Charter Earnings Miss Estimates in Q4, Revenues Decline Y/Y

Charter Communications CHTR has reported fourth-quarter 2025 earnings of $10.34 per share, which missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 0.6%. The reported figure increased 2.4% year over year.

Revenues of $13.6 billion declined 2.3% year over year, driven by lower residential video and political advertising revenues, partially offset by growth in residential mobile service and Internet revenues. The reported figure lagged the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 1.01%. Residential connectivity revenues increased 2.3% year over year. 

CHTR has shown a mixed earnings surprise, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the trailing four quarters, with an average negative surprise of 3.65%.

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 $10.43 billion in the fourth quarter, decreasing 2.4% year over year due to a decline in residential customers of 1.2% and a decrease in monthly residential revenue per residential customer of 1.2%.

Fourth-quarter monthly residential revenues per residential customer totaled $117.19, a decrease of 1.2% from the prior-year period.

Internet revenues increased 0.7% year over year to $5.9 billion.

Video revenues totaled $3.2 billion in the fourth quarter, a decrease of 10.3% year over year.

Voice revenues decreased 10.3% year over year to $316 million.

Commercial revenues increased 0.3% year over year to $1.8 billion.

Mid-market and large business revenues excluding wholesale increased 3% year over year, mostly reflecting PSU growth of 5.2%.

Fourth-quarter advertising revenues of $401 million decreased 25.8% from the year-ago quarter, primarily driven by lower political revenues. Excluding political revenues in both periods, advertising sales revenues increased 0.6% year over year.

Other revenues totaled $948 million in the fourth quarter, an increase of 7.3% from the fourth quarter of 2024, primarily driven by higher mobile device sales.

CHTR’s Subscriber Statistics

Fourth-quarter total customer relationships decreased 1.1% year over year to 31.8 million.

Total Internet customers decreased by 119K in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared with a decline of 177K in the year-ago period. As of Dec. 31, 2025, Charter served 29.7 million total Internet customers.

Total video customers increased 44K in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared with a decline of 123K in the year-ago quarter. As of Dec. 31, 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 fourth quarter of 2025, total wireline voice customers decreased 140K compared with a decline of 274K in the year-ago quarter. As of Dec. 31, 2025, Charter served 6.0 million total wireline voice customers.

The company added 428K total mobile lines in the fourth quarter compared with 522K in the year-ago quarter. As of Dec. 31, 2025, it served 11.8 million mobile lines.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, Charter activated 147K subsidized rural passings. Within CHTR's subsidized rural footprint, total customer relationships increased by 46K.

Operating Details

Total operating costs and expenses decreased 3.1% year over year to $7.9 billion.

Fourth-quarter programming costs decreased $192 million, or 8.4%, from the fourth quarter of 2024, reflecting a higher mix of lower-cost packages, fewer video customers and $165 million of costs allocated to programmer streaming applications netted within video revenue (versus $37 million in the prior-year period), partially offset by contractual programming rate increases and renewals.

Other costs of revenues increased $41 million, or 2.4% year over year, primarily driven by higher mobile service direct costs and mobile device sales, partially offset by lower advertising sales costs given lower political revenue and lower franchise and regulatory fees.

Field and technology operations expenses decreased $69 million, or 5.1%, year over year, primarily driven by lower labor expense.

Customer operations expenses decreased $15 million, or 1.9%, year over year, primarily due to a decrease in bad debt expense.

Marketing and residential sales expenses decreased $2 million, or 0.1% year over year, due to lower labor expense, offset by a change in sales mix to higher-cost sales channels.

Balance Sheet & Cash Flow

As of Dec. 31, 2025, the total principal amount of debt was $94.6 billion, and Charter's credit facilities provided approximately $4.4 billion in additional liquidity in excess of Charter's $477 million cash position.

As of Dec. 31, 2025, the total principal amount of debt was $94.6 billion, and Charter's credit facilities provided approximately $4.4 billion in additional liquidity in excess of Charter's $477 million cash position.

The free cash flow in the fourth quarter of 2025 totaled $773 million, a decrease of $827 million from $1.6 billion in the third quarter of 2025. The sequential decrease was driven by higher capital expenditures of $3.3 billion in the fourth quarter compared to $3.1 billion in the prior quarter, less favorable working capital changes and a less favorable change in accrued expenses related to capital expenditures.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, Charter purchased 2.9 million shares of Charter Class A common stock and Charter Holdings common units for $760 million.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

CHTR currently carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector are Airbnb ABNB, LiveOne LVO and Fox Corporation FOXA, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Shares of Fox Corporation have declined 2.7% year to date. Fox Corporation is set to report second-quarter fiscal 2026 results on Feb. 4.

Shares of Airbnb have declined 2.9% year to date. Airbnb is slated to report fourth-quarter 2025 results on Feb. 12.

Shares of LiveOne have declined 1.5% year to date. LiveOne is slated to report third-quarter fiscal 2026 results on Feb. 12.

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

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