. Thank you, everybody. Our next fireside is on SiriusXM. I have the pleasure being joined by Wayne Thorsen, the Chief Operating Officer. Wayne, you all had some news out this morning. So I thought I'll just jump right into that.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#2

You reaffirmed the recently raised guidance for the year which came simultaneous to some transition with the Chief Financial Officer's role. So maybe you could give us a bit of comment on that before we dive into the operation?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#3

We raised in our earnings call across EBITDA and free cash flow and revenue. And actually, this is our second time raising, as you know, on free cash flow in the last few months. Yes, we had some news this morning. We're welcoming in Zac Coughlin as our new CFO. We're incredibly excited. Wonderful background stewarding a lot of iconic brands and in particular, some great experience at Ford. So having that OEM experience is particularly exciting for us. But he's with that public company experience and a history of transformation, we're really excited. I know he's going to help us as we go through the next phase of our transformation as well. And of course, we're grateful to Tom. He's been with us for 1.5 decades, and he's been a great partner to me, and we're grateful for all the leadership he has shown and we're excited for Zac to come in, and we like -- we're excited for the next steps in our transformation.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#4

Yes. I mean what you mentioned with Zac and Ford Motor Company, I think, is a good segue into, I think, a lot of the focus of today, which will be about sort of the evolution of the product. I've used it for a long time. Pretty extensively. And there's been a lot of enhancements over the last 12 months. So you have play, I think the first ever ad-supported plan, the all-music plan, I think in my memory, it's the first time when you really had this choice as a user between just music or music and other stuff. So maybe you can talk a little bit about what drove you to decide to change these plans to change the packaging into this more simplified structure but with a number of new kind of tiers all the way from ad supported up to the premium tier at $25 a month?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#5

Yes. So we've been modernizing our price architecture for sure. So a lot of people -- a lot of streaming services, music and video and others as well have been all migrating towards really this good, better, best. So we've been doing the same, and that is continuing. And so as we're moving through there, the key thing for us, of course, is optimizing for EBITDA. That's the reason we're doing it. So when we're going through, there's 3 things that we watch, of course, which is churn. So similar to your situation where you had a plan and you optimize towards one with a lower price point, but it's a better fit for you and what you're willing to pay, but I want to talk about that with you later. The -- as we're moving through the easiest way and the most -- the highest ROI way for us to be able to generate a new net add is to not lose one. So churn certainly is a key focus for us as we're moving through and generating this price architecture. Second is widening the top of the funnel. So having persistently low price points like play is incredibly important to getting people to generate consideration where maybe as they've gone through trials in the past or the price points seem too high, they don't even engage in the trial. So this has been really helpful for us. And then third, of course, is ARPU. So managing those 3 things. And by the way, just as I said, no, when I say ARPU, I'm not just talking about the subscription price, of course, I'm also talking about the advertising revenue that we generate as well because ultimately, all of that is contributory. So if we're managing those 3 things, that's really a big guide. So we still have a lot of work to do in generating this architecture, but we like what we've seen so far. And I'll use play as an example. The response to this so far has been really -- we've been really excited about this. So it's been widening the top of the funnel. And in general, when people come in and they come in through this funnel, the vast majority migrate to higher price points or full price plans, and that's the entire point. So we've actually started to increase the volume of the people who are seeing that particular offering because it's, of course, accretive across those 3 things that we just mentioned.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#6

And maybe you could just then touch on what you're seeing on the ARPU insurance side of things. And churn, I think, has been really impressively low for as many quarters as I can remember and certainly more recently. ARPU, I think Jennifer has talked about, you think you can grow starting from Q4, but it's been sort of more in that flat to down range. So I would love to hear how you're thinking about those 2 components.

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#7

Yes. On churn, yes, that is -- we're really happy with what we've been -- the work that we've done in churn. So for churn right now, we're at 1.6%. That's a combination of a lot of the work that we've been doing behind the scenes to increase user experience, but it's also been some of the work that we've been doing to increase content. So that's been a big thing for us, as you know, is making more and more content available. There's actually -- just to kind of take a side note, there's a product piece of this as well. So we have a lot of content that nobody even realizes we have. So a big part of making a higher level of utility and a higher level of satisfaction that people have for our services, all the work that we've been doing in the app and in search recommendations and more work that we're excited to talk about later and making sure that more people are aware of not just the content that we have, but the content that's upcoming or even events that are upcoming. So that's a big part of why we're seeing really good CSAT and we're lowering churn. Another piece of this, I'll also share is we've been working on modernizing our identity framework. This is a very, very important part of what we've been doing. Like as an example, you heard Jennifer on the last earnings call, talk about continuous service. This is one of the first deliverables of this modernization of our identity stack. And so as an example, what ends up happening is like normally when you go to return a lease or you sell your car, you have to cancel your service.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#8

Done that a few times.

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#9

And then you have to restart again. Yes, exactly. Yes, it is like every time you change a TV, you have to restart your Netflix subscription. So it's been -- it's a little bit -- it's been a little bit of an artifact of how the identity stack was built over the years. And so changing that, that's one example where this is going to be a huge headwind for us, both in churn and conversion over time.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#10

And could you touch on the ARPU side of things?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#11

Yes. On the ARPU side, a big part of this is we're, again, managing for overall EBITDA. So as we're widening the top of the funnel, and we're making -- we're offering other sorts of plans, we're very carefully managing the ARPU side of that. But the ARPU side also includes advertising. So we had a very successful price action this year. And our churn still remained low. A big part of that is the continually -- continuing to offer more and more value for price, whether that's more content or improving the UX.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#12

Moving to streaming. So I think that's a big debate overall for the stock and sort of how SiriusXM fits into the streaming world? Is it a complement to other streaming products? Does it compete against other streaming products in the car. Spotify talked up, it's in-car engagement on its last earnings call. I don't know if that's a sort of new area of competitive focus. But you all have had a streaming strategy that's evolved over the last couple of years. Can you talk about just how you see SiriusXM sort of fitting into the streaming debate both with the customer and with the competitors?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#13

So just to take that in 2 different parts for a second. So first, the in-car as an example. So we've had a lot of leadership historically in car, and we still do. One of the great things about 360L, which is now -- by the way, it's up to over 50% of our new car trials. And by 2030, we'll be close to 90% of new in-car trials. The big -- one of the big advantages there for us is that has both the satellite connectivity as well as IP. So we're now getting a return path for data. The reason I think that's really important is that allows us to make content recommendations to deliver interactivity, to have artists seated stations, all of these things were before where we -- that was really not available for us. So that's a really important part when in December, when Jennifer announced the new strategy for us to focus on in car, the reason why she did that was because we still have a lot of headroom in car. But that didn't mean that we were leaving streaming meant we were stepping back from acquiring unprofitable subscribers. We're still acquiring streaming subscribers, and we're being thoughtful in how we do that and making sure that, that's ROI positive. But we've still been also investing in the app. So we've been working on making sure that this product as a stand-alone is where we want it to be as well as a companion. I mean as an example, we're -- the app rating on the in the App Store right now is up over 4.8%. It's dramatically improved over the last year. So we're continuing to make -- we're continuing to make improvements in the UX, the content recommendation and so on and so forth. And by the way, we're doing that as well as in CarPlay and Android Auto. So we're seeing massive lift in people using those services as well to access our service. So I don't really think of it as necessarily a streaming debate. I think of it is how are we in a place where we can offer our content in a way that is most easily accessible.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#14

This year has certainly been kind of uncharacteristic for auto sales with all of the tariff noise that we've had I think that probably had some pull forward in the first half of the year. Maybe we'll see kind of the other side of that in the back half of the year. Just overall, with a little bit of uncertainty probably in SAAR heading into next year, how are you thinking about what you need to do to build the trial funnel?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#15

So we saw in Q3, as we noted, we saw higher in-car trials. And we are continuing to, not just in new cars, but also, as you know, we've been building a lot of our capabilities and used car as well. So we like what we have there. I would say in terms of -- the macros are hard to predict for everybody on this is impossible. But because of the work that we're doing, such as continuous service, the work that we're doing with the increase of penetration of 360L. We like where we're at in car. All of the work that we've been doing in use, which I think is incredibly important for us is becoming a bigger and bigger funnel. In particular, since the size of our fleet is just becoming massive, the size of vehicles in operation that have SiriusXM installed.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#16

Well over $100 million.

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#17

Yes. And so this is becoming a real opportunity for us. And as we improve our marketing capabilities because of things like improving the identity stack this is a lot more attractable for us. I'd also say we've also improved, as you know, and implemented with the EVs, and this has been a great opportunity. But one thing I'd sort of tweak to the question is now that we've -- we also have a lot of opportunity outside of the in-car funnel. And so there's been a lot of partnerships that we've been starting to work on. But really importantly, the extended 3-year trials with auto OEMs is becoming a bigger and bigger piece of the puzzle for us.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#18

Could you speak to that a little more? So if I understand that correctly, that when a car is purchased, the purchase price includes a 3-year subscription? So it eliminates the trial funnel, right? Because there isn't a trial period. And so maybe you can give us a bit more about the kind of significance of that to the business as it grows?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#19

I don't think we're releasing any specific numbers on it. But here's what I will share is that it's definitely becoming a more significant -- it's definitely becoming a more significant part of the gross adds for us. But what's really interesting is we did a lot of work early on to think through what that's going to be cannibalistic. Are we generating more yield are we generating more expected revenue on per thousand trials? And the answer is yes, which is why we've been really leaning into it.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#20

And is it new and used car?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#21

New. Predominantly new. But there's an opportunity to use that we haven't approached yet.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#22

I have to think about like when trying to see where sub trajectories are going. We've talked a lot about churn, which is the big component and a bit about gross adds. But to get to gross adds, like self-pay conversion has always been a big metric. And I don't think if memory serves me correctly, it sort of stays in sort of the low 30s has been the historical rate as the pen rate has come up. So maybe first, just can you talk about how you've seen that trending over time? And again, it seems like one of those areas that operationally you sort of attack to get that conversion heading in the direction that you want. So what are you working on to drive conversion?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#23

So it's interesting. So you're right. So penetration for us is at an all-time high. And obviously, as you penetrate deeper and deeper into certain make model trends, less expensive make model trims tend to have slightly lower tend to have slightly lower conversion rates. However, what we have been seeing is an improvement in things like continuous service, which we've just talked about and some of the other unlocks that come from having an improved identity stack, such as our marketing capability are also generating real great offsets to that. I think last year, we stopped investing in streaming in the same way, which, as you mentioned, and created some headwinds on comps, but our overall in car business is better year-over-year.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#24

So this year, you have, I think, it's a few hundred thousand drag on net adds from kind of the pullback in streaming and maybe a little bit of promotion that you're cycling as well. I think Jennifer has talked about that you would expect to be positive on an underlying basis, excluding those headwinds. So if I take some of the things we've talked about so far, you won't have that headwind next year. It sounds like continuous service and the opportunities outside of the funnel, those are all very constructive. So I guess, how are you simply kind of feeling about the pace of net adds once this headwind is behind you?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#25

Yes. So we -- the pace of -- the streaming net adds will be a headwind for us and the biggest headwind and we're going to lap the biggest comp on that in Q4. So that will be the biggest place where we have to -- where we're lapping into those streaming ads. But again, as we just said, the underlying in-car business is going to be better year-over-year. I like where we're at from the way the business is set up right now. Obviously, you heard us just reaffirm and recently raised in the last earnings call. But the underlying business itself, a lot of the technological improvements that we've made, such as 360L, which is not recent, but it's just really finally getting to the place where it's the majority of new car trials. It's becoming a bigger and bigger part of the used car fleet. So that's really helpful for us because that's a great headwind. The ability to use the app and other ways to recommend content is creating more and more engagement. So as an example, for 360L users who also stream, the average days -- the average day usage is 28 days a month. I'm not sure what that is in February. I got to talk to the analytics team, but 28 days a month. They are really heavily engaged. So the more ways we can get people to use all of these services and be in a 360L car, we really like our chances there. In terms of what that means on a go-forward basis with things like continuous service, there's -- every few years, someone turns in a car, right? And then there's a leakage that happens for some people who don't go in and then renew or re-up or they're not -- they don't get the right trial or they're not contacted in the right way. So cleaning that up is going to be a huge unlock for us, not just in terms of conversion, but also in terms of churn. So if you think about net adds, that will be really positive for us. But cleaning up the identity stack, that also means that our marketing capabilities. So our marketing has predominantly been very legacy-based because focusing on having the radio as actually the subscriber versus the person as a subscriber, if you don't come in through the natural funnel, you come to one of our landing pages, the first thing we'll ask is for like a radio ID or VIN. It's a really tough conversion. So being able to attach that to the actual subscriber themselves really opens up a lot of other marketing channels that we've never really been able to use effectively before. And so we're really excited about that opportunity as well.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#26

And then just going back to pricing, you talked about how earlier in the year, you had a successful rate event. Is there any kind of easy way for us to think about the consistency of rate events every 18 months, every 24 months, something like that.

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#27

I don't think we have it calendarized right now, but we'll share more as our thinking evolves on this. But one of the things that's really important for us to be able to do is again, like going back to making sure that we're managing conversion, the ARPU/revenue and churn. So we're thoughtful about this when we approach. And that means also as well as we're thinking about how can we add more value to those more premium plans in conjunction with any sort of price action we would take. So I think more to come from us later.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#28

And just on that, so I think with all music in particular, that is a lower price tier than what you've had before and then premium is maybe a higher price year than what you've had before. Can you just talk about the skew between those? And just the idea that it doesn't create? I mean you talk a lot about the focus on EBITDA growth, it doesn't create sort of a revenue drag? Because you have -- everything you're doing seems to be giving the customer a more simple experience. So that's the risk/reward we're trying to balance.

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#29

Yes, for sure. I'd say with -- as we're setting up into a good, better, best price architecture, what often happens is people will come in because -- by the way, no one ever sees like all 3 is an option, right? They're coming in through 1 option or another. What ends up happening is predominantly, and I'll use play as an example, which was our lowest price tier, and this is going to help us work on a lot of these things because it's not just about the new conversion. As you know, we also have a significant amount of unpublished discounts. So things like all access, things like play, these are going to help us start to clean up some of these that are in these unpublished discounts. That also raises overall average ARPU and EBITDA for us. Huge, huge project for us to be able to do. But when people come into these lower-priced tiers, they're, they're much more likely to engage. We have much higher CTRs and performance when people see these lower-priced tiers, but then they come in and they're like, you know what, I actually do want to Play-by-Play sports. I do want some of the other potential news channels or I don't want ads. And so this is why we see the vast majority of people come in on these lower-priced plans, converting to higher.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#30

And is that -- in general, you'd say you're seeing more of the uptrading than the downturn trading.

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#31

Yes, when people are coming in for these, yes.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#32

Yes. Okay. Switching over to the digital side of the business. Maybe first, just a kind of general question. So Pandora is a relatively straightforward business to understand. A lot of the value that you're creating in digital is not on the Pandora music side. It's in sort of off-platform podcasting, a little bit more of like a B2B business, maybe rather than a B2C. So just to level set initially, can you just talk us through what that business is in terms of what the assets are and what you're monetizing just separate from the Pandora streaming service?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#33

Well, they actually all do work together because that creates a really significant center of gravity for marketers when they're coming in. But as you know, we have a business that manages advertising and generates revenue for many other publishers as well. I think there's a total of [ Hooper ], correct me if I'm around about 160 million people a month on that. 42 million of that 42 million a month is Pandora. So this is still a very significant business, a very significant business. And so we're really excited about the size of this. but different pieces are moving at different paces. So our podcast business, as an example, which we're -- I think is it 11 out of top 20, a very significant number of podcasts where we're managing the advertising. This is up 50% year-over-year for us, very significant. On Pandora, we've been keeping the number of ad hours and that's holding steady, which is great, and there's been a flattening of the decline of the MAUs. We're struggling a little bit, I would say, on there is a -- on the ad units themselves, there's been more and more competition. But the teams have been responding with deals such as the deal that we have with Amazon, for the new demand coming into their DSP and, of course, with the data deal that we have with Snowflake. But I would say there's probably really 3 components to this. There's the Pandora business. There's the ad rep business and then there's specifically the podcast business.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#34

Yes. And is AdWizz, is that within the ad rep?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#35

Yes, that is the ad rep. Yes, yes, correct.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#36

And that is essentially doing what you do in podcast, but for non-podcast content?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#37

For sure. Yes. SoundCloud and others. Correct.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#38

And could you maybe then talk -- because again, I think this is kind of a lesser understood part of the business, like the strategy there and how you're tapping into programmatic demand and other opportunities to generate revenue acceleration?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#39

Yes. So we have partnerships, and we're increasing the number of partnerships that we have with more and more programmatic providers. Amazon being one. Of course, we have a partnership with the Trade Desk. But even as you have those partnerships, there's a chance to optimize those and to do more with those. And that ends up being quite technical where how do we bring more data partners and how do we get more match rates on those data partners because of the more data that we can bring in the more addressable, we can make any of the inventory, both for ourselves and for the partners that we ramp. So there's a continuing amount of work that we're doing there in order to improve the quality or the data around the advertising the advertising units and making sure that the actual quality and performance is much, much more measurable.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#40

And do you have an outlook as to when segment profit might recover at this business? I think it's had some pressure on it?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#41

Yes. I think we'll talk more about that maybe in future sessions. But right now, we've been cautiously optimistic with the overall advertising business.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#42

That's maybe a good segue into just cost overall. So I know that cost cuts have been something that probably you've been driving very personally. And a focus of the conference calls as you all have managed through some of this revenue volatility. So can you update us on kind of where you are on the internal cost program, and then we'll cover some of the costs like CapEx and things.

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#43

Yes. So as you know, we hit our $200 million a year run rate goal early. That was predominantly through improvements that we've been making in product and technology, by sharpening the focus, optimizing cloud. I mean, by the way, just as I said, it is -- there's not one silver bullet. It's many, many, many things. It's like as an example, going in to your cloud provider and choosing a less expensive chipset to be able to use on any particular workload. Just a lot of tiny small things that aggregate into big, large structural cost savings that will continue to pay dividends. And similarly, on the marketing side, certainly, there was a pullback in streaming, but there's a lot of other things we're doing to make the dollars work better. Again, this comes back to some of the identity work that we're doing, but there's a lot of other structural work as we make the funnel more efficient. It allows us to be able to spend less money to do the same thing. And then you get a path to a certain point and the inflection goes the other way, you can start more and more -- you have a higher ROI and more subscribers you can acquire. So it becomes -- we may start seeing an inflection point in the other direction there. But yes, a ton of work there. On CapEx. As you know, our satellite program by '28 will be roughly at 0 expected CapEx on that. And on the non-set CapEx, we're at the lower end of our guide between $450 million and $500 million for this year and our guide is for $400 million into next year on non-tech CapEx. So a lot of the work there is very similar is we're, again, sharpening our focus and allows us to rationalize certain platforms, put more resources behind programs like managing our identity stack versus trying to do a lot of different things.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#44

And I know OEM relationships are a big source of value and cost, maybe with new CFO news announcement and his background with Ford, do you see some additional opportunity within those relationships to find savings.

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#45

I absolutely do. So I think that the OEMs have been incredible partners. We wouldn't have our business without them. And so we -- but we're always continuing to, I think, on both sides, figure out how we can be even more mutually beneficial. . So there's a lot of things that we've been evaluating into how those partnerships can look in the future and how we can make it even more mutually beneficial. So I don't think we have anything to talk about now, but it is a very, very big focus for us.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#46

When I kind of step back from it all, the complexity of the business is high when you get into the details, right? If you step back and it's pay for a service, enjoyed in the car and out of car. And then I think the stock sort of simply is usually sort of net adds and EBITDA growth. And we do a lot of work to try to figure those things out. But if we do kind of zoom out because we've gotten into a lot of detail, if you just think about sort of long term, what subs can do long term, what EBITDA growth can do, what framework would you put around the business?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#47

So I think that -- I mean I think if you take a look at the potential we have in optimizing cost structure over time, that's a really good place to start. So we're in, I would say, early to mid-innings of things that we could do right now in terms of rationalizing the cost structure. We've gotten a lot of the easy wins in. But we're in early days on being able to do things as an example with AI. So -- and that's -- and as an example, in care, we've been, I think, one of the leaders in the work that we've been doing with Sierra. That has been incredibly beneficial both for the people who call in and interact, but also for our cost profile. But there's potentially other things, other ways we can use that as we start to think through outside of care, how do we work with our customers in a way or even acquire customers in a way using AI. That's we're in very early innings. There's in our P&T team, we're in early innings early innings, I should say, on how we use AI to structure costs there. So I think if you look around a lot of our big cost bases, there's a huge amount of opportunity to continue to rationalize for sure. So I think there's a cost opportunity. On the subscriber piece, this is where most of our revenue is generated. As we talked about, we really like where we're at with the increasing penetration of 360L in new car trials. We like where we're at with our new pricing architecture. And we like where we're at with our marketing funnel continuing to dramatically improve due to some of the product improvements we made like identity structure. So we're really happy there. And we talked about the opportunities in the advertising business as well. So I like where we're at from a revenue and from a cost perspective. And I think there's certainly even adjacencies that we're going to talk through at some point down the road.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#48

One, maybe adjacency at least for shareholder value is spectrum. It's something that for the first many, many years, I covered the stock never came up. And now all of a sudden maybe due to some other deals we've seen in the space? It seems like both that there's value there and maybe some realizability within the horizon. I think that's another one, but that's actually the point I wanted to ask on. So I think there's I don't know it's 2 million or 3 million legacy Sirius Radios that are probably out there longer than you expected. That seems to be the opportunity for monetization. I think that's 35 megahertz that they're on. So maybe talk about what you think kind of needs to happen for that installed base to become de minimis and then whether or not a monetization event could follow. And I think Jennifer kind of indicated that a spectrum sale may not be on the horizon on the last call. So just trying to understand what you see as some of those shareholder value opportunities?

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#49

Yes, for sure. And let me level set exactly what those holdings are and then great. I think there's like 3 different ways to maybe think about value on this. So we have total right now, our spectrum holdings consist of 35 megahertz of contiguous spectrum. And so 25 megahertz of that right in the center is what we generally use for our broadcast business. I think that the spectrum you're referring to in sort of an interesting artifact of the original merger between Sirius and XM, there's 12.5 megahertz it was serious and then just above that at a slightly higher frequency is the 12.5 megahertz it was XM. So we kind of refer to those as a lower band and high band. So over time, what we've been doing is a lot of new cars have been traditionally in that higher band. We still have millions of customers in that lower band. And as those vehicles slowly come out of service, those subscribers have been shifting over into new vehicles, which predominantly use the high band. An important note, and I think it's important when we talk about the 3 ways we could realize value here, is we've also been shipping out what we call a wideband chipset that actually can take the spectrum from both rather than one or the other. So if you start thinking through -- and then, of course, by the way, there's the other 5 and 5 on each side for a total of 10, which is the WCS spectrum that we acquired last year. Now within that, there's the 3 ways you sort of think about the value of this the intrinsic value overall of the spectrum, I think, is what is maybe attracted some attention as it's been going up. So certainly, the intrinsic value increasing is great for us as holders. We're very excited about that. However, I'd say that I don't know that that's necessarily the highest utility use of this. So as we think about either using some of the spectrum assets over time, perhaps for something else. The great thing about it is we have this installed base with radios in the car. We have birds already orbiting that can actually talk to those radios in the car. And over time, we expect to have tens and tens of millions of these wideband chipsets installed that can actually talk to both. So that gives us an opportunity to do something. There's also an opportunity to perhaps partner with somebody else to make use of the spectrum in a way that our own technology wouldn't necessarily allow us to do. But we become a very attractive partner because, again, we have these spectrum assets we have all of these radios and installed already in cars. And then if you're thinking through a partnership and perhaps the distribution of the different service, we also just for SiriusXM alone, we have 33 million paying subscribers. So that allows us to be a really attractive partnership opportunity for others. And so we're actively considering all of those opportunities. And so nothing new in China to talk about right now, but we're excited to continue to work on this. And there's a lot of energy around it.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#50

And then last question, asking this one for a friend and loved one. But Yacht Rock spends every summer at Channel 15 and then in the winter, it migrates like rare bird. So I'm wondering if there's a point when it might be solidified down into the all music tiers channels, which I think max out at about 100. And maybe just how you think about the programming lineup overall.

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#51

Yes. So on Yacht Rock specifically, it's really interesting. So when we had the Taylor Swift pop-up channel that replaced it, I've never had so much -- I got more LinkedIn messages about this than anything that we've ever done. There was a lot of activity around it. And some of the -- a lot of the responses were around this, sometimes you get comp between the moon and a new Taylor Swift channel. So for those who prefer those at Yacht Rock jokes. There's actually more puns I was saying that there are actually Yacht Rock on. So it's unfortunate. But part of this is right now, Jimmy Fallon's holiday channel is on this right now. And so channel 15 and a lot of this is our bandwidth management. So we end up using this particular channel to promote a lot of wonderful opportunities that may be a little bit less permanent. But I would also say, though, for those of you who maybe you're an older radio or you wouldn't be able to find it. This is a great time to use the app. It's always available in the app as well as Yacht Rock Solo, Yacht Rock '80s and '90s and even we even have Al Roker in there as a guest, DJ. So I'll tell your friend to download the app.

Steven Cahall

Analysts
#52

I sure will. Okay. Thank you, Wayne.

Wayne Thorsen

Executives
#53

You bet. Thanks.

This call discussed

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