Stifel Bullish – Goldman Cautions On Sirius XM
There were two reports issued by analysts today in response to the guidance issued by Sirius XM radio. Analyst Kit spring of Stifel noted that Sirius XM Radio’s guidance exceeds the Stifel model. This could be substantial in that there is at least some indication that sirius XM is being conservative in their numbers.
Spring notes that a stable churn is important, and if the company can maintain stability in churn, even in tough economic times, that it may help give some validity to the business model. Stifel’s spring is maintaining his BUY rating on Sirius XM with a price target of $1.25.
The second anlayst that issued a report today was Mark Wienkes of Goldman Sachs. Wienkes has been highly critical of Sirius X<. and in this report, little has changed.
Wienkes noted that SIRI now estimates 2008 year end subscribers at 19.1 mn versus 19.5 mn previously and that he feels that number is sharply below the Goldman estimat of 19.6 19.6. Wienkes also notes that Sirius XM ended Q2 with 18.6 mn subs, and thus, the new guidance implies only about 500,000 net adds in all of 2H08 vs. 900,000 as previously forecast, and about one-quarter of the 1.95 mn added in 2H07. Wienkes gives no indication as to whether he thinks Sirius XM is being conservative or aggressive in their guidance.
Rather than issue a new price target, Wienkes noted that the Goldman Sachs estimates and price target are under review.
The report stated, “The lowered subscriber outlook reflects both the weak auto market and a higher saturation of natural demand for the product, in our view. We see more signs signaling further caution is prudent for any investor in satellite radio. Specifically, (1) Sirius’ lowered outlook; (2) a pending change in retail distribution partners (yesterday Directed Electronics announced the cessation of its Satellite Radio distribution deal as of 1/2009); (3) Time Warner Cable noted it was seeing a pull back in its premium service offerings; and (4) higher churn at DirecTV”
Position – Long SIRI
Brad,
Nobama will bury the country further. He has already back tracked on the Iraq pullout. Now the time line is the same as McCain’s. Yes, Obama lied. He has hired the Clinton’s retreads…where is the change? Another lie. Tax breaks…forget-about-it…another lie. He sold you the bill of goods and you and 62+ other million kool-aid drinkers bought it.
Hey Big Ben.
You are fired up.
Hit those weights.
In 1992 I bought a home. Interest rates were 17%. Yeah thats right. Everything was in a complete shambles. By 1999 the home had doubled.
In 1975 I witnessed the gas lines due to the oil embargo. We still haven’t gotten fuel independent.
In 2000 Wall St. completely collapsed. The Nasdaq never recovered.
In 2003 we had an incredible recession.
This housing market collapsed in the summer of 2006. It went on for two years before these hedge funds finally couldn’t hind their losses any longer.
There is always a bottom Ben. And there will always be those able to reduce their spending. Create cash flow. And take advantage of the situation. They are doing it today as we type.
In 5 years people who buy a home today have a great chance to make a very nice profit. It never looks that way when your in it.
I type this knowing that we have all lost our asses in this market.
But……………….I am 100% certain that for those who can whether the storm. Maintain a good credit score. And survive this mess, which is what I am attempting to do.
It WILL turn around. And for those that always want to blame the current president and everyone else. They have valid points. I just feel that it’s best to deal with reality and what I have in front of me. Vs. Rehashing political agendas and continually thinking negative things regarding life in general.
I stop. And honestly Ben. I think, I have had the most incredible life. Born into a family of six, with a single mother in the 60’s, who worked three jobs to keep the lights on.
She went through the great depression. She knows the best way to get out of these things is “hard work”. There is a lesson here that I needed to learn and many others.
We need to value everything we have in the good times. And always prepare for the potential bad ones. And there is an entire generation of kids that need to learn this also.
We will be better for this mess. I have to believe that. We have better for every other trial and tribulation we have been through.
Lifes best lessons come from lifes biggest failures.
The easy life makes easy people.
You sound like a great man Ben. It’s a pleasure to read your post.
Take Care.
Socal
“lie,” “bury the country further,” “retreads,” “lie,” (again) “kool-aid drinkers”….and on and on…
Real productive stuff.
Go get some help to deal with your anger, man.
Big B, you appear to be a legit business man and I hear ya; however, in my profession of project and program (multiple integrated project) management I have to be highly objective in order to start at the real beginning, envision the required end, and map the course from project / program business case and charter through planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, to lessons learned, admin and contract closure, and a post mortem. Ours is a nation of mainly doers and not whiners. We tend to see problems as they are and–despite rhetoric, elbow jockying, and unfortunate portions of waste, fraud, and abuse–we dig in, figure out what needs to be done and then go about solving our problems, resolving our concerns, managing our issues, and minimizing our risks. Am I wrong about the American People? I hope not. Our country has steered off course economically, recognizes that corrections are required. We are confronted with the need to get out of a mess, identify and plan what to do about real and near-term risks going forward, determe who will lead (just done in the general election), and take steps in a logical order to slow, stop, and reverse the downward economic spiral. I realize that I am oversimplifying, but am I wrong? Lamenting where we are will not result in a course reversal–either at the macro level or as a reversal applies to the downward spiraling of Sirius XM’s battered stock. I challenge my fellow posters to focus on what can be done rather than what put us here and what cannot be done about it. My hallowed grandma kept the Serenity Prayer posted in her kitchen. I often read it and I believe in it. We need to be aware of what we cannot control (and we get loads of information about these things on this board), but our direction should be set based on what we can control. We can buy more shares, hold (which is my personal strategy for now), sell at a loss (many of us at up to 90%), sell and take proceeds to sell short…. Monday and the conference call will come and go. So will the shareholder meeting in December and the debt due date in February. Dig in, tighten your grip on what can be done at individual position level, and lean foward in the foxhole (remain alert). SIRI remains at grave risk. Because of this, based on my experience in my profession, I know that each risk relative to the stock must be identified, qualified, quantified, prioritized, and monitored. Monitoring means tracking risk triggers (triggering events that cause a risk to occur, for example). And finally, a risk remedy for each risk must be determined (sample remedies are accept it, shift it, mitigate it if possible, avoid it, pursue it (for opportunity risk), etc.) Any time a triggering event occurs a planned remedy gets applied. In the case of SIRI we really need to inventory the risks and take the approach above to plan our way foward. Personally I do not like getting ambushed by triggerd risks that could have been avoided, mitigated, or worked around. Maybe with the help of some of the more astute contributors on this board we can compile the known risks and then determine, collectively as a team of sorts (which we are as fellow longs), what the necessary course of action will be for each risk to SIRI–remembering and valuing Grandma’s Serenity Prayer as we proceed.
Long SIRI
PM,have you sent your resume to the board of directors at sirixm? They need a man like you!!
I can appreciate your logical and somewhat optimistic approach to your investment strategy in SIRI PM. I have lost money in the past on investments being “logical” and made money where there was no “logic” in sight.
That is why some say Goldman Sachs is one of the “best and brightest” firms on Wall Street. They were more than deceptive in their practices for as long as they have been around. Time will tell if they are able to make it through this as with every other company.
My only point is that until an investor gets on the right side of a trade and not be on the wrong he will lose money, logic or not. And like Big Ben said earlier, it’s supply and demand. The added dilution makes for a much larger supply, and without an equal demand we head lower. Just my opinion.
Off topic, but there is plenty of bipartisan blame to go around regarding the mortgage crisis…got this from wikipedia…
Phil Gramm and the 2007 mortgage and 2008 economic crises
Some economists believe that the 1999 legislation spearheaded by Gramm and signed into law by President Clinton — the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act — was partially to blame for leading to the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis and 2008 global economic crisis.[9] [10]. The Act is most well-known for repealing much of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had regulated the financial services industry. Gramm responded to such criticism by stating that he saw “no evidence whatsoever” that the subprime mortgage crisis was caused in any way “by allowing banks and securities companies and insurance companies to compete against each other.”[11]
The Washington Post in 2008 named Gramm one of seven “key players” responsible for winning a 1998-1999 fight against regulation of derivatives trading. [12] Gramm was later critical to passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which kept derivatives transactions, including those involving credit default swaps, free of government regulation.[13] 2008 Nobel Laureate in Economics Paul Krugman, a supporter of Barack Obama, during the 2008 presidential race described Gramm as “the high priest of deregulation,” and has listed him as the number two person responsible for the economic crisis of 2008 behind only Alan Greenspan.[14][15] On October 14, 2008, CNN ranked Gramm number seven in its list of the 10 individuals most responsible for the current economic crisis.[16]
[edit] John McCain presidential campaign, 2008
Gramm was co-chair of John McCain’s presidential campaign[17] and his most senior economic adviser[18] from the summer of 2007[19] until July 18, 2008.[17] In a July 9, 2008 interview on McCain’s economic plans, Gramm explained the nation was not in a recession, stating, “You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession.” He added, “We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline.”[20] Gramm’s comments immediately became a campaign issue. McCain’s opponent, Senator Barack Obama, stated, “America already has one Dr. Phil. We don’t need another one when it comes to the economy. … This economic downturn is not in your head.”[21] McCain strongly denounced Gramm’s comments.[22] On July 18, 2008 Gramm stepped down from his position with the McCain campaign.[23] Explaining his remarks, Gramm stated that he had used the word “whiners” to describe the nation’s politicians rather than the public, stating “the whiners are the leaders.”[24] In the same interview, Gramm said, “I’m not going to retract any of it. Every word I said was true.”[25]
The Real Deal
So who is to blame? There’s plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn’t fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn’t do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of “layered irresponsibility … with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role.” Here’s a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:
* The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
* Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
* Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
* Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
* The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
* Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
* Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
* Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
* The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
* An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
* Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.
Republished with permission from factcheck.org.
Anyway… Wienkes is always wrong. The price of SIRI always goes lower than his target.
I predict it will go even lower than his next target. But then it will go much higher.
But like any prediction, we just won’t know until the future becomes the past.
Love how Big Ben bashing Obama already. Hes not even the pres yet.Bush will go down as the worst president in history. PERIOD!!! Get a life you Bush loving hill billy.
Hey Spanyo. They makeout Greenspan as number 1 !
Interesting as Greenspan seems to blame everyone and everything else but him.
Thanks. I agree with the last comment. Partisan name calling never solved anything.
Hey Spanyo, LMAO for your comment, “Anyway… Wienkes is always wrong. The price of SIRI always goes lower than his target.”
If you think Weinkes takes things completely out of context. Go read number 4, above.
Then go check the actual article regarding Direct TV’s results. Which beat estimates. They had a fantastic quarter.
He pulled one line out of their release and some fucking how, related it to a satellite radio monopoly.
Fuck Goldman Sachs. I hope some hedge fund shorts them to zero.
Because they short the stock thats why he is right
The only thing that catches my attention about the Goldman Sachs aticle is the following:
Quote: “Goldman Sachs estimates and price target are under review.”
Interesting. Wonder why the delay in estimating a stock they have been relentless and continuously bashing for the last three months.
Any ideas????? Are they being cautious waiting for the Q3 report or is something in the wind?
yep, Goldman Sachs should be reviewed by the SEC for the timing of their estimates and the purchasing of the stock of those same companies. Also,they should go screw themselves
imho
vaporgold
Vapor..good observation….IMO there is something going on behind the scenes and set for after CC monday…we will find out when market opens tuesday.
if cc is great news …they will give good review to pump stock up to get shorted again. they seem to make lots $$$ from this stock both up and down.
Maybe the SEC under the B.H. Obama administration will be made to understand that it needs to do more, and more thorough, investigations into matters such as the alleged illegal manipulation claims made so many times by posters on SiriusBuzz. As a small, retail-level investor I really question whether the SEC looks out for me and the many millions of other similar investors that get screwed when the federal government fails to act in our best interest vis a vis our treatment by powerful Street level institutions that have the financial muscle and shares to manipulate challenged companies and stocks at will. I may just be naive; however, it’s my sense that all the complaining in the world by all SIRI longs will get nowhere, in fact will remain ignored by the federal government and laughable in certain back rooms on Wall Street, until the SEC steps up enough to investigate and, where warranted, take enforcement actions necessary to make large investment banks (including those that so creatively now are investment “holding banks”) treat small investors fairly. Also, briefly, before I get a reply suggesting that I contact the SEC, suffice it to say that there is no need. Multiple others on this board and on related boards have already mentioned that they have done so. We don’t need a legally acceptable petition with thousands of names on it presented to the SEC; all we need is for one contact on this matter to be taken seriously by the SEC, and for the SEC to at least focus some of its overarching investigative power on using SIRI to put the fear of God into those that would do anything to drive client revenue into their organization’s coffers. I purposely do not intend to channel my concern toward a single investment bank or holding company because what should apply to one should apply to all. Restoring small investor confidence demands no less.
PM – Not to sound negative but this is how the game has always been played and will always be played. It is unfortunate for many.
PM.
Whether or not Sirius sharholders will every be heard. Doubt it.
Whether or not, the SEC will ever do it’s job?
Only if they are completely re-invented, and…..their current budget is doubled or tripled.
In this economy that’s not going to happen.
So………..It really comes down to winning at the game as GIS says.
Our ceo and bod, know the game. And are given the task to win at that game.
Currently they don’t even appear on the scorebook.
But look at these famous companies falling by the wayside. Ford, GM, Leh, BSC and so many others. Ran by famous people with famous backgrounds like Mel.
You ever wonder how posters here, seem to have much more insight and business sense than the ones running the ship???????????
When I read your posts and others. You have to wonder what the fuck these ceo’s are board of directors are doing at these other companies. You really do.
What a clusterfuck.