Charter stock slips 7% as Q1 shows profit beat, but more broadband slowdown
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Charter Communications stock (NASDAQ:CHTR) has accelerated lower by 7% out of Friday's market opening action after posting its first-quarter earnings, which - like rival Comcast - showed a beat on profit measures while observers dug into what slowing subscriber numbers might mean for the company.
Revenue was in line with expectations, growing 5.4% to $13.2 million. The company logged revenue growth in almost every area, even including the cable video business (barely).
Attributable net income jumped by 49% to $1.2 billion, topping expectations, and earnings per share grew faster alongside a near-11% decrease in common shares outstanding. Adjusted EBITDA rose by 5.4% to $5.2 billion
The company added 164,000 residential subscribers to high-speed Internet, vs. net adds of 334,000 during the prior-year period. Residential video and voice continued an ongoing slide, down 123,000 and 156,000 net subs respectively.
It's up about 1 million residential customers year-over-year, to just over 30 million.
Mobile subscribers were a standout measure, though, as the company added 373,000 subs - putting it closer to AT&T/T-Mobile/Comcast growth territory than that of Verizon (which lost a net 36,000 subs for the quarter).
Revenue breakout: Internet, $5.45 billion (up 7.2%); Video, $4.35 billion (up 0.1%); Voice, $391 million (down 2.1%); Small and medium business, $1.06 billion (up 4.6%); Enterprise, $661 million (up 3.7%); Advertising sales, $383 million (up 11.5%); Mobile, $690 million (up 40.2%); Other, $218 million (up 5.2%).
Capital expenditures ticked up to $1.9 billion from $1.8 billion (below estimates for $2.02 billion).
Net cash flow from operations came to $3.6 billion, down from a prior-year $3.8 billion. Free cash flow was $1.8 billion, down from the previous $1.9 billion.
Charter and Comcast are coming together on a joint venture to take on Roku, Amazon, Google and others with an entry into the streaming hardware platform business.