Cable giant Charter Communications, in which John Malone’s Liberty Broadband owns a majority stake and operates under the Spectrum brand, said Friday that while pay TV and broadband continue to decline, Reported results for the third quarter of 2024, including updated subscriber trends showing continued growth in TV and broadband. mobile service.
The company, led by Chief Executive Officer Chris Winfrey, said it lost 294,000 pay-TV subscribers in the most recent quarter due to a high-profile shipping dispute with Walt Co. (Decrease of 327,000 people in the same period last year). Disney’s latest numbers consist of a loss of 281,000 individual customers and 13,000 small business accounts. The charter ended in September, with total pay TV customers exceeding 13 million.
In the third quarter of 2023, the company lost 327,000 video customers due to the Disney showdown that lasted several weeks. After the settlement, the two companies signed a new agreement that includes terms such as bundling Disney+ with Charter’s core video services and removing many Disney cable channels, including Freeform, Disney Junior, and Disney XD.
In its broadband business, Charter’s subscriber numbers decreased by 110,000 but grew by 63,000 in the third quarter of 2023. At the end of September, there were 30.3 million broadband subscribers.
Mobile remained a growth business for Charter. The total number of mobile lines increased by 545,000 in the latest quarter, following a net increase of 594,000 in the same period last year. This brings the total number of mobile lines to 9.4 million.
Third quarter sales were $13.8 billion, an increase of 1.6% from the same period last year. This was “driven by a 37.6% increase in home mobile service sales and a 1.7% increase in home internet sales,” the company said. Quarterly profit rose 2.0% to $1.28 billion, and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, another earnings metric, rose 3.6% to $5.65 billion.
“In the third quarter, we delivered strong results based on our sales strategy and underlying investments,” Winfrey said. “Now and in the future, we have the best, fully deployed network that is uniquely able to provide seamless connectivity and entertainment everywhere we operate. We have pricing and packaging that saves us money, and we have service capabilities and investments that are not yet fully realized as a competitive advantage.”
Slides from an earnings conference call presentation published on Charter’s website Friday morning show all the major program streaming apps that are already included or will soon be included in Charter’s Spectrum TV Select Plus package. , it has been noted that the total is worth $78 per month. These streamers include Disney+ Basic, ESPN+, Paramount+ Essential, BET+ Essential, Max With Ads, Discovery+ With Ads, Peacock Premium, AMC With Ads, ViX Premium With Ads, and more. Charter’s TV Select/Signature package is listed as offering a $57 monthly value in terms of streaming apps that are already included or will soon be included, while the Mi Plan Latino service is listed as a $19 monthly value.
Mr. Malone has been seeking a merger between Charter and Liberty Broadband, which owns a large stake in the cable giant along with GCI, Alaska’s largest communications provider. Liberty Broadband disclosed on September 23 that Charter sent it an initial merger proposal, to which it responded with a counter-proposal.
