• by Wayne Friedman , July 29, 2022

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.

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.