Sirius Issues Howard Stern 22 Million Shares of Stock Worth $83 Million
As an incentive payment, today Sirius issued Howard Stern 22,058,824 shares of common stock, due to greatly exceeding subscriber estimates for 2006. In October, 2004, the consensus estimate for analysts was approximately 3.5 million subscribers at the end of 2006. Sirius passed that by more than 2 million, the number needed to trigger shares being granted to Howard. Sirius ended the year with 6,024,000 subscribers. The value of the shares is approximately $83 million.
These payments could be expected to continue into 2007, provided Sirius does not see the slowdown that XM did in 2006.