Cable giant Charter Communications, with John Malone’s Liberty Broadband as a major stakeholder, has continued to shed video subscribers.
The company, led by CEO Chris Winfrey, revealed that it lost 393,000 residential pay TV subscribers in its latest quarter, compared with a loss of 189,000 customers in the year-ago period. Video revenue totaled $3.9 billion in the second quarter, down 7.7 percent year-on-year as Charter ended the latest financial period with 13.3 million overall video customers, down 9.5 percent from a year earlier.
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Charter and Comcast, which similarly shed video customers amid a pivot by consumers to streaming platforms, have rolled out their Xumo streaming platform to retain TV content subscribers. Winfrey on a morning call with analysts said video customers were making choices “based on affordability.”
During the second quarter, Charter residential Internet customers fell in number by 154,000, due mainly to the end of Affordable Connectivity Program government subsidies to allow low-income households to save on monthly packages. Winfrey said Charter was working to retain Internet subscribers, where possible, after they no longer received an up to $30 price discount on their monthly Internet package after the ACP program ended.
“The real question is the customers ability to pay not just now, but over time,” he added as market churn and challenges in signing up new Internet subscribers are likely going forward as the loss of the ACP benefits impact is expected to flow through to the current financial quarter.
“For sure they’ll be more non-paid disconnect in the third quarter,” Winfrey warned, without giving actual subscriber trend forecasts. “Ultimately this ACP impact is one-time. That said, we’re very focused on really isolating the ACP impact internally and evaluating our performance and retaining those customers, because we want to keep them connected,” he added.
Second quarter overall revenue rose 0.2 percent to $13.7 billion, as increased residential mobile service – Charter added 557,000 residential and business mobile lines – and residential internet revenues in part offset lower residential video revenue.
“We remain fully focused on driving customer growth, with a unique, high quality product set that continues to evolve, creating long term value for shareholders,” Winfrey said in a statement ahead of the analyst call as Wall Street eyes the rate of customer decline at the cable giant in the face of streaming competition and the loss of ACP subscribers.
Charter’s net income attributable to shareholders came to $1.23 billion, just up from a year-earlier $1.22 billion.
