Charter Loses 58,000 Pay TV Subs, Broadband User Growth Slows to 190,000
Cable operator Charter Communications, in which John Malone’s Liberty Broadband owns a big stake, lost more pay TV subscribers in the fourth quarter than in the year-ago period, while its broadband user growth slowed.
Charter lost 58,000 pay TV subscribers in the final quarter of 2021, compared with a loss of 35,000 in the year-ago period. As of the end of 2021, it had more than 15.83 million total video subscribers.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Peacock Hits 9M Paid Subs, Break-Even Date Delayed Amid Higher Content Spending
NBCU's Peacock Reaches 24.5M U.S. Monthly Active Accounts, Quarterly Loss Hits $559M
The cable giant’s broadband Internet business was once again a growth area, recording 190,000 subscriber net additions, even but that was down from 246,000 in the comparable quarter of 2020. Cable operators’ stocks have been hit hard in recent months amid slower broadband user growth. As of the end of 2021, Charter had nearly 30.09 million total broadband customers.
Charter also added 380,000 mobile phone lines in the fourth quarter, up from 315,000 additions in the year-ago period and ending 2021 with more than 3.56 million.
Quarterly advertising revenue, which benefited from political spending in the comparable quarter of 2020, fell 28.2 percent to $448 million. Charter’s total revenue rose 4.7 percent to $13.2 billion. The company’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) for the fourth quarter jumped 7.7 percent to $5.4 billion. Net income rose from $1.25 billion to $1.61 billion.
“In 2022, we remain focused on driving additional customer growth by offering better services while saving customers money on their total communications spend, driving EBITDA growth, free cash flow growth and shareholder value,” Rutledge said.
