• by Wayne Friedman , July 31, 2020

Under the stay-at-home orders in the second quarter, Charter Communications reversed its declining video subscriber loss with a net 102,000 increase in subscribers during the period.

A year ago in the second quarter, the cable system/broadband company witnessed a decline in subscribers of 150,000. Charter has 15.7 million video subscribers.

Jeff Wlodarczak, media analyst for Pivotal Research Group, wrote:"Charter torched our and consensus expectations with all important data subscribers dramatically ahead of expectations."

The company's broadband-internet business performed even better, adding 842,000 versus 221,000 additions in the second quarter of 2019.

Overall revenue per residential customer (excluding mobile) dropped 1.2% to $110.82 per month. This was partly due to giving a waiver of overdue customer balances --as a result of declining economic conditions -- as well as lower-priced video packages within its video customer base.

Charter's broadband revenues were up 10.4% to $4.5 billion, with its video business slipping 0.4% to $4.4 billion.

Mobile climbed 96% to $310 million.

As with most pay TV businesses, Charter witnessed a steepening drop in local cable advertising due to the pandemic -- down 37% to $249 million. Taking out political advertising, the decline in advertising was 41%.

Overall, company-wide revenue was up 3.1% to $11.7 billion. Charter stock was up 3% to $581.40 in mid-day Friday trading.