Richard Gardner

Happy 1-Adam Twelve Day! There is a 211 in progress!

smdh at people learning for the first time that the Japanese are really into Rockabilly, Cholo lowrider culture, and bitchin' hot rods

Ran some diligence on SiriusXM this weekend Not because anyone asked Because my 14-year-old nephew connected his phone to my car via Bluetooth, played a Spotify playlist, and asked me what the "SXM" button was for I didn't have an answer So I pulled the 10-K SiriusXM is an $8.56B revenue company with nearly $10B in debt and a $7.4B market cap Read that again The debt is larger than the company Their business model, simplified: 1. Pay automakers to install radios nobody asked for 2. Give every new car buyer a free trial they didn't request 3. Hope they forget to cancel 4. Charge them $25.99/month for something their phone does for $10.99 That's it. That's the model. They have 33M subscribers. Sounds impressive until they lost 301,000 self-pay subscribers last year. And hundreds of thousands the year before that. Revenue has declined three consecutive years The average subscriber is 35-64, male, household income over $150K. Over half have been paying for 10+ years. These aren't loyal customers These are people whose spouses haven't noticed the $25.99 charge on the Amex yet The crown jewel of the portfolio is Howard Stern. They pay him roughly $100M a year. He works three days a week. His show averages 125K daily listeners. That's $800 per listener per year My analyst did the math three times because he thought he was wrong He wasn't For that price, you could buy each listener a Spotify family plan, an Audible subscription, and still have enough left for AirPods Speaking of Spotify. Nearly 290M premium subscribers. Growing double digits. $10.99/month. Available on every device ever made. SiriusXM. 33M subscribers. Shrinking. $25.99/month. Requires a satellite. Spotify's full-year revenue grew 19%. SiriusXM's declined 2%. Spotify trades at 74x earnings. SiriusXM trades at 5x. The market is not confused about which direction these businesses are headed Their growth strategy is called the "trial funnel." There are 7.3M people driving cars with free SiriusXM trials. The conversion rate is not publicly disclosed. Probably because it's embarrassing They have 180M "enabled vehicles" in the U.S. They have 33M subscribers. That's an 18% attach rate on hardware they already paid to install. 82% of the cars with their radios in them are generating zero revenue In any other industry an 18% hit rate gets you fired In satellite radio, it gets you a seat on the NYSE Adjusted EBITDA margin is 31%. Looks healthy. Until you realize "adjusted" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting in a company that posted a $2.08B net loss the year prior. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.73B that same year The distance between those two numbers is called addbacks And they're working overtime 2026 guidance: flat revenue, flat EBITDA, slightly fewer subscribers. The CEO called this stability and meaningful progress. On Wall Street, we call this managed decline Warren Buffett owns 35.4% of this company. This is the most confusing part. The man who said "be fearful when others are greedy" bought a satellite radio company in the age of Bluetooth. His entry was a Liberty Media arb play that accidentally became a long-term hold. The stock is down over 50% from its highs. I don't know why he's still in. You don't know why. His shareholders definitely don't know why. The bull thesis: SiriusXM has 33M people who have been paying $15/month for a decade and have no plans to stop. That's $6B in recurring revenue from people who may not even remember they're subscribed. Churn is 1.5%. Lower than most SaaS companies. The bear thesis: Every teenager alive today has never used a car radio Both are probably right SiriusXM's competitive moat is not content. It's not technology. It's not brand. It's the 47 minutes it takes to cancel over the phone SiriusXM isn't a bad company. It's a case study in what happens when your moat is consumer apathy and your growth strategy requires General Motors. Plz fix. Thx. Sent from my iPhone

The prominent presence of Palestinian and Mexican flags will do little to dispel the suspicion that left-wing political violence, regardless of pretext, is done for an underlying ideological purpose.

Top Naval Architects tell @nytimes it’s unnecessarily big, too lethal.

They would have been better off arming themselves and going to kill mullahs. In 1979, that might have started something. Instead they "marched," trying to get sympathy and support from someone else.

I doubt that anyone who attacked Israel today over a “non-story” about stopping the Hamas cardinal from entering the church for his safety, just as Jews themselves were stopped from entering the Western Wall, did so out of concern for their Christian brothers and sisters. If it were sincere concern, they would be worried about the thousands of Christians being massacred in Nigeria every day, or about Christians in Syria. What we saw today was pure hatred.

The whole point of the conservative critique of California's Democratic governance is that no state which looks like this should be as poorly governed as it is. It shouldn't be possible for it to be in such dire straits with its natural advantages. And that's on Team Donkey.

Hello Mr. Ford. You probably know that Nevada imports 85-90% of your refined products from California refineries. The same refineries that are being strangled by your close friend and political ally Governor Newsom. As everyone knows, Gov Newsom's California's CARB regs, low-carbon mandates & refinery crackdowns have spiked fuel costs for California drivers -- and now Nevadans. Yet you just sued the Trump Admin on March 19 to reverse their repeal of the the regulations that would lower costs of producing energy. Why are you fighting to keep heavy federal regs on fossil fuels & emissions that drive up energy costs? Why do you want to keep in place the same measures that drive up costs in California that Nevadans now have to pay for? Governor Lombardo has been warning Nevada voters about CA's failing energy policies. And just 10 days ago you sued to keep those failures in place. Interesting. We appreciate you sharing your views.

No wonder the left's fiction is unreadable. No idea of plotting.

It sure is interesting who they’re allowed to call a malicious puppet master and over which issues. Stephen Miller is a patriot, and America is lucky to have him. We would be in a better place if he had even greater influence within the White House. Pay special attention to who refuses to defend him from ridiculous attacks like this.

Oh no, not an “unnecessarily big” and “very tall” building

Countries that ban the Muslim Brotherhood and designate them a terrorist organization: - UAE -Bahrain - Saudi Arabia - Jordan Countries without such a designation: - The United Kingdom - Spain - France - Germany Europe, you have a problem.

She voted repeatedly to shut down DHS for over a month & sustained the shutdown on the literal day of a homeland terrorist attack in her state.

Just see the level of toxicity in this Indian Muslim family where the wife Yasmeen Khan ran a beauty parlour where she invited Hindu girls for free beauty parlor courses. And when these girls came she used to spike their drinks. When they used to became unconscious, she used to call her husband Mohammed Sharif Khan who used to rape them. The wife meanwhile used to guard the reception while her husband raped the Hindu girls & video recorded his act to blackmail Hindu girls to have sex with more Muslims. When police asked the wife why she offered young Hindu girls to her husband for raping them, she said that they will get Jannat as she is helping raping kafir girls who deserved to be raped by Muslims. Hindus needs to be aware & should not allow their children's to be in contact with anyone of them. They are crooked evil people. - @garvit_sethii

If you haven’t heard, and even if you have, Jimmy Kimmel said this about Markwayne Mullin, former Senator from Oklahoma, and our newest Secretary of Homeland Security: “We have a plumber now protecting us from terrorism.” Apparently, there has been some backlash. Plumbers were offended, obviously, as were parents of plumbers, spouses of plumbers, children of plumbers, and millions of people who have had a plumber show up when they needed one. Comedians were also offended, (the funny ones, anyway,) along with a surprising number of terrorists - especially those with access to hot and cold running water. However, in spite of the ensuing kerfuffle, @jimmykimmel doubled down. “I’m not upset that the head of Homeland Security was a plumber,” he said, “I’m upset that he isn’t still a plumber." He further elucidated by adding, "I wouldn't put a plumber in charge of Homeland Security for the same reason I wouldn't call a five-star general to pull a rat out of my toilet, OK? We all have our areas of expertise.” Being offended is always a choice, and I don’t choose to be offended by a joke, even one that comes at the expense of the skilled tradespeople my foundation tries to elevate. But I am a tad butt hurt by the suggestion that skilled workers should never evolve into something new, and that competence is somehow limited to one vocation. Obviously, expertise and skill are important. If I need a new kidney, I’d prefer a doctor do the surgery, not a late-night talk show host. But if the doctor in question used to host a talk show, why would I hold that against him? Ten years ago, during one of the presidential debates, @MarcoRubio answered a workforce-related question by arguing that America needed to get shop class back into high schools. He concluded by saying, “What our country needs are more welders and fewer philosophers.” A lot of people on this page commented that Rubio and I were singing from the same hymnal, but in fact, we weren’t. At least not entirely. Because I don’t think the current shortage of welders has anything to do with an overabundance of philosophers. In fact, I think it’s a mistake to promote one vocation at the expense of the other. What we really need in this country, are more welders who can talk intelligently about Aristotle, and more philosophers who can run an even bead. More Generals, in other words, who can fix their own toilets, and more plumbers who can hold a powerful government job. This is what Mullin did. He was a private citizen who mastered an essential skill and then turned that skill into a multi-million-dollar company that employed a lot of people and served a lot of customers. That gave him the freedom to do other things with his life, including a career in public service which got him into Congress, where he’s spent the last eleven years doing whatever Congressmen do. Now, he has a very consequential position in the Cabinet of the current administration. Is that not the embodiment of the American Dream? I get that Jimmy Kimmel might have a problem with Mullin’s politics, but what possible objection could he have about the trajectory of his career, or his desire to do more than one thing with his life? The only sensible thing to do in the wake of a moment this tone deaf, is remind America that the skills gap is wide, and getting wider. The shortage of skilled tradespeople is now headline news and closing it is nothing less than a matter of national security. This year, my foundation has set aside $10 million dollars to help train the next generation of plumbers, and lots of other essential workers. I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of AI-proof, six figure jobs that don't require a four-year degree, waiting to be filled. The money is currently available to anyone who wants to master a useful skill at mikeroweworks.org. Apply today. As for those of you genuinely offended by Kimmel's comments, consider expressing your disappointment with a modest donation to mikeroweWORKS. Our work ethic scholarship is making a real difference, and your money will be well spent, I promise. The donate button is big and red and hard to miss, at mikeroweworks.org I’d love to chat but I’ve gotta pull a rat out of my toilet…

"An Israeli spokesman attempted to justify the killings by claiming one of the journalists was a member of Hezbollah. He provided no evidence for this claim." There are Hezbollah posters and flags at this funeral. They can be seen in the embedded video. The camera pans to them.

We should have spent more on green energy, say the media. No, we shouldn't have. The $2 trillion we spent did nothing to prevent the energy crisis and may even have caused it.

This is sedition and should be treated as such America must return to the 1924 Immigration Act so all the communists can be denaturalized and deported, or thrown in some dank cell and left to rot Also, these commies are funded by Neville Roy Singham, a communist living in the PRC but who has been allowed, for whatever reason, to retain his American citizenship and fund political agitation in the United States That would appear to be treason, as is being connected to it, and should be treated as such

Eventually, people will become vigilantes if they expect the law not to remove violent criminals from society. Eventually, people will also beat up or kill the judges who set violent criminals free—especially if those criminals prey upon their loved ones—because they will (correctly) see the judge as responsible for the violence.

Sadly, activist judges are the fertilizer sowing the seeds of vigilantism in America. It’s s only a matter of time.