Pandora Reports Listening Hours Increase 18 Percent

Pandora announced Wednesday new metrics that were reached in the month of November 2013.

• Listener hours for Pandora during the month of November 2013 were 1.49 billion, an increase of 18% from 1.27 billion during the same period last year.
• Share of total U.S. radio listening for Pandora in November 2013 was 8.44%, an increase from 7.17% at the same time last year.
• Active listeners were 72.4 million at the end of November 2013, an increase of 16% from 62.4 million during the same time period last year.

Meanwhile, Forbes reports there's a 30% upside yo Pandora’s stock if its content costs decline To Sirius XM’s levels.

According to Forbes,  For 2012 Pandora’s content acquisition costs stood at close to 60.6% of its total revenues. In comparison, Sirius XM’s revenue sharing and royalty costs stood at around 18.6% of its subscription revenues for the same year. However, this is not a true comparison. Sirius XM spends additional money on acquiring and producing the content, the costs of which do not come under the revenue sharing model. Keeping this in mind, the overall content-related costs for Sirius XM stood at close to 28% of its subscription revenues in 2012. This still puts Pandora’s content spending (as % of revenues) at a much higher level compared to Sirius XM. For the current year, Forbes expects the figure for Pandora to reduce to 52.6% and decline to 38% in the long run. If the company’s content spending was to come down to a level similar to that of Sirius XM, there could be close to 30% upside