Altice USA said it delivered its best financial performance in the third quarter, though TV losses continued to plague customer numbers. Revenues for the quarter went 4.1 percent higher to USD 2.42 billion, driven by Residential growth of 2.4 percent, Business Services rising 6 percent and advertising revenue jumping 37.8 percent. Business was boosted by strength at Enterprise & Carrier up 7.4 percent and SMB rising 5.3 percent while advertising was helped by the growth of new local and national multi-screen ad services, as well as NY Interconnect.
Altice continued to lose residential customers, though the net losses slowed to 5,000 in the quarter from a loss of 8,000 the year before. The figure includes broadband additions of 14,000 (+16,000 year-on-year), pay TV losses of 28,000 (-33,000) and telephony losses of 12,000 (+3,000). Residential ARPU increased 2.3 percent to USD 143. About 80 percent residential broadband gross additions took download speeds of 200 Mbps or up, with an average data usage of over 240 GB per month.
The initial rollout of Altice One completed, with the service currently available to over 80 percent of the company’s footprint, helped by Suddenlink. Altice USA has reached over 200,000 unique Altice One customers; it is adding about 100,000 Altice One customers per quarter on a run-rate basis, as of the end of the third quarter.
For the full year, Altice USA still sees revenues up 2.5-3.0 percent, an expanded adjusted EBITDA margin and more investment for the continued rollout of Altice One, FTTH and new networks. Despite this, capex is now expected at less than USD 1.3 billion. Altice also reiterated its plan to further expand its adjusted EBITDA and cash flow margins over the medium to long term.
