Sirius XM Holdings Inc (SIRI)

[SeriousMoney]

Sirius Is Loved Too Much, Too Soon
By James J. Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
12/29/2005 10:45 AM EST

Last night, walking uptown on a beautiful albeit too warm December evening, I was stopped six times -- not including the one time the woman who stopped me and asked if I was Lenin's great-grandson because of the spitting image thing.

Of those six times, four of them -- four of them, mind you, which represents two-thirds, 'cause I just did that problem with my 11-year-old -- were about one stock: Sirius Satellite (SIRI:Nasdaq) .

All four were long it.

With each interchange, my enthusiasm for the stock -- already flagging with all this good news and no upward momentum -- lagged further, to the point where I just shrugged to the last fella.

I am a huge believer in learning from anyone. Anybody who stops me with a booyah on the street is going to get the interrogation about what they like, what I can do better, what I should focus on.

But four people in a row begging me to say that I liked Sirius is, frankly, a scary thing. You don't see that kind of embrace early in the game before a big move.

You tend to see it in Cisco (CSCO:Nasdaq) at $34 or Sun Micro (SUNW:Nasdaq) at $10 or EMC (EMC:NYSE) at $18 and I pick my examples carefully.

Here's the problem. I am a huge believer in Sirius, the company. I like the management, I like the programming, I like the service. I believe it represents tremendous value over terrestrial radio and am quite willing and able to pay for a cable radio subscription if I get my money's worth -- and I get it with Sirius. I also believe that there is a gigantic, untapped market for narrow programming of the kind that Sirius is seriously developing, away from Stern. You don't need me to know how much Stern's being paid, and I genuinely believe that Mel Karmazin figured it out better than you and I can. Some people are just good business people; he's one of the best.

But you know me. I am a huge believer in the short- and intermediate-term disconnect between a stock's price and the fundamentals of the company. I am beginning to think that everything will go right for Sirius and it won't matter to the stock because everyone is in it already. There's no one left to convert. The fact that the company announced terrific -- and they were terrific -- numbers earlier in the week and the stock went down anyway spoke volumes to me, volumes. Nothing, however, spoke louder to me -- screamed at me -- than those who pleaded with me to bless the name.

I bless the company; the stock? I don't think so.

Bottom line: Look for Sirius to exceed all of its targets, which, alas, will allow its stock to stay here, but not do much, in the timeframe that all of the people want it to go to $10. We had a big run into the Stern hoopla and I believe that will be it.

Great company; not-great stock. You know I prefer the inverse.

http://www.thestreet.com/p/_yahoo/rmoney/technology/10259427.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=PREMIUM&am...