Too Early to Gauge Impact on SiriusXM From Harvey and Irma, Says CEO Meyer

With SiriusXM in roughly 76 percent of cars on U.S. roads, it’s too early to gauge how “material” the impact to the company will be from hurricanes Harvey and Irma, CEO Jim Meyer told a Goldman Sachs investor conference Wednesday. “We've done business for a while, so we've obviously dealt with natural disasters before,” said Meyer. “Obviously, we've never dealt with two Category 4 hurricanes within a week, which has just been devastating for the country.” Harvey destroyed a “huge number” of cars in Texas, and “I suspect we're going to see the same thing in Florida” from Irma, “and so there will be a transition of the fleet,” he said. “There is going to be this immediate upswing in new vehicles.” Owners of those replacement vehicles will go first into three-month SiriusXM “trials before they are converted back” to full, paid monthly subscriptions, he said. “Almost all” who buy replacement cars will first need to have a “trial visit, and so the trial is going to be added to whatever subscription period they have left,” he said. “But the trial will become the front end of the subscription relationship.”