SiriusXM Closing In On Howard Renewal
• It certainly appears that SiriusXM’s long-running negotiations to re-up its marquee star Howard Stern are close to paying off — literally — for Stern.
On Thursday, Oct. 22, SiriusXM held its third quarter earnings call, announcing its Q3 2020 operating and financial results, including revenue of $2.025 billion, up 1% compared to the prior year period. The Company’s net income increased 11% to $272 million in the third quarter from $246 million last year. While that’s all well and good, the burning question to the participants on the call was the progress of talks to re-sign Stern Earlier this month Bloomberg reported that Howard was closing in on a mega-contract renewal with SiriusXM Holdings Inc. that would boost his pay to about $120 million a year.
Stern’s current five-year deal with SiriusXM expires at the end of December, so the clock is definitely running, and we understand that negotiations have been underway for the better part of a year. His previous five-year contracts, which cover production and staff, topped out at roughly $80 million to $100 million.
During the earnings call, Jessica Reif Ehrlich of Bank of America Securities asked outgoing SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer about the progress of the Stern negotiations. Without offering any details, an optimistic-sounding Meyer replied, “On the Howard discussions, I’d rather wait for some of those specifics until the deal is done. But, I can tell you that where we are in the discussions today, we have a set of economics that Howard’s team is happy with and I’m happy with. Obviously, we’ve got to get the deal completed. And it would be a — certainly a long-term arrangement is what we contemplate. But stay tuned there. And hopefully, we’ll have more to say here pretty soon.”
As was previously announced, Meyer will retire as CEO of SiriusXM on December 31, 2020 and become Vice Chairman of SiriusXM’s Board of Directors. Jennifer Witz, the Company’s President, Sales, Marketing and Operations, is slated to become CEO on January 1, 2021, and Sean S. Sullivan has been appointed Chief Financial Officer, effective Monday, Oct. 26.
