Fourth-quarter net income dropped to $243 million or $0.05 per share from $251 million or $0.06 per share in the corresponding period of last year, in line with the consensus forecast. The bottom-line was negatively impacted by a 60% year-over-year increase in operating expenses.
Total revenues climbed to $2.06 billion from $1.50 billion in the fourth quarter of last year and exceeded the market’s projection. The strong top-line performance reflects broad-based growth across all business segments. Contributions from Pandora Media, which joined the SiriusXM-fold last year, supported revenue growth.
Subscriber Addition
Total net subscriber additions were 870,000 last year, which translated into 34.9 million total subscribers at the end of the period.
“Not only did we achieve our 10th consecutive year of one million-plus self-pay net additions, but we successfully completed the acquisition of Pandora Media and drove each business to record-high financial performance. Looking forward to 2020, we’re excited about a new decade of opportunity before us and confident in reiterating our guidance for the year,” said CEO Jim Meyer.
Outlook
The management expects last year’s momentum to continue in the current fiscal and forecasts full-year self-pay net subscriber additions of about 900,000. Total revenues are expected to be $8.1 billion. The company is looking for full-year adjusted EBITDA of $2.5 billion and free cash flow of $1.7 billion. The outlook matches the estimates provided earlier.
Capital Return
In the whole of 2019, the company returned about $2.4 billion to stockholders by repurchasing 364 million shares and paying about $226 million in dividends to stockholders.
SiriusXM shares, which gained about 21% in the past twelve months, has been trading broadly at the levels seen at the beginning of the year.