Photo Credit: SiriusXM
Despite posting a small year-over-year revenue increase and net income of $247 million during Q3, SiriusXM (NASDAQ: SIRI) is reportedly preparing to reduce the size of its roughly 5,600-person team.
The satellite radio giant’s rumored staff cuts came to light in a report from Bloomberg, but at the time of this writing, neither SiriusXM nor Liberty Media (which owns a majority stake in the company) appeared to have commented publicly on the matter.
Additionally, it’s unclear exactly how many of SiriusXM’s team members (who numbered 5,590 as of 2021’s conclusion) and divisions will be affected by the potential layoffs. However, execs intend to formally announce the unfortunate news sometime during “the coming weeks,” according to anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter.
Also in its aforementioned Q3 earnings report, SiriusXM – which is standard in all Lucid vehicle dashboards – said that net income had dipped by 28 percent YoY to hit the previously noted $247 million. Meanwhile, total satellite radio subscribers slipped to 34.17 million despite a boost on the self-pay side, whereas Pandora suffered a nearly 200,000-subscriber falloff from Q3 2021. Plus, Pandora’s ad-supported listener hours fell from the same three-month stretch in 2021 to finish at 2.75 billion.
During today’s trading hours, the value of SiriusXM stock decreased slightly from Friday and finished at $6.18 per share. The figure reflects a 2.83 percent decline since 2022’s beginning, and as of October 31st, Liberty owned approximately 3.21 billion SIRI shares, or around 82.4 percent of the business.
Separately, November saw SiriusXM launch a dedicated Selena Gomez channel after unveiling plans in October to build a “state of the art” broadcasting facility, complete with a 50-seat performance space, in Miami during the new year.
Of course, a number of other music and tech companies have also shrunk their teams in 2022 amid far-reaching concerns about the state of the economy.
During the past month alone, Spotify made a new round of layoffs after revealing podcast-focused personnel cuts in January and October, Facebook and Instagram parent Meta reduced the size of its team by about 11,000 employees, and it came to light that Utopia Music would trim its ranks by close to 20 percent following a high-profile acquisition spree.
Patreon, Downtown’s CD Baby and Soundrop, TikTok, Amazon’s Amp, SoundCloud, BMI, and Snapchat’s parent are among the other entities that have likewise parted with staff across 2022’s initial 11 or so months, and Gamestop today reportedly started making additional layoffs. The unit in charge of building the retailer’s blockchain wallet has been “heavily impacted,” per Axios.