Cable giant Charter Communications, in which John Malone’s Liberty Broadband owns a major stake and which does business using the Spectrum brand, on Friday reported its third-quarter 2024 results, including latest subscriber trends that showed continued declines in pay TV and broadband but growth in mobile services.
The company, led by CEO Chris Winfrey, disclosed that it lost 294,000 pay-TV subscribers in its latest quarter, compared with a loss of 327,000 in the year-ago period, which was impacted by the company’s high-profile carriage dispute with The Walt Disney Co. The latest figure was made up of 281,000 lost residential customers and 13,000 lost small- and medium-sized business accounts. Charter ended September with more than 13 million total pay-TV customers.
During the third quarter of 2023, it had lost 327,000 video customers, driven by the impact of the Disney showdown that lasted a couple of weeks. Once resolved, the companies struck a new deal that included such terms as Disney+ being bundled into Charter’s core video offering, as well as the removal of a number of Disney cable channels, including Freeform, Disney Junior and Disney XD.
In its broadband business, Charter lost 110,000 subscribers, compared with a gain of 63,000 in the third quarter of 2023. It ended September with 30.3 million broadband subs.
Mobile remained a growth business for Charter. It recorded 545,000 net additions in total mobile lines in the latest quarter after adding 594,000 in the year-ago period. That took its total mobile lines count to 9.4 million.
Third-quarter revenue of $13.80 billion was up 1.6 percent over the year-ago period, “driven by residential mobile service revenue growth of 37.6 percent and residential Internet revenue growth of 1.7 percent,” the company said. Quarterly earnings of $1.28 billion rose 2.0 percent, while adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, another profitability metric, increased 3.6 percent to $5.65 billion.
“We executed well during the third quarter, building on our operating strategy and foundational investments,” Winfrey said. “Now and in the future, we have the best, fully deployed network uniquely capable of delivering seamless connectivity and entertainment, everywhere we operate. We have pricing and packaging that saves customers money with the best products, and a service capability and investment that has yet to be fully realized as a competitive advantage.”
Malone has been exploring a merger of Charter with his Liberty Broadband, which owns a large stake in the cable giant along with GCI, Alaska’s largest communications provider. Liberty Broadband disclosed on Sept. 23 that Charter had sent an initial merger proposal, to which it responded with a counterproposal.
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