Sirius XM Holdings Inc (SIRI)

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Sirius soars on Canadian success

Mark Redmond is the CEO of Sirius Canada Satellite Radio.

JON TATTRIE
METRO CANADA
February 15, 2010 7:00 a.m.

Sirius Canada Satellite Radio is getting seriously big, as the four-year-old company cruised past the million-subscribers mark recently, and CEO Mark Redmond plans to take the company wider and deeper into the lives of Canadians.

“It was our most significant milestone to date,” he says. “It reiterates what we’ve believed all along, which is that this technology and service (has) a tremendous market opportunity.”
The final growth spurt to hit a million came during a recession that saw auto companies take a beating. That didn’t faze Sirius, though a big chunk of their business is getting satellite radios into cars.

“We were able to grow not only our revenue and subscribers, but also improve our financial position,” Redmond says, boasting of being cash-flow positive for a string of quarters now. “We are profitable.”

Redmond, who was born in Halifax, worked for 17 years with Thomson, a global player in digital video, before joining Sirius U.S. He spent a year there learning the satellite radio ropes before returning to Canada to launch Sirius here in 2005.

Sirius Canada’s licence was finally approved in September 2005 and they launched on Dec. 1. “It was a mammoth undertaking,” he recalls.

His goal then was to build the brand so Canadians knew what Sirius was offering. Now that one in thirty of us have signed up, Redmond credits the product itself: 120 channels, mostly commercial-free, covering sports, talk, entertainment, music and, of course, Howard Stern.

“You can listen to it from coast to coast, so if you get into a market like Halifax, where your choices become limited, we bring in 120 channels of variety and content. At $14.99, it’s a pretty compelling offer,” he says.

The goal now is to keep those million clients — Redmond says customer satisfaction is better than 90 per cent — to draw more and get existing clients to add services to the cottage, RV, boats and secondary car. Sirius recently released an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that lets subscribers listen on those devices.

Asked what Sirius is working toward now, he says, “The next million. Hopefully it will come a little quicker.”

http://www.metronews.ca/edmonton/work/article/451984--sirius-soars-on-canadian-success