Charter Q1 revenues climb 4.8%, to $11.7B, driven by broadband, mobile, SMB, video and advertising

STAMFORD, Conn. – Charter Communications, Inc. (along with its subsidiaries, the "Company" or "Charter") today reported financial and operating results for the three months ended March 31, 2020.

Key highlights:

During the first quarter of 2020, Charter's residential customer relationships grew by 468,000, while first quarter 2019 residential customer relationships grew by 321,000. As of March 31, 2020, Charter had 27.7 million residential customer relationships, with year-over-year growth of 1.2 million, or 4.3%.

Charter added 563,000 residential Internet customers in the first quarter of 2020, versus first quarter 2019 residential Internet customer net additions of 398,000. As of March 31, 2020, Charter had 25.5 million residential Internet customers, with over 85% subscribing to tiers that provided 100 Mbps or more of speed. Currently, 200 Mbps is the slowest speed offered to new Internet customers in approximately 60% of Charter's footprint, with 100 Mbps the slowest speed offered in the remaining 40% of its footprint.

Since early March, Charter has seen a substantial increase in network traffic, particularly in the daytime, with more people working and learning from home. Residential data usage for Internet-only customers was over 600 gigabytes per month in March, increasing by more than 20% since the fourth quarter of 2019. Due to our significant investment in infrastructure and technology, Charter's network continues to perform well despite higher levels of data traffic.

Residential video customers decreased by 70,000 in the first quarter of 2020, while first quarter 2019 residential video customers decreased by 152,000. As of March 31, 2020, Charter had 15.6 million residential video customers.

During the first quarter of 2020, residential wireline voice customers declined by 83,000, while first quarter 2019 voice customers declined by 120,000. As of March 31, 2020, Charter had 9.4 million residential wireline voice customers.

During the first quarter of 2020, Charter added 290,000 mobile lines, and as of March 31, 2020, Charter served a total of 1.4 million mobile lines. Spectrum Mobile is available to all new and existing Spectrum Internet customers and runs on America's most awarded LTE network combined with Spectrum WiFi. Spectrum Mobile customers can choose one of two simple ways to pay for data, "Unlimited" for $45 a month (per line), or "By the Gig" at $14/GB, in both cases including applicable fees and taxes. In the first quarter of 2020, Spectrum Mobile launched 5G service. Customers with a $45/monthly unlimited data plan can use 5G phones to access 5G service at no additional cost in select cities nationwide.

SMB customer relationships grew by 18,000 during the first quarter of 2020, compared to growth of 30,000 during the first quarter of 2019. As of March 31, 2020, Charter had 2.0 million SMB customer relationships, with year-over-year growth of 6.1%. Enterprise PSUs grew by 2,000 during the first quarter of 2020 compared to growth of 5,000 during the first quarter of 2019. As of March 31, 2020, Charter had 269,000 enterprise PSUs, with growth of 6.5% year-over-year.

First Quarter Financial Results
Revenues

First quarter revenue increased by 4.8% year-over-year to $11.7 billion, driven by growth in Internet, mobile, SMB, video and advertising revenue. Excluding mobile revenue and advertising revenue, which benefited from political spend in the first quarter of 2020, revenue grew by 3.7% year-over-year.

Read the full announcement here.

Charter Communications