SIRI Sirius XM Holdings Inc

By Brittney Laryea 

Sirius XM Holdings Inc. raised its earnings guidance for the year as the satellite radio company reported a 10% increase in second-quarter revenue.

Sirius XM now expects this year's revenue to be about $5 billion, compared with its previous guidance of $4.9 billion. Shares of the company rose 3.1% to $4.28.

Chief Executive Jim Meyer said the company's results reflect "continued strong demand for our content bundle" and that the company's "subscriber base, revenue, adjusted Ebitda and free cash flow have never been higher."

In its second quarter, Sirius XM said it added 587,000 net new subscribers to total more than 30.6 million subscribers, an 8% rise. Its number of subscribers who don't get Sirius's service as part of a promotion, described as self-paying subscribers, rose 507,000 to 25.1 million.

The company's self-pay churn rate, or the rate at which its subscribers left the service, rose to 1.8% from 1.6% a year ago. Its average revenue per user rose 3% to $12.78.

For the quarter ended June 30, Sirius XM's profit rose to $173 million from $102.8 million a year ago. On a per-share basis, earnings rose to 3 cents from 2 cents a share. Revenue grew 10% to $1.24 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast 4 cents in per-share earnings on $1.23 billion in revenue.

During the quarter, the company spent $403 million to repurchase 102 million shares of its common stock, reducing its average share count by 9%.

SiriusXM in May cut eight Latin music channels from its satellite-radio service. The channels are now only available online, where Sirius XM has considerably fewer listeners compared with those who use the service from their car stereos. The channels host music from Latin genres such as cumbia and reggaeton. Sirius XM said the satellite service still has Spanish-language sports and news channels, a tropical Latin music channel and two other channels that play music with Spanish lyrics.

Write to Brittney Laryea at brittney.laryea@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 26, 2016 09:20 ET (13:20 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.