Charter Comm Inc Del CL A New Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Hello, and welcome to Charter Communications' second quarter 2026 investor conference call. We ask that you please hold all questions until the completion of the formal remarks, at which time you will be given instructions for the question and answer session. Also, as a reminder, this conference is being recorded today. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to Stefan Anninger.

Thanks, operator, and welcome everyone. The presentation that accompanies this call can be found on our website, ir.charter.com. I would like to remind you that there are a number of risk factors and other cautionary statements contained in our SEC filings, and we encourage you to read them carefully. Various remarks that we make on this call concerning expectations, predictions, plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from historical or anticipated results. Any forward-looking statements reflect management's current view only, and Charter undertakes no obligation to revise or update such statements. As a reminder, all growth rates noted on this call and in the presentation are calculated on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise specified. On today's call, we have Chris Winfrey, our President and CEO, and Jessica Fisher, our CFO.

With that, let's turn the call over to Chris.

Thanks, Stefan. During the second quarter, we added over 400,000 Spectrum Mobile lines, making that 1.7 million lines over the last 12 months, for growth of 16%. We now have over 12.5 million mobile lines and remain the fastest-growing mobile provider in our footprint. Our video customer losses continue to improve, with our 21,000 video customer loss significantly better than last year. We now have the best video product and value in the marketplace. In internet, we have a fully deployed and fully converged gigabit-plus network across our entire footprint. A competition for new customers from expanded competitive footprint remains high. Our second quarter internet customer loss of 172,000 was higher than a year ago, similar to what we saw in the first quarter. Revenue was down 1.7% year over year, driven by lower residential revenue. Second quarter EBITDA, excluding Cox transition expenses, declined by 3.2%.

Softer gross additions remains the primary driver of our internet customer growth weakness, while churn remained largely unchanged. While internet customer growth is taking longer to reverse, the growth of new competition will subside. We expect to stabilize and return to broadband growth over time with our better converged connectivity product and pricing, higher demand for speed, data, and reliability, and as our NPS scores improve, benefiting both churn and sales. The timing of all that is hard to predict, our cash flow growth is not, and we have full confidence in the significant free cash flow ramp we're about to see. Our outlook for a significant reduction in capital expenditures has not changed. We also expect second half EBITDA for standalone Charter to benefit from a previously discussed cost pass-through on internet this summer and political advertising.

AI service and cost benefits are also beginning to ramp, and we're implementing a series of additional cost management measures. Jessica will circle back on our free cash flow profile and outlook in a moment. Let me highlight what we're doing right now day-to-day to win in the marketplace. A recent change to our marketing and sales channel focus has been the redoubling of our efforts to improve our internet funnel and yield by focusing first on the internet sale, with a growing focus on mobile and video upgrades thereafter. That bundling, of course, drives significant value and churn benefits. Internet customers that also purchase our mobile product churn nearly 40% less than internet customers who don't have mobile. The more lines per account, the greater the churn reduction.

Today, our mobile customer penetration of internet is about 20%, with an average of just below two lines per mobile customer. Significant upside remains for mobile penetration and lines in broadband churn reduction. Internet customers that purchase our video product similarly churn over 40% less. An activation of our programmer app inclusion offer further reduces churn across all broadband relationship tenures. Currently, 55% of our eligible video customers have activated at least one of our inclusion apps, with over four apps activated on average. We're also focused on improving customer satisfaction and resulting NPS. Good prices and saving customers money is a key driver of NPS, and that starts with internet pricing with available price locks when including our mobile and video services, including our $1,000 savings guarantee for new and existing customers with mobile. Service and reliability are the other top drivers of NPS.

We believe our service capabilities are unique, anchored by a 100% U.S.-based sales and service team, That provides a significant upside. Our digital service capabilities are set to meet customers where and how they want to be serviced. When automated, we're ensuring that channel delivers the same quality as the top 10% of our agents. When on-site service is needed, we guarantee same-day service or we provide a credit. The reality is we're now often arriving within two hours of calls, We see tangible examples of where we increasingly delight customers with our service. At the same time, we have real opportunities for improvement in reliability, how we communicate with customers, and what I call paper cuts in the service experience. At Charter, we've already made the investment in the service infrastructure, our employees, and capabilities. We'll turn that investment into a better service reputation.

Changing perception takes time, the organization's increasingly focused on customer satisfaction, and we're incentivized around NPS. We're doing the right things from a resource allocation, customer mindset, and organizational perspective to make that happen. That includes adding complementary talent from Cox. On September 1st, Nick Jeffery will join as Chief Operating Officer alongside the talented team we have today. Turning to the Cox transaction, we're now hoping to close mid to late August. Our operating strategy of product investment and innovation, saving customers money, and onshoring our service capabilities has allowed us to be successful in M&A. Recently, investors have been asking us about what might come next. The reality is we have a large transaction right in front of us now, which creates significant value.

We have a fully developed integration plan for Cox, and we have confidence in our ability to execute well and at a faster pace than previous integrations. We expect to grow the asset. Shortly after close, we'll launch our Spectrum pricing and packaging within the Cox footprint. We expect to drive better internet customer performance and unit growth acceleration with very under-penetrated mobile and video. A lower product pricing, including our $1,000 savings guarantee for new and existing customers when taking mobile, will help drive higher household product penetration, maintaining healthy Cox household ARPU. That's despite their higher individual product prices today. We expect our pricing and packaging to drive lower churn, higher customer satisfaction, and better NPS.

The bundling and migration approach we'll deploy at Cox is the same we successfully used with Bresnan in 2013, TWC and Bright House in 2016, and with ourselves really over the past two years. We also expect significant B2B upside by leveraging what each company does well with a long runway for growth and acceleration. The addition of Cox's hospitality capabilities, Segra, RapidScale, and a longstanding investment in its B2B infrastructure will benefit the broader Spectrum. We still expect run rate transaction expense synergies of at least $800 million per year, and while we'll update that estimate after close, I think it'll grow to $1 billion. As a reminder, transaction synergies do not include any benefit from operating or CapEx synergies. Separate from those synergies in procurement and overhead, there will also be a significant number of new frontline hires.

We're now recruiting well over 1,000 new residential and business sales jobs in Cox territories, which will drive higher sales. We couldn't hire these jobs until we had better visibility on a likely closing date with California. Across sales, retention, and customer service over the next year, we'll onshore and insource all call center activity, moving the platform to 24/7 coverage for service in Cox markets. This will bring work back to the U.S. and insource work that is currently handled by a significant number of offshore contractors. We expect to absorb most, if not all of this offshore volume from Cox through existing Spectrum operating efficiencies and digital capabilities. Following the closing of the Cox transaction, I want to frame what we'll represent as an industry partner for innovation.

We'll have roughly 1.3 million miles of network with over 70 million passings, with a fully converged multi-gig internet and mobile offering available to all of those passings. We'll have approximately 37 million customers, meaning a selling opportunity of nearly 35 million passings without a relationship today. Together, we'll generate approximately $67 billion in revenue and approximately $28 billion in EBITDA. Spectrum will operate under two MVNOs with the best mobile networks in the country and the only fully converged capability in our footprint. Today, there are approximately 164 million mobile lines in our footprint, and only 13 million of those will be Spectrum Mobile, 8% penetration with a faster, lower cost mobile product. While we're growing mobile quickly, there's still a very large growth opportunity in front of us.

Turning to capital structure, Jessica and I listened to feedback. We heard both equity and debt investor preference for lower leverage despite our significant free cash flow and continued capital return. Today, we're moving our post-transaction leverage target to a flat three and a half times, which we expect to achieve within three years following the close of the Cox and Liberty Broadband transactions. We're taking a multifaceted approach to delevering, which Jessica will discuss in a few minutes. The plan is to both delever earlier and further, but not forgo the buyback opportunity at what is a historically low valuation. All of which provides a robust backdrop to a broad segment of shareholders and bondholders who benefit from our free cash flow growth and capital allocation.

Stepping back from maintaining an optimal capital structure, the biggest value driver opportunity for us going forward is returning to growth. Our recipe for winning in the marketplace is simple: deliver the best connectivity at the best overall value with the best service. Our network is a unique and strategic asset which can't be replicated. It offers converged service in 100% of our footprint with gigabit speeds and low latency everywhere. Our speed and reliability are set to improve dramatically over the next few years as we complete our network evolution. When you look at both our wireline and converged network and the traffic we already deliver today, it's clear we're more than just America's connectivity company. We provide the mission-critical AI infrastructure that will ultimately demand our superior speed, reliability, and low latency capabilities.

We expect to be a significant beneficiary of AI through network demand, data center connectivity, our own service capabilities and cost structure, and the potential utilization of our edge data centers, which have fiber, primary and backup power, and cooling in space. As we complete our network evolution, we'll have over 250 megawatts of available capacity without additional investment, and capacity for much more at a very low cost with future potential partners. While our focus is squarely on broadband, we also have separate resources focused on developing new revenue streams and ensuring we can develop network capabilities and products that others cannot replicate. With that, I'll hand it over to Jessica.

Thanks, Chris. Please note that any forward-looking financial or customer information that we provide in today's discussion or presentation does not include Cox or any transition costs related to Cox integration planning, unless otherwise noted. Now let's please turn to our customer results on slide seven. Including residential and small business, we lost 172,000 internet customers in the second quarter, driven by lower connects year-over-year, while churn was essentially flat. As Chris has said before, we have been facing top-of-the-funnel softness. We continue to see expanded fixed-wireless competition versus a year ago, including lower sales from low-income consumers, ongoing mobile substitution, and fiber overlap growth at a rate similar to prior quarters, with aggressive promotions by certain competitors.

Though I would point out that we continue to lead the market in converged connectivity pricing at connect and have higher market share than our fiber competitors, even in our mature fiber overlap. As it relates to satellite, so far, we haven't observed meaningful share loss to Starlink, including in our subsidized rural footprint, but we continue to monitor it closely and take it seriously. In mobile, we added 406,000 lines, with higher gross additions year-over-year, offset by higher disconnects. Video customers declined by 21,000 versus a loss of 80,000 in 2Q25, with the improvement primarily driven by lower video downgrades, lower customer churn, and higher upgrades year-over-year, resulting from our seamless entertainment product improvements, including our programmer app inclusion packaging and the new pricing and packaging we launched in late 2024.

New connects to our fully featured video package with apps were also better year-over-year, with some benefit from the World Cup. In rural, we continued to see strong customer relationship growth, generating 47,000 net customer additions in our subsidized rural footprint in the quarter. Subsidized rural passings grew by 127,000 in the second quarter and by 487,000 over the last 12 months, which is in addition to our continued non-rural construction and fill-in activity. Moving to second quarter revenue results on slide eight. Over the last year, residential customers declined by 1.8%. Residential revenue per customer relationship declined by 1.8% year-over-year, but was essentially flat when excluding the programmer app allocation headwind of $251 million this quarter versus $67 million in the prior-year period.

There were other puts and takes, including pricing and packaging mix within our customer base and a decline in video customers during the last year, offset by the growth of Spectrum Mobile lines. As slide eight shows, in total, residential revenue declined by 3.5% and was down by 1.8% when excluding costs allocated to streaming apps and netted within video revenue in both periods. From a pure internet revenue perspective, we are balancing rate actions in an inflationary environment and retention activities, where our more aggressive retention offers in the first quarter are largely normalized over the course of 2Q. As Chris mentioned, we're making some pricing adjustments, which also include meaningful speed upgrades for the vast majority of affected customers. Those adjustments didn't impact 2Q, but will drive better residential revenue in the back half of the year.

Turning to commercial, total commercial revenue grew by 1.5% year-over-year, with mid-market and large business revenue growth of 2.8%. When excluding all wholesale revenue, mid-market and large business revenue grew by 3.5%. Small business revenue grew by 0.7%, reflecting year-over-year growth in revenue per small business customer of 1.5%, partly offset by year-over-year decline in small business customers of 0.8%. Second quarter advertising revenue grew by 12.3%, given higher political revenue year-over-year. Excluding political, advertising revenue declined 4.6% year-over-year. Other revenue grew by 7.1%, driven by higher mobile device sales, partly offset by a $45 million one-time benefit in the prior year period. In total, consolidated second quarter revenue was down by 1.7% year-over-year, but decreased 0.8% when excluding advertising revenue and programmer app allocation. Moving to operating expenses and adjusted EBITDA on slide nine.

In the second quarter, total operating expenses were virtually flat year-over-year. Programming costs declined by 9.7% due to $251 million of costs allocated to programmer streaming apps and netted within video revenue, versus $67 million in the prior period. A higher mix of lighter video packages and a 0.8% decline in video customers year-over-year, partly offset by higher programming rates. Other costs of revenue increased by 11.3%, primarily driven by higher mobile device sales, mobile service direct costs, and higher advertising sales costs given higher political revenue and a higher mix of third-party impressions. Cost to service customers, which combines field and technology operations and customer operations, grew 1.4% year-over-year, primarily due to higher fuel and medical costs. Marketing and residential sales expense declined by 3.1% year-over-year.

Due to lower marketing expenses from procurement initiatives, our volume of impressions and our marketing activity generally was much higher year-over-year. Transition expenses related to the pending Cox transaction totaled $65 million in the quarter, driven by systems disentanglement from Cox Enterprises and systems integration with Cox Communications. Transition expenses have been coming in a bit higher than expected. Some of that is closing delay, and some is from a change in the expected mix of operating costs versus capital expenditures. We still expect the sum of our Cox transition costs and capital expenditures to be at or better than what we anticipated. Finally, other expense declined by 2.5%, primarily driven by lower professional service expense. Adjusted EBITDA declined by 4.3% year-over-year in the quarter, and declined by 3.2% when excluding transition expenses.

Currently, for the full year 2026, we expect standalone Charter EBITDA, excluding the impact of transition costs, to decline around 1% year-over-year. The back half of this year will benefit from political advertising, cost pass-throughs, and efficiency initiatives, and we're working on a number of additional initiatives to improve the full year trajectory. Turning to net income, we generated $1.3 billion of net income attributable to Charter shareholders in the second quarter, essentially flat with the prior year period, with lower year-over-year adjusted EBITDA offset by a gain on extinguishment of debt related to open market debt repurchases in 2Q 2026, which I will discuss in a moment. Turning to slide 10, second quarter capital expenditures totaled $2.9 billion, virtually flat with last year's second quarter, with lower line extension spending offset by higher network evolution spend, which lands in upgrade rebuild spend.

For standalone Charter, we continue to expect total 2026 capital expenditures to reach approximately $11.4 billion. As we've said before, looking beyond 2026, we expect total capital spending in dollar terms to be on a meaningful downward trajectory. After our evolution and expansion initiatives conclude, our run rate capital expenditures for standalone Charter would be below $8 billion per year. That reduction in capital expenditures on its own from approximately $12.1 billion over the last 12 months to less than $8 billion in 2028 is equivalent to over $30 of free cash flow per share based on our June 30th share count. If we take consensus 2026 free cash flow for standalone Charter and substitute our expected 2028 CapEx for 2026 CapEx, our current stock price would imply a free cash flow multiple of a bit over 2 times and a free cash flow yield of nearly 50%.

Turning to second quarter free cash flow on slide 12. Second quarter free cash totaled $1 billion, about $75 million lower than last year, given lower EBITDA and a less favorable change in working capital, partly offset by lower cash paid for taxes. Turning to cash taxes, second quarter cash taxes totaled $101 million. We continue to expect that our calendar year 2026 cash tax payments will total between $500 million and $800 million. We finished the second quarter with $94 billion in debt principal. The weighted average life of our debt is 11.7 years. Our weighted average cost of debt remains at an attractive 5.2%, and our current run rate annualized cash interest totals $4.9 billion. During the quarter, we repurchased 4 million Charter shares, totaling $838 million at an average price of $210 per share.

As of the end of the second quarter, our ratio of net debt to last 12-month adjusted EBITDA was 4.18 times and stood at 4.21 times pro forma for the pending Liberty Broadband transaction. Cable industry growth has been pressured by the pace of new competition growth, combined with a challenging housing growth and move environment. Those factors have reduced our customer and EBITDA growth and our trading multiple. We've always regularly evaluated our balance sheet to maintain our financial strength and strategic flexibility and to be responsive to our debt and equity holders. As a result, today we are lowering our post-transaction leverage target to a flat 3.5 times, which we expect to achieve with consistent progress along the way, within three years of the close of the Cox and Liberty Broadband transactions. We've already begun executing a multi-pronged strategy to achieve that goal.

During the second quarter, we repurchased over $1.2 billion of our own debt in the open market for $1 billion in cash, reducing our total leverage by capturing approximately $250 million of discount. We also plan to reduce our total debt through liability management. Last night, we announced the launch of a capped exchange offer targeting $20 billion of par value of our investment-grade rated debt that trades at a discount to par. Participating bondholders will receive new par bonds in applicable 12 or 15-year maturities and in some cases, cash in equivalent value to the current discounted trading value of the exchanged bonds plus a premium. If successful, this exchange will reduce our total debt principal and accelerate deleveraging.

As of the end of the third quarter, including the impact of the Cox and Liberty Broadband transactions and including the impact of our second quarter debt repurchases, and assuming the success of the exchange offer announced yesterday evening, we expect our ratio of net debt to last 12-month adjusted EBITDA to be just above 3.9 times. Paying down debt, including the opportunity to repay secured maturities as they've come due, will be part of our effort to reach our long-term leverage target, and we expect there to be continuing opportunities for liability management approaches to support de-leveraging. Our leverage target is not aspirational. We have high confidence in the strength of our business and its ability to generate substantial cash flow to achieve our targets.

Given the pending Cox closing and its financing and our focus on liability management, we have paused our share repurchases through the end of the third quarter. We expect share repurchases to restart in the fourth quarter, and we expect to be in a position to repurchase shares throughout the de-leveraging process to 3.5 times. We expect our de-leveraging efforts to create value for all providers of capital, including shareholders and debt holders, and we remain committed to maintaining an investment-grade rating on our secured debt. Before turning the call over to Q&A, I want to make a few comments regarding our pending Cox transaction and our reporting plans, some of which I mentioned last quarter. Our first post-close quarterly results, which we expect will be our third quarter results, will reflect a full quarter for Legacy Charter, plus a stub period for Legacy Cox.

Year-over-year actual comparisons won't be helpful, but we intend to present Charter's quarterly trending schedule with pro forma data along the lines of what you received today. Going forward, we will report similar customer, PSU, and revenue data for both legacy entities for several quarters following close, both separately and on a consolidated basis. We will not show expenses or capital expenditures by legacy entity. That's not possible given the shared nature of key large items like programming, overhead, and significant centralized capital spend. We will also continue to report transition expense and capital related to the integration and will provide updates on certain items, including estimates for the synergies we've realized so that you can better isolate the organic growth of the business. Our balance sheet and P&L will also be impacted by purchase accounting.

Part of that will be fair market value step-up of Cox assets, reflecting the fair market value of the consideration we paid for the Cox assets as of the closing date. Taken at today's Charter share price, the current implied transaction enterprise value for the Cox business is $27 billion, which is roughly five times EBITDA on transaction EBITDA and a 4.4 times multiple when including $800 million of transaction synergies, which we now view as conservative.

As of the end of the second quarter and pro forma for the Cox and Liberty Broadband transactions, our net debt totaled approximately $110 billion and consisted of Legacy Charter net debt of approximately $93 billion, the net debt we are assuming from Liberty Broadband of about $1 billion, the approximately $4 billion of debt we will issue to fund our cash payment to Cox Enterprises, and Legacy Cox debt principal of about $12 billion. Note that for balance sheet purposes, the Cox debt we will assume will be fair valued in an amount less than the face value based on current market prices. A few other items to keep in mind. After close and on a quarterly basis, we will expense a charge of approximately $103 million of preferred coupon for Cox's ownership of preferred partnership units.

That charge will be reported in our P&L as part of net income attributable to non-controlling interests, similar to how we reported the Advance/Newhouse preferred interest following our transactions in 2016. We will also have some below the EBITDA line charges, including additional transaction advisory expenses, which are contingent and payable at closing. We also expect restructuring and separation expenses through the integration process that will post below EBITDA as well. Interest expense will increase for the combined company given the debt assumed from Cox, the new Charter debt issued for the cash portion of the purchase price, and the accretion of the discount on assumed Cox debt.

As I mentioned last quarter, our outstanding share count will increase as we issue the equivalent of just over 46 million Charter shares to Cox Enterprises, comprised of common and preferred partnership units, partly offset by a net Charter share reduction of about 4.7 million shares associated with the Liberty Broadband transaction. That 4.7 million figure is lower now than when we announced the Liberty Broadband transaction, primarily due to our ongoing share repurchases from Liberty Broadband. Based on our June 30 standalone share count at close and on an as converted, as exchanged basis, we expect our total shares to be about 177 million. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator for Q&A.

Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. When it is your turn, you will receive a message on your screen from the host allowing you to talk, and then you will hear your name called. Please accept, unmute your audio, and ask your question. As a reminder, we are allowing analysts to ask one question today. We will wait one moment to allow the queue to form. Our first question will come from Craig Moffett with MoffettNathanson. You may now unmute and ask your question.

Hi. Thank you. I'm going to see if I can squeeze in two if I can. First, Jessica, a while back you said, I think it was two quarters ago, you guided to positive broadband ARPU for the year. I wonder if you could just update us on your outlook for broadband ARPU for the year. I wanted to ask a question about wireless. Comcast yesterday said that 90% of all their traffic is now offloaded onto Wi-Fi, or perhaps some of that over CBRS. Can you give a comparable number for Charter and how you see that progressing?

Sure. Craig, I'll start with ARPU. Broadband ARPU will improve sequentially in Q3. The use of more aggressive retention offers, as I said, lessened through 2Q and largely normalized in June. We're still feeling the impact from some of those more aggressive offers in 2Q, and we will over the course of the rest of the year. The impact isn't building in the same way at this point. We'll have a tailwind from the rate for the cost pass-through that's hitting in late July and early August. I understand the sensitivity and the rationale for the focus around broadband ARPU, I remind people, we don't manage the business for product level ARPUs. Our focus is on penetration as well as connectivity ARPU, and overall customer relationship ARPU, excluding the program or app allocation, both of which I think will grow in FY 2026.

Maybe I'll just tag onto that a little bit. The pressure that we had inside of Q1, which carried through Q2, really was a bet at the time that you could get a substantial lift through putting in that retention. It had some impact, but not enough to really merit what we did. We pulled back. I own that. It took a bit to pull back and, when we did, it had a cascading impact to carry forward on the ARPU through the retention. That was the driver inside of Q2, and as Jessica mentioned, you're going to have lift coming from that going away and in addition to that, the rate increase pass-through.

The other thing, when you take a look at a full year perspective, leaving aside Cox integration, leaving aside what Jessica said about management for total customer relationship ARPU, which is a full suite of products that we include. We have Nick Jeffery coming on board on September 1st. The last thing I want to do when he's coming on board with really a stated focus from our perspective of enhancing our go-to-market capabilities and our Net Promoter Score, and really hopefully being a big catalyst for those two categories. Returning us to growth is some tell to hamstring the ability of the company to go do some things to accelerate our growth. I don't think it's wise for us to focus on product ARPU generally.

We've always said that, but particularly in this environment, we're focused on creating shareholder value, and I don't think it makes sense to kind of hamstring us that way. The second question you asked, Craig, was around wireless. I hadn't seen that Comcast had reported up at 90%. We've been at 88% and we were kind of moving up to 89% through exactly the same reasons, which was the continued offload that we have through Wi-Fi, through seamless authentication, not only in our footprint, but in Comcast and also in the Cox footprint as well, across the three major cable operators. In addition to that, the continued rollout of CBRS. What we did inside the quarter is we effectively moved the type of speed pass-through for our products, to make sure that we had better service above certain caps that were in place.

As a result, what you ended up was a bit more 5G usage than we've had before because of the product changes we made to improve the customer experience, the customer service. That actually pushed us back down to 87%, which is where we'd been previously, not because there was less offload, but because there was actually more 5G traffic usage, which was a positive thing from a consumer perspective. That was what should be a one-time pushdown, as we modified the product capability in a good way, and then we'll expect to be moving back up as the continued Wi-Fi offload and the continued CBRS deployment takes place over time. Slightly different for that reason, but on the same trajectory would be my estimate.

Thanks, Craig. Operator, we'll take our next question, please.

Your next question will come from Vikash Harlalka with New Street Research.

Hi, thanks so much for taking the question. Two, if I could. You've changed your goal for EBITDA for the year. I just wanted to ask what changed in the first six months for you to lower your target for EBITDA. There were some press reports mentioning that Starlink may look to partner with Charter. Any comment on that? Thank you.

Sure. On the EBITDA side, I think some of what changed, and Chris described a bit of it, was expectations around broadband subscribers and ARPU over the course of the year based on some of those things that we had done around offers that we thought might work, but they didn't work out as well. There's also a little bit of pressure in some controllable expenses, things like fuel and medical, where we haven't been able to sort of make adjustments against those in the same way as you can some others. We do have the ability, and we've done quite a bit to think about expenses for the second half of the year and how we can be in a better place. As Chris said, we've made some changes around moving price adjustments through.

We are Doing some work around driving down expenses across the business, and in some cases, we're making some changes to benefit plans to bring them more in line with market, and to doing some simplification on the overhead side that I think makes a lot of sense, and that's rolling through now. We continue to have levers, and we'll continue to push to be in a better place than that trajectory as we get through the year.

I want to be clear, what Jessica said is, what we're providing as an outlook, as an update to what was previously provided, but we're actually targeting to do better through all the reasons that Jessica gave. The question on Starlink. Look, it's natural for us. We talk to many industry players. Anytime that we think that we can enhance our own product capabilities or do things that are innovative in the marketplace, or we can lower costs for customers, those are the type of conversations that we have with many industry players. We do that all the time.

I don't think it makes any sense to get into the detail of any of those conversations other than to say you should expect us to continue to do that across the board. When there's something to announce or talk about, we'll do that, and that certainly is not the case today.

Thank you. Thank you. Good.

Operator, we'll take our next question, please.

Our next question will come from Steven Cahall with Wells Fargo.

Thank you. First I wanted to maybe piggyback on Craig's question about your wireless offload, as well as the last question on Starlink. It's possible we could see SpaceX or Starlink try to build the fourth wireless network. You've taken an asset light approach to wireless, but you're able to do all this offload. I was wondering if you think there's the potential for Charter to partner with potential builders over time and use the architecture that you have along with what someone else might do in wireless, and if there are partnership opportunities that could create value. I'd love to understand that better.

I was wondering if you could just touch a little bit on how Cox Internet trends have sort of transitioned versus your internet trends, do you think the trends that they're seeing in the market are the same, better, or worse than yours? Is there any change to the playbook since it sounds like competition has picked up once you close the acquisition? Thank you. Sure. Look, let me take a more global approach to your first question around our willingness to use our network for offloading.

Our principal focus as a company has always been about retail in the consumer segment and the B2B segment. Sometimes that means that we've foregone appropriately or sometimes, maybe we should have had a different point of view on the wholesale opportunities that exist with capabilities of our network. I'll give you an example just as a parallel. The B2B side, we've done a lot of work around cell tower backhaul, years ago, which was a good business. It was great ROI. It's not as good as it used to be, but what we did there made a lot of sense.

Similarly, you can talk about the data center business that exists today for fiber connectivity, I think Cox has done a really good job of being aggressive and getting after that. Because we're so retail focused, I think we're getting into it now. We'll have a great opportunity, but maybe we didn't focus on it as much as we should have. You can then, to get to your question, use that as a parallel with just our seamless authentication capabilities across Wi-Fi and CBRS, should we be using that in a wholesale environment versus our current retail approach that we have? I think the answer is it depends. It depends on what's the long-term path that we're doing, how does it impact us from our main objective on the retail side, but we are doing offload today.

You think about the Amazon deal that we did with their fleet, which is public, where we have seamless authentication for Amazon drivers and the trucks to be able to offload to us at a more attractive rate than what they typically pay for cellular services. I could see us being, and we have had those discussions for electric vehicle companies, think about the tremendous amount of offload that they have to do from all the cameras that are operating during the course of the day and need to upstream, where our network is uniquely capable of doing that and being able to monetize it for us, but to save customers, in that case, a wholesale customer, lots of money. We have those capabilities. We've set up a platform called BrightIQ that enables all of that to take place seamlessly.

It works very well, to the extent that we can be innovative around that, create additional revenue streams. If it's going to be material, it's certainly something we would think about. I think between one partner or another, the answer is it just depends, and we'll think it through at the right time. By the way, we could do that for even mobile operators as well, in terms of being able to offload for them in a different way than they already do today, private SSIDs, and I'm not sure that's somewhere we'll go, but it's another potential business opportunity that's out there.

Thanks, Steven. He asked a question about, sorry, to come back, Cox trends.

Yes. Nothing new or major to report.

Cox's trends on both subscribers and revenue has been a couple clicks lower than here at Spectrum, and that continues to be the case. I wouldn't say there's been any dramatic change of what we've seen relative to our own performance since the time of signing up the transaction. No change to the playbook. Cox has been a very well-invested asset over the years. It's prided itself on good service and having a great reputation in the market and the communities that they serve. I do think when you look at our products, which include speed for internet, the convergence with mobile, our video product for sure, and its ability to have seamless entertainment with the Xumo deployment and the pricing of all that, both on a standalone basis, in particular when it's put together.

I don't want to get over our skis, we're going to come into the Cox markets with a brand new name, which is the Spectrum name. Always when you're a quote unquote "new entrant," you have an opportunity to be something new and alternative at better pricing with better products. That's a real opportunity for lift across all of those products, and that's always been the strategy. It's still the case. Given the fact that the closing has been delayed as much as it has been, we were ready to go really in March and April, we've been working through the process with California. We're glad that we're where we are with that process. We're more ready now as a result to go faster in deploying that product pricing and packaging into the Cox markets.

We're really excited about getting this done and getting going for the benefit of the employees, customers, and a real, I think, growth opportunity that's there.

Thanks, Steven. We'll take our next question, operator.

Before we go to our next question, as a reminder, if you'd like to raise your hand, you may use the raise hand feature at the bottom of your Zoom interface. Our next question will come from Walter Piecyk with LightShed Partners. Please go ahead. Thanks, Chris.

I just want to go back to the last question, because I think what he was asking about wasn't necessarily about just wholesaling the hotspots, but also whether closing out that last 12%, meaning like joining in a network build, whether it's SpaceX or someone else.

Oh Whether that might be something that makes sense to put some dollars behind.

Yeah. Let me start with probably the hottest topic of the day. I want to be really clear. We don't have any plans to do anything different as it relates to our CapEx trajectory. Given where we are. Right.

If there were opportunities, I think that there are ways that we could look at them from an off-balance sheet, sort of not part of our own capital perspective, not in this specific one, but our capital trajectory in terms of what we've laid out in the multi-year capital plan is set.

Yeah. I don't think there's no specific plans that we have today to do anything around what you described. I would step back and say we're in a capital light approach that we're really enamored with as it relates to going for mobility and the ability to deliver converged retail services. We have great partners, Verizon now principally on the residential side, who's been a great partner, great network. We've recently launched on the B2B side, incrementally going forward with T-Mobile. Also, obviously, a fantastic network in a capital light approach for us that makes a lot of sense. We're also able to add in some additional features and product features into the business side that we didn't have before, as well as the ability to sell a lot more lines and move upstream into that space. They've been great partners as well.

Pretty seamless in terms of the launch, working very well with both of those partners, and we're pleased. There's no driving need for us to quote unquote "go build a network of any type because we have it." I mean, the other way to think about it, I've always said, not to be provocative, but we're the largest facilities-based wireless provider in the country, which is a little counterintuitive. The reason I say that is not only do we offload 87%-88% of our own traffic, but the cable operators and Wi-Fi generally, Wi-Fi is the workhorse of Spectrum and of data delivery across the entire footprint. It's Wi-Fi that delivers probably 75%-80% of the traffic for the MNOs, for the wireless telcos.

That's our wireline and Wi-Fi facilities that's delivering not only wireless offload for us, but also for the major telcos as well. I don't think it's that provocative. We're the largest wireless facilities provider in the country, particularly when we close Cox. Maybe today it's Comcast and us is number 2, but we're going to be the largest wireless-based facilities provider in the country. I don't think there's a real need for us to feel like we have to go after that last 12%, given the partnerships that we have and the economic setup that we have today.

Yeah. When you look at the offload that you have, could you give any sense of the mix between the extra SSID from someone's home modem versus the hotspots that you may have deployed on wires or in communities and things like that?

What's the relative split there, and is it changing as you maybe invest a little bit in CBRS?

Yeah, it is changing. I'm trying to think of the best way to answer your question. When we first came out with Spectrum Mobile, we were closer to 84%, 85%. We had publicly said that we thought that we could get essentially into the low 90s, and that point of view hasn't changed. You've got a lot of other things going on in terms of overall traffic volume, where traffic occurs, and people's usage. I think for the most part, that still holds. You can see where we've moved up the chain, going beyond just our own network of Wi-Fi authentication, but then when that could extend it to out of footprint with Comcast and then Cox, it continues to move up.

CBRS, which is still early days, so we're across a vast number of markets, but we're well on our way on the increments and just continuing to penetrate more deeply on an ROI-based approach based on where there's density and traffic that justifies the investment. The payback we get in that is well under a year. Just to be clear, that's always been included in our capital expenditure outlook. I think we'll continue to move upstream, but as you saw even in this past quarter when I answered the question for Craig, there are things that'll bump you back down a little bit as we do things with the product. I think our original outlook is still the same, and I think the mix is, first and foremost, it's our own Wi-Fi.

The second is out of footprint, when a New York customer goes to Philadelphia, for example. Increasingly to your point, it's the CBRS as that gets more fully deployed, not just for us, but as it gets more fully deployed in the Comcast footprint and the Cox footprint, which soon enough will be Spectrum. That CBRS deployment that each of us makes benefits the other because we have the same capabilities there as we do with Wi-Fi.

Thanks. Thanks, Walter, and thanks to everyone else.

That concludes our call. Leila, back to you.

Thank you everyone for joining. This concludes today's call, and you may now disconnect.