SiriusXM Acquiring Pandora
• SiriusXM Holdings Inc. and Pandora Media, Inc. today announced a definitive agreement under which SiriusXM will acquire Pandora in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.5 billion. According to the announcement, the deal will create “the world’s largest audio entertainment company,” with more than $7 billion in expected revenue in 2018. It also moves SiriusXM and its parent company, Liberty Media, aggressively into the streaming market. You may recall that SiriusXM already held a sizable chunk of Pandora — in June 2017 SiriusXM made a $480 million strategic cash investment in Pandora, giving it a19% stake in the streaming service.
Jim Meyer (left), CEO of SiriusXM, said, “We have long respected Pandora and their team for their popular consumer offering that has attracted a massive audience, and have been impressed by Pandora’s strategic progress and stronger execution. We believe there are significant opportunities to create value for both companies’ stockholders by combining our complementary businesses. The addition of Pandora diversifies SiriusXM’s revenue streams with the U.S.’s largest ad-supported audio offering, broadens our technical capabilities, and represents an exciting next step in our efforts to expand our reach out of the car even further. Through targeted investments, we see significant opportunities to drive innovation that will accelerate growth beyond what would be available to the separate companies, and does so in a way that also benefits consumers, artists, and the broader content communities. Together, we will deliver even more of the best content on radio to our passionate and loyal listeners, and attract new listeners, across our two platforms.”
Roger Lynch (left), CEO of Pandora, said, “We’ve made tremendous progress in our efforts to lead in digital audio. Together with SiriusXM, we’re even better positioned to take advantage of the huge opportunities we see in audio entertainment, including growing our advertising business and expanding our subscription offerings. The powerful combination of SiriusXM’s content, position in the car, and premium subscription products, along with the biggest audio streaming service in the U.S., will create the world’s largest audio entertainment company. This transaction will deliver significant value to our stockholders and will allow them to participate in upside, given SiriusXM’s strong brand, financial resources and track record delivering results.”
The transaction has been unanimously approved by both the independent directors of Pandora and by the board of directors of SiriusXM and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2019.
