Charter Communications at Bank of America Conference: Strategic Moves in Broadband

On Thursday, 04 September 2025, Charter Communications (NASDAQ:CHTR) presented its strategic vision at the Bank of America 2025 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference. CFO Jessica Fisher emphasized the company’s focus on broadband growth, operational efficiencies, and brand integration following the Cox Communications acquisition. While Charter aims for significant cash flow and EBITDA growth, challenges from fixed wireless and fiber competition persist.

Key Takeaways

• Charter projects a $26 increase in free cash flow per share from network evolution initiatives.
• The Cox Communications acquisition is expected to yield $500 million in synergies and $1 billion in reduced capital expenditures.
• The company plans to roll out 450,000 rural passings this year.
• Charter is integrating streaming services into video bundles to stabilize video business.
• The public company name will change to Cox Communications, with Spectrum remaining the brand name.

Financial Results

• Free cash flow per share is anticipated to rise by $26 from network evolution and an additional $10 from tax benefits.
• The Cox acquisition should provide $500 million in transaction synergies and cut $1 billion in capital expenditures.
• Rural penetration stands at 37%, with growth expected from 450,000 new rural passings this year.
• EBITDA growth is expected for the year, despite a challenging third quarter.

Operational Updates

• Charter is upgrading its network to multi-gigabit speeds and deploying fiber on demand to enhance reliability and reduce costs.
• The company is on track to expand with 450,000 rural passings this year.
• A new app store and advertising campaigns aim to promote the value of over 100 streaming apps in video packages.
• A deal with T-Mobile will allow Charter to expand its mobile offerings to business customers.

Future Outlook

• Charter expects stronger EBITDA growth in the fourth quarter.
• The integration with Cox will expand Charter’s market presence and enhance marketing against national competitors.
• The company is focusing on fixed-mobile convergence and deploying CBRS across additional markets.
• Charter plans to manage price sensitivity and monitor fixed wireless growth.

Q&A Highlights

• Fixed wireless impacts areas without fiber competition most significantly.
• Charter maintains higher penetration than AT&T and Verizon Fios in mature fiber markets.
• The Cox acquisition brings under-penetrated mobile and video segments, with $500 million in synergies expected.
• Charter aims to stabilize video margins through streaming service integration.

Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for more in-depth insights.

Full transcript - Bank of America 2025 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference:

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Welcome back. Jessica Fisher, CFO of Charter Communications. So let’s just jump into it. Can you talk about the top three priorities that you’re focused on over the next several years given the challenging broadband competitive environment, the Cox merger, increasing move towards convergence across the industry, and the final stages of implementing your network evolution plans? Not It’s like there’s nothing going on.

It is

Unidentified speaker: not like there’s nothing going on. No. So our first priority, is what our first priority, sort of always been, which is executing against what I think is a well proven strategy, to grow the broadband business, grow EBITDA, grow cash flow. And, that strategy is first focusing on high quality products for customers. We do that with broadband by differentiating our broadband product through having with it the fastest mobile, in the industry as well as a seamless entertainment product, through our video product that is, very different, from what it was a few years ago and and can really attract customers into and be an asset to the broadband business.

We pull that together, so high quality products with selling those products and packages that create value for consumers, to connect more customers to the network. And then pulling that together with best in best in class customer service. And, really, that’s about things like our customer commitment that we rolled out last year, trying to create a service environment, where customers stay with us because of the high reliability, because of our long tenured US based workforce, that works well with them, because of what we’re implementing around AI and telemetry to make the network work better. And you pull that all together, and it’s really about sort of having the the right strategy and executing against it, to grow the business. So that’s number one.

The things that then support that, you talked about. So it’s coming through and completing our network evolution strategy, getting us to multi gigabit speeds in the downstream, and gigabit in the upstream, while also, improving the quality of the network, as we do it, which will which will be good for good for the business overall. It’s finishing as well on executing our network expansion, initiative, where, through rural as well as sort of across the network, we’ve been building high ROI passings, to to add customers, over time. And you you put the three of those together, and I think it’s all about sort of coming back to that. How do we grow the business, grow broadband, grow EBITDA, and grow cash flow?

And and then there’s this deal with Cox. Right? And on the on the implementation there, I think it actually all comes back to what I said the first priority is the way that we will get value out of the deal with Cox is by implementing our strategy across their footprint. So it becomes an extension of executing against the strategy that we already have. And I and I think when we pull all of those together, you know, you think about some of the things that we’ve talked about.

Coming to the end of our initiatives is pretty valuable. The increase in free cash flow per share that we would get even on today’s share count just from, making it through the end of those capital initiatives is, $26 of free cash flow per share. We got some great sort of tailwind out of the one big beautiful bill act from a tax perspective, and then I think that one generates $10 of free cash flow per share on a go forward basis. And you have to take into account the shrink there. But the combination of those, you know, the business has a a great possibility, and the amount of cash that we’re gonna generate out of the business over the next several years

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: is pretty incredible. And so we’re excited about that. Wow. So moving on to broadband, fixed wireless operators have been the largest broadband share gainers. Where does Charter win or or lose, you

Unidentified speaker: know, against FWA today? You know, fixed wireless is most impactful in those areas where we don’t have a fiber fiber overbuilder yet. And it’s really that for natural reasons, the impact of a new competitor in that environment is different than it is in the spaces where we have a fiber build. But when you have a new competitor anywhere, it creates impact. We’ve been sort of making changes actually across the business to make ourselves a better competitor against fixed wireless, whether that’s from, you know, having a a mobile product that works better and where from a value package, we can generate savings for customers versus in in our converged bundle versus a wireless converged bundle, making sure we’re delivering that message to consumers.

We can do it on a higher quality product. We can do it on a product that’s more reliable. And we’ve been working on our messaging in the market to make sure that we deliver that message in sort of a a really deliberate way to consumers to make sure that that that we’re continuing to compete well. And when you look at something, like customer perception of the business, we can see that that effort is actually improving customer perception of the business across brand, across service levels where, you know, now if if you call in by 05:00, we are we’re able to be there same day, which is what you have to have to be competitive with a mobile product. And and across, value where I think we’re really delivering some of the new pricing and packaging that we put out is helping us to deliver against them.

Right.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: But you expect I mean, I think you’ve said this in the past, but did you expect FWA to ultimately slow down in the not too distant future? Do you do you still expect that? And do you do you if and if yes, like, will that help you? Like, do you

Unidentified speaker: think that you’ll win back Internet customers? At at the micro level, we win back fixed wireless customers all the time today. Right? At the macro level, I think the MNOs have have said that their expectation is that fixed wireless is utilization of excess capacity. Right?

And that with the growth of data usage in the mobile business that eventually there’s less of that excess capacity to use. I think even in what we saw AT and T do with their spectrum acquisitions, they’re saying, well, we’re going to use the excess capacity while we build a fiber network, which which is an acknowledgment that the wired network is going to be the better better competitor in the long term. All that being said, I I I don’t dismiss that fixed wireless has been an effective competitor in the market. While it’s plateaued over the last several quarters and I think sort of broadly their expectation is that that growth will slow, I I I don’t have a way yet to say sort of when that would happen.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: But but at the same time, competition is increasing. So what are you seeing in terms of the pace of fiber build outs and and where are you seeing that?

Unidentified speaker: Fiber overbuild pacing is similar to where it’s been, over the last several quarters. Obviously, it sort of jumps up and down, but when I look at an LTM basis, it’s pretty consistent. In terms of where it is, you might see some competitors concentrate on pockets in a region, but I think it’s broad across most of our footprint. The places where they continue to concentrate are places that are have a higher demographic profile or where there’s more density, which which from a cost perspective, I guess, is where you would expect their energy to be. But from a from a competitive perspective, you know, I hear sometimes people say, oh, well, cable’s gonna split the market with fiber from a market share perspective.

But when we look at ourselves versus each of our fiber competitors, so I I look at us in a fiber overlap with AT and T fiber footprint or us in an overlap with Verizon Fios footprint, we have more we we have a a greater penetration in those markets than theirs by a notable amount even in those spaces where you’re in a mature fiber market. And the way that we do it is by the things that I talked about. You gotta compete on a differentiated product with video, a differentiated product with mobile. And so in the long run, I think that we believe that if we’re delivering high quality products that are valued to consumers, that we can do better in those markets than what I what I think the broad assumption is.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Right. Can you update us on third quarter broadband trends?

Unidentified speaker: You know, there’s not a lot that I could say on third quarter broadband trends that will be different from sort of what we’ve said before. I think the market continues to be a competitive space. Okay.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Do you still expect to grow EBITDA for the full year, this year?

Unidentified speaker: We do. I think there’s a little bit of inconsistency that I see. My expectation is that third quarter is actually a little more challenging than a fourth quarter. And some of that is, I think, their operational efficiencies that we’ll get that we get more of as we get later into the year. But on a full year basis, my expectation is still that we grow EBITDA across the year.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Okay. What are you learning about price sensitivity, promotional strategies, and churn cohorts post ACP? And how is that shaping your ARPU and retention strategies for back half of twenty five and into ’26?

Unidentified speaker: You know, it’s clearly true that when you that customers want products to be delivered at a value, and we see that in acquisition. We see it in retention. When we were coming out of ACP, we offered very attractive value to those consumers who are coming through and often by bundling mobile with the product that they had. And when we rolled out our life unlimited pricing and packaging sort of strategies in late q three of last year, It was in recognition of that. They did what we wanted them to do.

We have customers who are buying more products, which ultimately means more revenue, which is good. The success of our bundling strategy also means we have more customers locked in to longer pricing. So if you took two two products there, your pricing is locked for two years. You take three products, it’s locked for three years. That means as we go into q four, is that we won’t have quite as much roll off from a pricing perspective.

I think we’ll see the benefit of that. And, you know, you talk about operating efficiencies and and sort of the calls that we take related to those pricing roll offs in q four. And, ultimately, in the long run, I think if you thinking about that brand perception and how customers perceive our pricing and packaging, then it’ll be that it’ll be good for customers. But, certainly, we recognize in this market continuing to drive to drive customer growth by driving more products and to do it at a value is is important in the post DCP environment.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Right. What are you seeing in, you know, like or can you talk about, like, just the rural opportunity from here? Like, how how much more runway do you have in net ads in in your rural areas?

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. We had a good increase in rural net adds in 2Q. We’re we’re still on track to roll out 450,000 rural passings this year, which is sort of the fastest pace that we’ve had. And I think that it was when we think about those markets, you know, our rural penetration is about 37% today. When you’re in those markets where we’ve where we’ve been that are more mature, where we’ve been for longer, substantially higher than that.

And so our expectation is with the new build and sort of the set of passings behind us that are continuing to add customers, we’ll continue to get a good tailwind out of rural up through the end of our build and even after that for some time to come.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: What’s your vision for Charter’s fixed mobile convergence over the next three to five years? How do

Unidentified speaker: you think it reshapes the customer relationship, your competitive position in the market, unit economics? Yeah. So I I think that customers are going to be buying connectivity. Right? And and we see that, maybe not at the upfront sale today, but as we continue to bring more customers into our products that have both broadband and mobile, that customers in that environment are stickier.

They they stay with us for longer, and they have a better experience. And so I I I think that we will continue to see people move into converged products, and we’re and we have the advantage of the fact that we can sell those products all across our footprint. From a unit economics perspective, you know, I think broadband pricing is pretty resilient. On the mobile side, because of the way that we support our mobile network, we have the we have the ability to sell it unit economics that are actually less than what most customers pay across the market to give us a sort of a better value and overall converged connectivity while still driving really strong positive financial results for Charter. And so I think we’ll continue to be able to grow rapidly in that space based on the unit economics we have now and and in what is a pretty resilient environment that I think can support strong economics going forward as well.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Alright. Moving

Unidentified speaker: the MVNO. How does the new business focused MVNO deal with T Mobile expand your addressable market? Really excited about the deal with T Mobile. What it enables us to do is to sell more lines to business customers, which measures with our medium and large business segment well. It’ll enable us to utilize our Salesforce and our existing product lines to really launch into a new space where there’s a market we couldn’t address at all before.

So a totally new growth space for us, and we’re quite excited to be working with T Mobile on it. Right.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: How fast can you scale CBRS small cells? Where are you deploying first? What’s the medium term offload target to a structurally improved MVNO unit cost? So

Unidentified speaker: we’re continuing to deploy CBRS, across a good portion of our footprint. We expect to have 23 markets deployed inside of this year. As we get into the next couple of years, we expect then to deploy across the remaining spectrum that we had purchased inside of our footprint. The unit economics for CBRS are actually, I’m say, very affordable, and we can target them quite well to generate ROIs. The capital for all of that deployment fits inside of the capital envelope that we’ve already that we’ve already talked about.

And so I I think that we’ll be in a good place there. In terms of offload, you know, we continue to utilize both our WiFi network and the CBRS network to drive more offload. We’re sitting at about 87% today, but I think that we will continue to grow that 87% as we deploy CBRS across additional areas as well as as we continue to add Wi Fi Wi Fi hotspots and and sort of other ways to connect to our network.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Yeah. So let’s move on to Cox. It’s a it’s a big acquisition. What are the two or three unique capabilities that Cox brings that can accelerate your strategy, simplify? You know, what is it commercial?

Is it mobile? They’re shockingly under penetrated in video. Was a big surprise when those numbers came out.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. So the number one, thing that I think we’ll do, is, as I said, deploying our strategy against those assets. And you pointed it out, they’re quite under penetrated in mobile. They’re quite underpenetrated in video. Our ability to grow, the mobile and and even to to do well in that in that video segment for them, I think gives us a real opportunity to to grow against what’s there today and to do that while strengthening and stabilizing their broadband business.

And so I I think being able to go out there first and deploy against that pricing and packaging strategy will be important. We’ll couple that with you know, Cox has had a very service oriented culture over time, and and it has sort of good quality customer service and great quality assets. And so I think we’ll couple those with our customer service strategy around, bringing things in house and onshore, and some of the things that we’ve tried to do in in improving, those things, like how quickly you’re getting to the customers and how you’re managing outages, try to really manage that network better. And so number one, again, just sort of deploying the strategy against the assets. In terms of what they have, one of the things that I’m really excited about in the commercial side, you know, they address verticals that we don’t address today.

They have product sets that we don’t have today. And so the ability to take some of that knowledge and some of those skills that they have on the commercial side and deploy them against the existing charter assets, I think, creates another sort of big opportunity for growth there. And then there’s some sort of scaling opportunities that aren’t the kinds of things that you think about where I think being able to have a larger footprint and therefore market in a more, in a in a in a broader and more consistent way against competitors who are largely national at this point, will put us in a better place from a branding perspective. I think being able to go and make the investments in AI and in telemetry and those kinds of systems and do it once against a broader base of assets, will create a lot of efficiencies across the business. And when you pull all of that together, I think the acquisition ends up being, you know, good for customers.

It ends up being, good for for us as a business. And so and and so overall, I I think it’ll be a big win.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Right. One more Cox question, but on the more on the cost side. But what’s embedded for network procurement, s g and a synergies? You know, and what what what is the plan to best realize those synergies? What kind of time frame are you thinking about?

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. So inside of synergies, you have $500,000,000 of transaction synergies that we’ve estimated, and a billion dollars of sort of reduction to their run rate capital expenditures. On the capital expenditure side, it really is just utilizing scale, but to to get their CapEx their their their capital intensity in line with the the way that we manage the rest of our business. On the operating side, you know, it’s it’s a lot of the things that you’ve talked about. I think some of those will be able to get to pretty quickly across things like contract rationalization.

And then there’s work on sort of the overhead side on on s g and a. We did not include in that $500,000,000 number any benefit around direct expenses. And so I think but I think we are quite confident in being able to get to the $500,000,000 and being able to do so relatively quickly. Obviously, with some transaction costs that were layered into our proxy and and disclosed as well. But the but the benefit that is not in there is all of the things we just talked about.

Right? The benefit of going and growing mobile in their business, the benefit of going and grow and and deploying video better and using that to to put them on a different trajectory for broadband, the ability to go get gains out of the the commercial rationalization and to run the business in a different way. I when we talk about those, we talk about operating synergies, and they’re they’re really not up in the 500,000,000. So I so I think the ability to do better with the business is much broader than just this sort of capturing the synergies on the front end.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Right. No. It’s just really exciting. Yeah. It’s just it really is.

So let’s move on to video, near and dear to me. So in this pretty, you know, tough environment of cord cutting, you’ve done an amazing job of integrating streaming services into your bundles and basically recreating the video product into a much higher quality, better value offering, you know, for sure. And we’ve seen some improve some improvement without a lot of marketing so far. Can you give us, like, an update on your efforts within, like, video? What what you’re doing like, what your plans are for marketing?

Because because your marketing’s all over New York, but not so much on video. Like, there’s Yeah. You you market mobile very well, but and and and broadband as well.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. So the video marketplace, so our our our app store, if you will, has launched. It’s it’s not in broad marketing yet, but it’s soft launched and doing well. From a marketing perspective, we have, as we come into the fall, sort of a new don’t Let’s called a slate a new slate of advertising where we’re we’re really thinking about how we push people to understand the value of what’s now a 100 of programmer streaming apps that are included in the traditional video package. And I I think that what that where that allows you to go is that the product is now marketable to a whole new demographic who who have not been buying linear video for some time now.

And so we we’re we’re we’re getting there, and I think and I think you’ll start to see it relatively soon around getting the message out around the value that we’ve brought to the video package. And I think the really exciting thing about that then will be that for that market that has not been interested in linear video for some time, but for whom the the broader package of program or streaming apps is really attractive, we’ve created a new benefit to selling our broadband that didn’t exist for those folks before. And so and so we’re also hopeful to see the the interaction of that with really being able to drive broadband growth and retention as well.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: I mean, it’s it’s so innovative and it’s I I mean, it’s just such a great strategy. But do you do you also think that you mentioned bringing broadband back, but what about, like, video subs? Do you think you’ll be able to grow video?

Unidentified speaker: So it’s the best video package that we’ve had in a decade. Right? I I I’m not going to go there to say, well, do does it grow? But I don’t even we don’t have to grow it for it to be a big advantage to the business. Right?

It has been shrinking so fast, that if what you can do is stabilize the absolute dollars of video margin in the business, Broadband revenue is growing. Mobile revenue is growing really rapidly. If there’s less drag from video, the trajectory of the of the broader business is in a different place. And so with what’s happening right now, like, in inside of the financials oh, if you if you look at the past four quarters, we still have some notable video losses. You have where we’ve taken a bit less price, sort of leaning into how is it that we’re gonna stabilize the video business.

And you have a little bit of sort of, melting of the of the equipment revenue. So absolute dollars of video margin in the year over year have been challenged. As we stabilize video customers, that challenge goes away. And so then the growth that we have in other parts of the business becomes more apparent. And so I think even even if where we get is just to stabilize, like, we will have, we will have driven a lot of value back into the business.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Right. Does Zumo enhance the video product?

Unidentified speaker: Absolutely. It does. So if you think about what we’re selling and it’s a linear video product which people have typically gotten through their set top box Right. And a collection of programmer streaming apps. And for those to be delivered to the customer in a way that feels like one experience, you gotta send them through one platform.

And Zumo I mean, and customers have been begging for that anyway. Right? It’s the, like, how do I find the game problem? But Zumo delivers that in a in a seamless way and particularly with the voice remote in a way that I haven’t seen replicated on any other platform. Platform.

It it is it is the right platform for delivering our product.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: And then just one more thing on video. I have a lot of questions, actually. But, when you head into your next programming cycle, how do you ensure you can still attach the many DTC services you provide to your video customers at, this incredible value? Like, does that conversation change?

Unidentified speaker: You know, I think that this new product set is good for us and it’s good for programmers. We utilize our sales Salesforce. We utilize bundling. And what that drives for the programmers is lower selling costs, higher revenue, better retention of customers, less churn. And so, ultimately, we’re we’re we’re

We’re not gonna make customers pay twice for this content again. We we think that we have the right strategy, and that it’s good for us and it’s good for the programming community. Right.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: I mean, you really took a tough stance starting with Disney.

Unidentified speaker: We did.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: And it it seems to have worked. So it it was just the next rounds will be interesting. So maybe moving on to advertising, still with a sort of a video bent, though, but has has the shift towards AVOD services? I mean, that’s what you’re offering essentially in the in the streaming, the the Ed Lite packages, you know, as opposed to the SVOD. But has that affected your advertising business?

I don’t think you get any of those ads on the streaming services.

Unidentified speaker: So it’s certainly over time, the combination of fewer video customers and sort of the shifts in how people consume content, the number of advertisements that we have in our own inventory has been shrinking. I think our reach business has actually been really successful at doing the set of things, whether implementing the technologies so that we now sell not only advertising out of our own portfolio, but we sell out of others portfolios as well so that we can deliver a good package across the market. And that really takes advantage then of the asset that we have, which is that we have a great local advertising sales force, that has great relationships across our markets and therefore is able to sell in a really unique way. And so the it does have an impact, but I think our our advertising group has has done a really excellent job in sort of facing the market where it is and making choices that allow them to continue to be successful in spite of sort of our inventory being less than it was before. Right.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Can you just clarify? So who are you selling advertising for besides yourselves?

Unidentified speaker: So we we have deals with certain programmer streaming apps where we sell local for them on their on their product. So totally separate from what I would say otherwise are our customers.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Right. And then just last thing on advertising, but, you know, can you talk about, like, what trends you’re seeing currently in the market?

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. So local advertising continues to be challenging. I think there’s there’s a lot of inventory, which which makes it more challenging to sell, advertising overall. But with what we’ve done around, you know, the technology to create, you know, the ability for programmatic sales and the ability to sell third party inventory, I I think our our business will continue to be more successful than its peers because of those investments that they’ve made and and the way that they’re performing against it. How

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: do you define the strategic purpose of network evolution for Charter? And what will success look like with customers, competitors, and

Unidentified speaker: your financials feel the full impact? It’s the the big strategic purpose of network evolution is to make us more competitive in the marketplace. Right? And it does it in a few ways. One is by bringing us better claims for speed.

So multi gig in the downstream, gig in the upstream, and then actually across most of the footprint, ability to deliver fiber on demand. So we’ll have remote OLTs in the nodes, which then enable us to have my marketing claims that are sort of head to head competitive with fiber. In addition to that, by going and doing the work, we’ll improve, the reliability of the network and, you know, you take you take some of the oldest pieces of the network and replace them as part of this, which which actually makes the whole thing function better. And so we expect that to drive down, actually costs from a service and and and replacement cost perspective going forward coming out of the coming out of the network evolution investments. It doesn’t all happen at once.

You don’t sort of flip a switch and suddenly and suddenly customers know that the network has improved and suddenly everything works. There’s there’s a bit of friction in the process of upgrading the network. And then when you when you get to the end of that, it takes some time to to build the additional sort of reputation on the other side. But I think that we will continue as as we work through those, roll them out. We’ll be in a much better place on the other side.

And and it’ll happen market by market as we as we roll network evolution over time.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Can you talk about current trends you’re seeing in the small and medium business operations?

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. So small and medium business has many of the same sorts of competitive tensions that we see today in our residential business. It continues to be the case that fixed wireless actually is is competitive there. But we have a really great product, in in small and medium business, and and and and there, I think we, have a great product. We have great pricing.

The the portion of the market that can be taken by cell phone Internet product is somewhat limited. And so our ability to grow in the medium and the long term is still quite strong. But today, it it it’s a big challenge.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: And can you talk about the same thing for your enterprise business?

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. So in in medium and large businesses, I think we’re we’ve been growing at a at at actually a pretty good pace. We are doing that by concentrating in certain verticals where we can do quite well by making we’ve been making some changes to the product set to make sure we have the right products, particularly in that medium business that kind of where where I think we brought Spectrum business together to make sure we were serving the middle of the market the right way, and we’ve made some good good good progress around that as well. With those things, I think we are confident in our ability to continue to grow in the medium and large business market and and to take share in that space.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Okay. And then, you know, let’s look at the balance sheet a little bit. But how does the post Cox close ownership and leverage change your capital allocation strategy between buybacks, deleveraging, and incremental bills?

Unidentified speaker: It it doesn’t is where I’ll start. So our capital allocation strategy has been very consistent over time. We’re going to first take capital and invest it in high ROI organic projects inside of the business. After that, to the extent that we can find a create m and a that’s attractive and and at the right price and accretive to shareholders, we’ll consider that. And then the last thing that we look to is to manage manage the balance sheet.

In the Cox deal, of because of the size of the balance sheet post deal, we’ve made a decision to bring that leverage target down over the course of a couple of years. And so there will be some delevering that comes in the wake of the transaction. But, you know, I talked at the beginning here about how much free cash flow growth, we have naturally from the business. You add the Cox free cash flow to that, and the Cox transaction itself is is accretive on a free cash flow per share basis. And so if you sort of put that together even with, delevering over that period of time, we think that we continue to have a a good amount of remaining capacity to continue with a with a solid share repurchase program per post deal as well.

And so I I I think the the priorities don’t change, and and the outcomes don’t change dramatically either in terms of our ability to return capital to shareholders.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: I mean, just one more question, to kind of go back to like marketing, you’re going to have a name change, aren’t you?

Unidentified speaker: We will. Yeah. So the term in the deal is that we will change the name of the public company, I think it’s within twelve months post deal, to Cox Communications from Charter. The brand in the public market would be Spectrum.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: It would be Spectrum across the entire footprint. Across the entire footprint. And is there anything, like, just because you’re marketing on a number of fronts, so I guess you said that you’ll be more efficient as your footprint grows, right,

Unidentified speaker: I if you’re think that’s right. I think we can be more efficient as the footprint grows, but also reach matters. Right? You think about things like, how do I handle a customer who moves from within my footprint to within my footprint? And and can I can I create continuity to the relationship there?

Can I take advantage of my brand when they’re moving into a new market where previously, say, they moved from a Cox to a charter market that’s or Spectrum market that’s a totally new brand? If I have a consistent brand across that space, I can I can utilize that? And I can also think about things like like often for us, national advertising doesn’t make sense because of the size of the footprint. There might be some spaces, and and I won’t say that there but but where you’re taking advantage of utilizing the larger footprint to be able to be more competitive on brand recognition and and just that that brand knowing the brand versus what are what are today national competitors.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Right. Right. I mean, it’s been pretty regional or Right. Mark and then I guess one last thing on video. Are there any video streaming services that you are not yet in your bundle that you think would be meaningful?

You know, I

Unidentified speaker: think that we’re really happy with the collection, of streaming services that we have. Certainly, now I think we have, from all of the major programmers that were part of the linear package, the associated streaming apps. Does it mean that you wouldn’t go down another path to add something? No. I mean, I I think that you could, but right now, the the value is compelling.

It’s over a $100 of services when you when you take our traditional video product. And, actually, you know, I think about how dim to different demographics you you talk about that in some spaces that you’re you’re buying a collection of programmer streaming apps and you you get a linear video product with it. Right? And so I I I think we believe that what we have, is certainly sufficient to create a compelling offer.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Does the ESPN direct to consumer launch make a a difference in that? I mean, the the value proposition seems to be really high.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. I I I think that the value proposition is high. I think, you know, we sat here two years ago and talked about Disney. Wow. And it and it and it was important to us in in that deal that, you know, ESPN obviously is a big player in the in the video marketplace.

And if there was a possibility that they were going to have a streaming app, it was an important one to have. And so I I I think we’re excited to have it as part of our packages. I think I think it’ll bring value to consumers having it there. And and then and overall, it’s part of that sort of believing that we have the collection that you need to be to be marketable in a in a

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: that available today to Spectrum subscribers? They just launched,

Unidentified speaker: like, They last just launched. I’m gonna say, I think the answer is yes. Yes. I think the answer is yes. So so it certainly was our goal to make that available to our subscribers

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: as soon as it was So that would be a plus value value

to customers because that’s as a standalone, it’s a $30 product. Right. Right. Yeah. No.

Unidentified speaker: It it it it’s it’s a compelling value delivery for our customers who take their traditional product. Absolutely.

Jessica Fisher, CFO, Charter Communications: Great. Well, with that, thank you so much. Yeah, thanks.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.