SIRIUS Satellite Radio today reaffirmed its guidance of more than 6.2 million subscribers by year-end 2006, representing an 87% increase over the company’s subscriber base at the end of 2005. The company continues to expect to add more than 2.8 million net subscribers during the year.

“We continue to experience dramatic growth and strong demand for our service across our retail and automotive OEM channels,” said Mel Karmazin, CEO of SIRIUS. “This supports our expectation that we will capture the majority of retail satellite radio net additions in 2006.”

According to The NPD Group*, SIRIUS achieved 54% retail market share in April 2006, compared to 38% retail market share in April 2005. For 2006 year-to-date, SIRIUS has achieved 58% retail market share, compared to 40% retail market share through April 2005. Also according to The NPD Group*, SIRIUS achieved 55% year-over-year retail unit growth in April 2006 and a 120% increase year-to-date.

SIRIUS’ first quarter of positive free cash flow, after capital expenditures, could be reached as early as the fourth quarter of 2006, and the company continues to expect to generate positive free cash flow for the full- year 2007.

Full PR

Obviously an answer to XM’s cut of their guidance from 9 to 8.5 million subscribers. The reaffirming of these numbers is good news to Sirius shareholders.

This is from Satellite Standard Group - If anybody can find a picture, PLEASE POST!! Or send it to a moderator via email.

Sirius Annual Meeting - Live Wearable
May 23, 2006

Those that attended the Annual meeting got a treat today.

Satellite Standard Group has learned that a Slide of the new live wearable device was part of the presentation. Mel Karmazin also held up the unit in his hands.

The unit is described as slightly wider than the S50, a black face, white/light trim, and a knob on the face controls.

Also of note were comments that Mel Karmazin was able to be very candid in the question and answer session, and took the time to answer several investor questions in great detail.

Could this be the start of the Sirius /Tony Stewart / NASCAR relationship?

I found this over at Standard Satellite Group

NASCAR Driver Tony Stewart to Host Live Talk Show Exclusively on SIRIUS Satellite Radio
Friday May 19, 9:00 am ET
‘Tony Stewart Live’ will air weekly on SIRIUS’ upcoming 24/7 NASCAR Channel
SIRIUS will be the Official Satellite Radio Partner of NASCAR starting in 2007NEW YORK, May 19 /PRNewswire/ — SIRIUS Satellite Radio, the Official Satellite Radio Partner of NASCAR starting in 2007, announced today that two-time and reigning NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series champion Tony Stewart — one of the sport’s most exciting and outspoken drivers — will host a live weekly talk show exclusively on SIRIUS.The Press Rrelease

Blogs have taken the Internet by storm and have recently crossed boundaries as video blogs and audio podcasts gain strength as an alternative form of media.SIRIUS Satellite Radio announced today that it will launch a daily music show hosted by some of America’s top music bloggers.The innovative new program, Blog Radio, will debut May on Monday, May 29 on Left of Center channel 26, the commercial-free SIRIUS music channel that plays the best in college, indie and alternative rock music.

The RIAA has sued XM over their Pioneer Inno device, saying that it allows for “massive wholesale infringement”, according to the RIAA. The suit is seeking damages of $150,000 per song downloaded from XM’s service using the device. Our take on this: it’s a BS claim. Odds are they will settle out of court. BUT, it might mean either a delay in sending out the Sirius live portable expected out later this summer, cutting back features it will have, or both. If the new live portable has a very strong FM transmitter as well, it could mean the odds of a delay have increased after what happened earlier today with XM and their Audiovox Xpress being pulled due to problems with their FM transmitter.What you can do though, is take the issue to your congresspeople. Tell them that you don’t want your music to be so tightly controlled. It is against your rights to not be able to make a recording of a live broadcast for your own personal use. Go to Congress.org and put in your zip code to find out who your congresspeople are. Write to your senators and your representative in the house. If you want to know who should be your highest priority, find out if one of the senators is running for election in November, this is the time when they listen to the people most.

Audiovox announced that it will stop shipping out its Xpress radio for XM. The reason is because the FCC has a problem with the FM transmitter that is in it, and says that it is exceeding the guidelines in the power it is transmitting in. The FM transmitter is the part of the radio that broadcasts your audio on an aftermarket satellite radio receiver to your car’s FM antenna wirelessly.The problem now becomes, is this isolated to one incident, namely the Xpress radio being faulty, or will it affect Sirius radios in the future? While Audiovox is no longer a partner with Sirius, if they were making what they believed to be ‘legal’ fm transmitters, Sirius makers Directed Electronics and Xact could be doing the same thing. If they are, it would mean that future radios could be delayed in the near term(think new Sportster coming out in a couple weeks) while it is sorted out, and/or the new radios could come out with significantly reduced power for the FM transmitters. If that happens, that could mean that many radios will need to be wired into cars in order for a decent sound quality to be picked up, making it harder for satellite radio to make it into the mainstream. Hopefully it was just a faulty problem for the Audiovox Xpress.

Sirius has added a new TV spot for father’s day, titled ‘Sunroof’. The ad is ok, not their best, but not their worst (see their 2003 as titled ‘it’s_ON’). It seems they are using a new slogan as well, “the best radio on radio”. See the ad at Sirius.com here, and vote in our poll on what YOU think of the ad!

Today Google released Google Trends. Trends tells you what the rest of the world is searching for, so Backstage thought it would be interesting to see who was searching for Sirius.

Here are some pretty graphs….

More Here

That according to David Frear, EVP and CFO of Sirius as mentioned in today’s CIBC conferenece. You can listen to the conference Here

As reported on orbitcast.com, David says:

“You can expect it to have not only to be a live wearable, but you can expect it to have a great form factor, a great battery life and also some storage and playback capabilities. And the full functionality of that device will be unveiled in the course of the next several weeks.

Additional comments include:

“Providing the option of wearability to consumers is an important option to provide them with. We don’t believe that there’s anything about live wearable that really is category changing. We don’t think it’s going to change the trajectory of growth [and] doesn’t alter the guidance that we’ve given you.

The MP3-like functionality that [we have] offered since October, in the S50, is something that our subscribers like. They like the ability to have a single device where they can listen to their radio in the car or home and they can take content with them as they go. So you want to offer the functionality, and you want to offer the option.”

It looks like we should have some interesting news info to look forward to. I have heard reports that the newest chipset is more integrated than XM’s as seen in the new Sportster model. It will be interesting to see if they can get the battery life improvements they need to pull this off!