Faced with crisis in a falling market, Sirius XM serves up a plan


Banks are not the only companies in trouble in the current market. Sirius XM (NASDAQ: SIRI) is viewed by some on Wall Street as a dead company. Shares in the firm trade for 95 cents and have been as low as 86 cents recently. Over time, being below $1 could cause a Nasdaq delisting notice.

The newly merged company has over $2 billion in debt. Neither firm ever made an operating profit and Wall St. is unclear about how much money management can take out in a consolidation.

According the The Wall Street Journal, "The company will soon introduce radios that allow consumers more flexibility in the programming, including a 50-channel plan that costs $6.99 a month." Sirius will also bring out a "best of" offering for $4 a month.

Most struggling companies would have trouble facing one challenge. Sirius faces three.

The first is that the current Wall Street environment may make it nearly impossible to re-finance debt or raise more money. The second is that selling programming at a discount may make revenue matters at the company worse. While it could bring in more subscribers, some current customers may "downgrade" to the lower service tier, cutting the company's income-per-subscriber and undermining revenue growth.

The last and most serious trouble may be that satellite radio is not the "hot product" any more. In a world awash with MP3 players and multimedia handsets which run on 3G networks, there may be no place for Sirius to go.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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