Charter Loses Broadband Customers, Ad Revenues 12% Higher

Charter Communications followed Comcast Corp. the day before with a second quarter of closely watched declines in residential broadband customers -- down 42,000 to land at 28.3 million.

Charter pointed to the one-time discontinuation of a special program as the reason. Taking that out, broadband customers saw modest growth of 17,000.

Analysts continue to eye the broadband results of these companies for signs of weakness. Stock-market investors chose to shrug at these results for Charter, and mid-day Friday trading of its stock was up 1.6% to $456.78.

Charter's video business continues to sink as expected -- losing 240,000 customers compared to a 63,000 loss in the year-ago period. The company points to a “pass through” programming expense for customers in April.

Total residential video customers now stand at 14.9 million.

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Boosted by higher political advertising spend for the current big midterm election year, advertising sales revenue in the period was up 12% to $460 million. As with other TV platforms, Charter witnessed lower results in the automotive ad category.

Broadband revenue was up 6.5% to $5.6 billion, while video revenue grew 2.4% to $4.5 billion.

Charter continues to see sharply higher growth in mobile customers -- up nearly 40% to $726 million.

Total revenues for Charter added 6.2% to $13.6 billion. Net income was 47% higher to $1.7 billion and adjusted cash flow -- earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA)-- growing 9.7% to $5.5 billion.

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