Altice USA reported its first quarter earnings today and despite a net loss of 42,000 video subscribers, the company grew its residential revenue slightly.
The video subscriber losses were well ahead of the 10,000 subscribers lost in the same quarter one year ago. Altice USA ended the quarter with approximately 3.14 million resident video customers.
At the same time, Altice USA said it had its best ever quarterly net broadband additions, which totaled 50,000 (or 60,000 when factoring in Altice Advantage, the company’s low income broadband program). The company said its total unique residential customer relationships grew 0.6% and its residential revenue per customer relationship remained flat at $143.39, which helped drive residential revenue growth of 0.5% year over year.
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The company’s consolidated revenues grew 2.2% year over year to reach $2.45 billion, thanks in part to business services growing 3.9%, and news and advertising revenue growing 11.4%. Still, the company recorded a net loss attributable to stockholders of $0.9 million, which was significantly lower than the net loss of $25 million during the same quarter last year.
Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei praised his company’s response the COVID-19 pandemic and its financial results during the first quarter, but warned that negative impacts due to the virus could still be ahead.
“Our first quarter results and preliminary April data have given us confidence in our core cable business, especially in broadband. However, we expect that the macroeconomic impact from the pandemic may affect our operations, particularly in our News and Advertising and SMB businesses. Although this reduces revenue and EBITDA visibility, we remain confident in our ability to deliver Free Cash Flow growth in 2020 while maintaining our leverage and share repurchase targets,” he said in a statement.