North American pay-radio operator SiriusXM reported Q1 revenues of an overall $2.09 billion (€1.7bn). It has 33 million paid subscribers, although 255 million listeners when its streaming service Pandora is included.

Revenue grew by 1 per cent for the quarter (y-o-y) although net income grew 20 per cent to $245 million. Churn reduced to 1.5 per cent, the lowest Q1 level of churn in the company’s history.

“We are off to a strong start in 2026, delivering growth in both revenue and profitability while executing with discipline against our strategic priorities,” said Jennifer Witz, Chief Executive Officer. “In the first quarter, we increased year-over-year subscriber net additions, grew ARPU, and achieved the lowest first-quarter churn on record. Our latest proprietary subscriber satisfaction study delivered the highest scores since its inception, reinforcing the strength of our value proposition. We also significantly enhanced our advertising capabilities through our landmark partnership with YouTube. This strong execution, combined with continued enhancements to our content offering and deeper listener engagement underscores the resilience of our model and positions us well to deliver sustainable long-term value for shareholders.”

“Our first-quarter performance reflects strong execution, with top-line growth, expanding margins, and a notable improvement in earnings and free cash flow,” added Zac Coughlin, CFO. “We are making solid progress on our cost efficiency initiatives while strengthening our balance sheet and allocating capital with discipline. As we navigate a more dynamic macroeconomic backdrop our priorities remain clear: achieving our target leverage range of low-to-mid 3x and driving continued free cash flow growth toward our $1.5 billion 2027 objective. Pandora and Off-Platform revenue totalled $501 million for the quarter, an increase of 3 per cent year-over-year.

Advertising revenue increased 5 per cent to $372 million, driven by strength in podcasting, higher programmatic demand and technology fees, partially offset by softer advertiser demand in streaming music. Subscriber revenue declined 2 per cent to $129 million, reflecting a smaller subscriber base. Pandora Plus and Pandora Premium ended the first quarter of 2026 with approximately 5.6 million self-pay subscribers, while monthly active users totalled 40.1 million.

The company is reaffirming its full-year 2026 guidance, including:

• Total revenue of approximately $8.5 billion,

• Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $2.6 billion, and

• Free cash flow of approximately $1.35 billion.

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Tags: pandora, radio, siriusXM