US satellite-radio firm SiriusXM published its latest quarterly financial results yesterday, including new figures for its streaming subsidiary Pandora. On the latter front, Pandora’s advertising revenues grew by 8% year-on-year to $315m, a new record for the company, while its subscription revenues grew by 5% to $132m – meaning $447m of revenue overall for Q3.
Pandora ended September with 63.1 million monthly active users (MAUs), down from 68.8 million a year ago. The MAU total was also down quarter-on-quarter, from 64.9 million listeners at the end of Q2 this year. Pandora ended Q3 with nearly 6.3 million ‘self-pay’ subscribers, a total that grew to just over 6.3 million once ‘paid promotional’ subs were included. Pandora’s listening hours also fell year-on-year, from 3.59bn in Q3 2018 to 3.32bn in Q3 2019.
In the earnings call, SiriusXM boss Jim Meyer stressed the profitability of Pandora. “We have moved the business to profitability through cost efficiencies and we are continuing to make strides in monetisation,” he said. “We have a lot of heavy lifting ahead of us but let’s not forget that this was our highest-ever quarterly ad revenue figure and we had solid off-platform growth as well.”
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