Charter is reporting its Q1 2016 results, which include subscriber gains, but a financial loss attributed to the increase in interest expense driven by the Time Warner merger deal in the works. A loss of $188 million ($1.68 a share) was reported, more than doubling the Q1 2015 loss of $81 million (73 cents a share). Thomson Reuters analysts had expected a loss of $1.09 per share on revenue of $2.54 billion.
Nevertheless, video and Internet customer trends continued to improve on a year-over-year basis, according to the operator, with total first quarter 2016 video net additions of 15,000 vs. a loss of 12,000 in the prior-year period, and total first quarter 2016 Internet net additions of 155,000 vs. 135,000 in Q1 2015.
Charter reports that total customer relationships increased 119,000 during the first quarter, versus 90,000 during the same period in 2015.
By the end of March, Charter says it served 6.8 million residential and SMB customers. For the twelve months ended March 31, total residential and SMB customers grew by 381,000 or 5.9 percent.
Charter also used its Q1 report to point out the introduction of its new cloud-based user interface, Spectrum Guide, to video customers in Fort Worth, Tex., Reno and St. Louis.
Spectrum Guide improves video content search and discovery, and enables Charter’s on-demand offering, the operator reports in a press release. The guide will function on nearly all of Charter’s deployed set-tops, according to the company. Charter will soon begin launching its new set-top, World Box, which is said to offer downloadable security along with other advanced functionality, “driving an enhanced customer experience and reducing incremental set-top box costs.”
In its earnings call, EVP and CFO Chris Winfrey commented on the ActiveVideo JV with Arris. “It’s a productive relationship that we have both with the management team at ActiveVideo as well as Arris, who owns 65 percent,” Winfrey says. “We have a couple of board seats on that investment. We’re treated as an independent third-party vendor inside the relationship with ActiveVideo, so I guess the benefit would be the ability to see the pipeline of product that they have coming in the future and to have oversight in terms of how that’s being developed elsewhere.”
“But we saw an interactive product that we were using amongst other vendors in our Spectrum Guide platform and we thought this was an interesting equity investment but also of strategic importance to Charter,” he adds.
