BusinessWeek has an interesting article discussing Sirius XM Radio’s more than $1 Billion Debt they will have next year.
Sirius XM Radio has more than $1 billion in debt coming due next year, and it
doesn’t have the money, at least not yet. Mel
Karmazin has tried to reassure investors that the company will find the
necessary funding, but the questions keep coming. “Am I going to lend
the company the money? I hope not,” he joked last month. “I hope we
don’t get to that.”
Despite the merger and a combined 18.6 million subscribers, Sirius XM
has seen its stock tumble from 3.94 last December to 31ยข as of Oct. 22.
Analyst James Ratcliffe of Barclays Capital
estimates that Sirius needs to raise $750 million to $800 million to
cover its debt repayments, programming costs, and capital spending for
next year.
Sirius says it can continue to fund operations and avoid filing for
bankruptcy. Executives expect to be able to raise money to meet debt
payments due in February and they anticipate that existing lenders will
be flexible about an additional $350 million due in May. “We are very
confident of taking care of the [$270] million in February, and we are
confident the banks will extend the maturity in May,” says David J.
Frear, chief financial officer for Sirius XM Radio.
[Via: BusinessWeek]
After the way Sirius treated their XM customers with the lousy line-up changes I seriously hope they go belly-up. I am cancelling my 4 radios and hope others do also.
I only listened to 3 channels faithfully and they have ruined each channel with XM crap. The reason I chose Sirius in the first place was for the content and quality of these 3 stations. I hope they go belly-up, too. What morons were in charge of this? Also, as much as I love AC/DC, I didn’t need them to take over what used to be Buzzsaw 24/7 for 2 months.
I own quite a bit of Sirius/XM stock and I never planned on selling until I turned on my XM one day to see they had changed Fungus 53 to AC/DC. Apparently they couldn’t afford to keep the one station that I like and still operate the 10 different country/western stations and now I see they will have an ABBA station on. WTF, SIRIUS? Do you hate your customers and stockholders? You guys really do not know what you are doing and I am planning on selling all of my SIRIUS/XM shares at a significant loss just to do my part to make sure you go out of business. You guys really screwed up. Go ahead and give paychecks to Stern, Tony Hawk and Bubba Lovesponge. Hopefully, they will sue Sirius when you can’t pay them.
I dont think Sirius Xm has no probelm getting out of this debt, the answer is very simple. What about that @SShole on channel 100 that gets paid 5 miliion dollars to 16 hours of work a week. that much money will pay back there may 2009 debt they owe back
I have heard both stations when they were independent and now have Sirius in my truck and hope to have it on my home theater amp in the next week. I hope like heck this company survives as they provide a service noone else can duplicate at this time. I don’t know how I will be able to go back to FM channels in my Dodge!
It’s a shame that this “company” that I have been a subscriber to for 5 years has decided to ignore the needs of their customers. This merger is a joke that provides no benefit to the listener, and now XM listeners have to pay more so that Stern and Bubba the Love Sponge can enjoy their millions in salary. I am cancelling my subscription today!
I only listen to 2 stations faithfully and am not satisfied with CH.71 & CH.74 Blues n Jazz thats it. Sirius Blues Sirius Jazz was the best and stayed on genere. Now its no telling what crap thats going to be played. Cancelled 1 radio one left because of the increase. You seem to be looking down a toilet paper roll and thinkin that everyone rides around all day in a Lexus listening to siriusxm but it is the average people who are plugged in to stereo’s and boom boxes that do the most listening.