XM CANADA BOOSTS PRICES Richard Blackwell – Globe and Mail update
Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., the company that runs the XM Canada satellite radio service, said Friday it will boost prices by $2 a month in September, after losing more than $20-million in its latest quarter.
CSR generated revenue of $2.34-million in the quarter ended May 31, from subscriptions, activations , advertising and the sale of radios. But the company, which has been operating for less than a year, generated a loss of $20.4-million.
CSR said it will boost its monthly subscription price to $14.99 from $12.99 on September 1. Current subscribers and those who sign on before September will stay at the old price for an additional year.
CSR said it had 80,000 subscribers by the end of May, ahead of earlier projections that it would get 75,000 people to sign up by the end of August. Of those 80,000, more than 64,000 are “self-paying,” the company said.
CSR says it expects to have one million subscribers by August 2010.
For the nine months period ended May 31, CSR lost $79-million on revenue of $3.53-million.
CSR stock closed at $8.80 on the Toronto Stock Exchange Thursday. The company went public in December at $16 a share, but the stock has slumped since then. |