Charter Earnings Miss Estimates in Q3, Revenues Decline Y/Y

Charter Communications CHTR has reported third-quarter 2025 earnings of $8.34 per share, which missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 10.52%. The reported figure decreased 5.4% year over year.

Revenues of $13.67 billion edged down 0.9% year over year, driven by lower residential video and advertising sales revenues, partially offset by growth in residential mobile service and Internet revenues. Residential connectivity revenues increased 3.8% year over year. The reported lagged the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 0.52%.

CHTR has shown a mixed earnings surprise, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate in two of the trailing four quarters while exceeding it in the other two, with an average negative surprise of 0.23%.

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 $10.65 billion in the third quarter, decreasing 1.1% year over year due to a decline in residential customers of 2.1%, partially offset by a year-over-year increase in monthly residential revenue per residential customer of 1%.

Third-quarter monthly residential revenue per residential customer totalled $122.63, an increase of 1% from the prior-year period.

Internet revenues increased 1.7% year over year to $6 billion.

Video revenues totaled $3.4 billion in the third quarter, a decrease of 9.3% year over year.

Voice revenues decreased 7.9% year over year to $332 million.

Commercial revenues increased 0.9% year over year to $1.8 billion.

Mid-market and large business revenues excluding wholesale increased 4% year over year.

Third-quarter advertising sales revenues of $356 million decreased 21.3% from the year-ago quarter due to lower political revenues. Excluding political revenues in both periods, advertising sales revenues decreased 0.5% year over year.

Other revenues totaled $836 million in the third quarter, an increase of 10.7% from the third quarter of 2024, primarily driven by higher mobile device sales.

CHTR’s Subscriber Statistics

Third-quarter total residential and small business customer relationships decreased 2% year over year to 31.1 million.

Total Internet customers decreased by 109K in the third quarter of 2025 compared with a decline of 110K in the year-ago period. As of Sept. 30, 2025, Charter served 29.8 million total Internet customers.

Total video customers decreased 70K in the third quarter of 2025, compared with a decline of 294K in the year-ago quarter. As of Sept. 30, 2025, Charter served 12.6 million total video customers. The year-over-year improvement was driven by new simplified pricing and packaging launched in September 2024 and benefits from the inclusion of programmer streaming applications in expanded basic packages.

In the third quarter of 2025, total wireline voice customers decreased 200K compared with a decline of 288K in the year-ago quarter. As of Sept. 30, 2025, Charter served 6.2 million total wireline voice customers.

The company added 493K total mobile lines in the third quarter compared with 545K in the year-ago quarter. As of Sept. 30, 2025, it served 11.4 million mobile lines.

In the third quarter of 2025, Charter activated 124K subsidised rural passings. Within CHTR's subsidised rural footprint, total customer relationships increased by 52K.

Operating Details

Total operating costs and expenses decreased 0.5% year over year to $8.1 billion.

Third-quarter programming costs decreased $152 million, or 6.5%, from the third quarter of 2024, reflecting fewer video customers, a higher mix of lower-cost packages and $106 million in costs allocated to programmer streaming applications netted within video revenue versus $25 million in the prior-year period, partially offset by contractual programming rate increases and renewals.

Other costs of revenues increased $73 million, or 4.6% year over year, primarily driven by higher mobile service direct costs and mobile device sales, partially offset by lower franchise and regulatory fees, and decreased advertising sales costs.

Field and technology operations expenses increased $3 million, or 0.3%, year over year, driven by higher network utility costs, offset by lower labour expenses.

Customer operations expenses decreased $19 million, or 2.4%, year over year due to a decrease in bad debt expenses.

Marketing and residential sales expenses increased $50 million, or 5.4%, year over year due to a change in the sales mix to higher-cost sales channels.

Balance Sheet & Cash Flow

As of Sept. 30, 2025, the total principal amount of debt was $95 billion, and Charter's credit facilities provided approximately $4 billion in additional liquidity in excess of Charter's $464 million cash position.

In the third quarter of 2025, net cash flows from operating activities totaled $4.5 billion, an increase of $0.9 billion from $3.6 billion in the second quarter of 2025. The sequential improvement was primarily driven by more favourable working capital changes and lower cash tax payments.

The free cash flow in the third quarter of 2025 totaled $1.6 billion, reflecting a decline of $2 billion from $3.6 billion in the previous quarter. The sequential decrease was driven by higher capital expenditure of $3.1 billion in the third quarter than $2.9 billion in the prior quarter.

In the third quarter of 2025, Charter purchased 7.6 million shares of Charter Class A common stock and Charter Holdings common units for $2.2 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 Peloton Interactive PTON, Take Two Interactive TTWO and The Honest Company HNST, each flaunting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Shares of Peloton Interactive have risen 36.8% year to date. Peloton Interactive is slated to report first-quarter fiscal 2026 results on Nov. 6.

Shares of Take Two Interactive have risen 36.7% year to date. Take Two Interactive is slated to report second-quarter fiscal 2026 results on Nov. 6.

Shares of The Honest Company have declined 50.1% year to date. The Honest Company is set to report third-quarter 2025 results on Nov. 5.

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

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