How Many Cars Have SiriusXM Activated?

There’s certainly no doubt that SiriusXM is a player in the vehicle. The company reports it now has 34 million people who pay for their service. They also report that 117 million vehicles now on the road are equipped with their radio service. So that’s at least 83 million vehicles with inactivate satellite radios, compared to 100% activation of traditional radios, of course.

Those 117 million vehicles equipped with SiriusXM-enabled radios is an increase of 12% over 2017. That’s about 44% of all the cars in the country. At the time satellite-radio-enabled vehicles are sold or leased, the owners or lessees generally receive trial subscriptions ranging from three to 12 months.

Despite not knowing exactly how many of those 117 million vehicles can play SiriusXM when they are powered up every day, there’s no denying the company is growing during a time when there are more options to listen to audio than ever before and the fight for the consumer’s ear has never been so competitive.

SiriusXM reported earnings on Wednesday and here are the numbers:

For the fourth quarter of 2018, SiriusXM’s revenue came in at $1.5 billion, up 7% from Q4 2017. Revenue in 2018 totaled $5.8 billion, up 6% from 2017.

Here are some more numbers to chew on from the SiriusXM earnings report:
Subscription revenue in Q4 was $1.175 billion
Subscription revenue for the year was $4.59 billion
Advertising revenue in Q4 was $52 million
Advertising revenue for the year was $188 million

414,000 net new self-pay subscribers in Q4
1.4 million net new self-pay subscribers in 2018
28.9 million self-pay subscribers at the end of 2018
Total net subscriber additions in the fourth quarter were 346,000
Total net subscriber additions for 2018 were 1.3 million
All up, the company is reporting is has 34 million total subscribers. At the end of 2017 SiriusXM reported a total of 32.7 million subscribers.

The company expects another $6.1 billion in revenue in 2019