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CHTR Q1 Earnings Miss, Stock Rise on Modest Y/Y Revenue Growth

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Charter Communications (CHTR - Free Report) has reported first-quarter 2025 earnings of $8.42 per share, which missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 1.29%. However, the reported figure increased 11.5% year over year.

Revenues of $13.74 billion increased 0.4% year over year, driven by growth in residential mobile service, residential Internet and other revenue streams. This was partially offset by declines in residential video and advertising revenues. The top line beat the consensus mark by 0.41%.

CHTR has shown a mixed earnings surprise, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate in one of the trailing four quarters while exceeding it in the other three, with an average surprise of 5.24%. (Find the latest EPS estimates and surprises on Zacks Earnings Calendar.)

CHTR’s Segmental Details

Residential revenues totaled $10.79 billion in the first quarter, which decreased 0.1% year over year.

Charter Communications, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

 

Charter Communications, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

Charter Communications, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Charter Communications, Inc. Quote

First-quarter 2025 monthly residential revenues per residential customer totaled $123.06 and increased 2.1% year over year.

Internet revenues grew 1.8% year over year to $5.93 billion.

Video revenues totaled $3.58 billion in the first quarter, decreasing 8.4% year over year. 

Voice revenues decreased 5% year over year to $356 million.

First-quarter mobile service revenues totaled $914 million, up 33.5% year over year.

Commercial revenues increased 1.4% year over year to $1.82 billion.

Mid-market and large business revenues, excluding wholesale, increased 4.4% year over year, mostly reflecting PSU growth. First-quarter advertising sales were $340 million, which decreased 12.9% year over year, primarily driven by lower political revenues.

Excluding political revenues in both periods, advertising sales revenues decreased 5.1% year over year due to a more challenging advertising market.

Other revenues totaled $793 million in the first quarter, reflecting a rise of 13.4% from the first quarter of 2024, primarily driven by higher mobile device sales.

CHTR’s Subscriber Statistics

First-quarter total residential and SMB Internet customers decreased 2% year over year to 31.369 million.

First-quarter total Internet customers decreased by 60 thousand. As of March 31, 2025, Charter had 30.0 million total Internet customers.

Total video customers decreased 181 thousand in the first quarter of 2025 compared with a decline of 405 thousand in the year-ago quarter. As of March 31, 2025, Charter had 12.71 million total video customers.

In the first quarter of 2025, total wireline voice customers decreased 278 thousand compared with a decline of 279 thousand in the year-ago quarter. As of March 31, 2025, Charter had 6.6 million total wireline voice customers.

Charter added 514 thousand total mobile lines compared with 486 thousand in the year-ago quarter. As of March 31, 2025, the company served 10.4 million mobile lines.

Operating Details

Total operating costs and expenses decreased 2.6% year over year to $7.97 billion.

First-quarter programming costs decreased 10.4% year over year due to fewer video customers, a higher mix of lower-cost packages within Charter’s video customer base and $47 million of costs, which accounting principles require to be allocated to programmer streaming applications and netted within video revenues.

Other costs of revenues increased 8.7% year over year, driven by higher mobile device sales and mobile service direct costs.

While field and technology operations decreased 0.7% year over year, customer operations decreased 4.5% year over year due to lower labor costs.

Marketing and residential sales expenses increased 7.7% year over year, given Spectrum's continued focus on driving growth and the launch of its latest brand platform, Life Unlimited.

Other expenses decreased 7.8% year over year.

Adjusted EBITDA increased 4.8% year over year to $5.76 billion.

Balance Sheet & Cash Flow

As of March 31, 2025, the total principal amount of debt was $93.6 billion, and Charter's credit facilities provided $6.4 billion of additional liquidity over its $796-million cash position.

In the first quarter of 2025, net cash flows from operating activities totaled $4.2 billion. Capital expenditure totaled $2.4 billion in the first quarter of 2025, a decrease of $392 million from the year-ago quarter, driven by the timing of CPE, upgrade/rebuild and line extensions.

The free cash flow in the first quarter of 2025 totaled $1.6 billion, reflecting an increase of $1.2 billion from the first quarter of 2024. The year-over-year increase in the free cash flow was primarily driven by higher net cash flows from operating activities and lower capital expenditure.

In the reported quarter, Charter purchased 2.1 million shares of Charter Class A common stock and Charter Holdings common units for $751 million.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

Charter currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Stride (LRN - Free Report) , Roblox (RBLX - Free Report) and Fox (FOX - Free Report) are some better-ranked stocks that investors can consider in the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector. LRN sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) at present, and RBLX and UTI carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Stride is scheduled to report third-quarter fiscal 2025 results on April 29. Roblox is set to report first-quarter 2025 results on May 1, whereas Fox is scheduled to report third-quarter fiscal 2025 results on May 12.

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