CHTR Misses on Q2 Earnings, Reports Modest Y/Y Revenue Growth

Charter Communications CHTR has reported second-quarter 2025 earnings of $9.18 per share, which missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 8.66%. However, the reported figure increased 8.1% year over year.

Revenues of $13.8 billion increased 0.6% year over year, driven by growth in residential mobile service, residential Internet and other revenue streams. The top line beat the consensus mark by 0.08%.

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 5.05%.

Charter Communications, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

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

CHTR’s Segmental Details

Residential revenues totaled $10.72 billion in the second quarter, which decreased 0.4% year over year.

Second-quarter 2025 monthly residential revenues per residential customer totaled $122.86 and increased 1.7% year over year.

Internet revenues grew 2.8% year over year to $5.97 billion.

Video revenues totaled $3.48 billion in the second quarter, decreasing 9.9% year over year. 

Voice revenues decreased 0.8% year over year to $346 million.

Second-quarter mobile service revenues totaled $921 million, up 24.9% year over year.

Commercial revenues increased 0.8% year over year to $1.84 billion.

Mid-market and large business revenues, excluding wholesale, increased 3.5% year over year. Second-quarter advertising sales were $371 million, which decreased 6.7% year over year, primarily driven by lower political revenues.

Excluding political revenues in both periods, advertising sales revenues decreased 4.4% year over year due to a more challenging advertising market.

Other revenues totaled $839 million in the second quarter, reflecting a rise of 18.9% from the second quarter of 2024, primarily driven by higher mobile device sales.

CHTR’s Subscriber Statistics

Second-quarter total residential and SMB Internet customers decreased 2% year over year to 31.2 million.

Second-quarter total Internet customers decreased by 117 thousand compared with a decline of 149 thousand in the year-ago period. As of June 30, 2025, Charter had 29.9 million total Internet customers.

Total video customers decreased 80 thousand in the second quarter of 2025 compared with a decline of 408 thousand in the year-ago quarter. As of June 30, 2025, Charter had 12.63 million total video customers.

In the second quarter of 2025, total wireline voice customers decreased 220 thousand compared with a decline of 220 thousand in the year-ago quarter. As of June 30, 2025, Charter had 6.38 million total wireline voice customers.

Charter added 500 thousand total mobile lines compared with 557 thousand in the year-ago quarter. As of June 30, 2025, the company served 10.89 million mobile lines.

Operating Details

Total operating costs and expenses increased 0.6% year over year to $8.07 billion.

Second-quarter programming costs decreased 8.8% year over year due to fewer video customers, a higher mix of lower-cost packages within Charter’s video customer base and $67 million of costs, which accounting principles require to be allocated to programmer streaming applications and netted within video revenues.

Other costs of revenues increased 7.3% year over year, driven by higher mobile device sales and mobile service direct costs.

Field and technology operations increased 4.3% year over year, and customer operations increased 3% year over year, partly offset by lower labor costs.

Marketing and residential sales expenses increased 8.6% year over year, given Spectrum's continued focus on driving growth. Other expenses decreased 0.6% year over year.

Adjusted EBITDA increased 0.5% year over year to $5.7 billion.

Balance Sheet & Cash Flow

As of June 30, 2025, the total principal amount of debt was $94.3 billion, and Charter's credit facilities provided approximately $5.8 billion of additional liquidity over its $606-million cash position.

In the second quarter of 2025, net cash flows from operating activities totaled $3.6 billion. Capital expenditure totaled $2.9 billion in the second quarter of 2025, an increase of $21 million from the year-ago quarter, driven by the timing of CPE and upgrade/rebuild, partly offset by line extensions.

The free cash flow in the second quarter of 2025 totaled $3.6 billion, reflecting a decrease of $3.9 billion from the first quarter of 2024. The year-over-year increase in the free cash flow was primarily driven by mobile device working capital changes.

In the reported quarter, Charter purchased 4.5 million shares of Charter Class A common stock and Charter Holdings common units for $1.7 billion.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

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

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector are Accel Entertainment ACEL, Laureate Education LAUR and Revolve Group RVLV, each carrying a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Shares of Accel Entertainment have gained 16.3% year to date. Accel Entertainment is set to report second-quarter 2025 results on Aug. 5.

Shares of Laureate Education have risen 27.6% year to date. Laureate Education is slated to report second-quarter 2025 results on July 31.

Shares of Revolve Group have lost 34.7% year to date. Revolve Group is set to report second-quarter 2025 results on Aug. 5.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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