Charter up despite cord-cutting
April 29, 2024
Charter Communications reported higher Q1 profits despite continued cord-cutting. The US telco and mass media company said it lost 72,000 residential and business interest customers, leaving it with 30.5 million. A year ago, the company added 67,000 broadband subscribers.
Despite this residential broadband revenue grew 1.9 per cent to $5.8 billion. Cord-cutting accelerated, with Charter losing 392,000 Spectrum video customers, compared with a loss of 237,000 in the year-ago quarter. The company finished the quarter with 13.7 million video customers, including 13.1 million residential customers.
Revenue from residential video fell 8.1 per cent to $3.9 billion for Charter. Programming costs decreased 8.2 per cent. Charter’s Spectrum Mobile customer base grew to 8.3 million lines with the addition of 486,000 in the quarter. Overall, first-quarter net income was $1.1 billion, or $7.55 a share, up 8.4 per cent from $1.02 billion, or $6.65 a share, a year ago. Revenue rose 0.2 per cent to $13.7 billion, driven by growth in residential mobile revenue growth of 37.8 per cent.
”Our differentiated converged connectivity products provide us with significant competitive advantages that position Charter for sustainable customer and financial growth,“ CEO Chris Winfrey said.