Charter Communications, Inc. ($CHTR)

Good morning, everyone. I am delighted to introduce Jessica Fischer, CFO of Charter Communications. Jessica, thank you for being here.

Happy to be here.

All right. Let's just dive into it. So can you tell us about your key priorities for 2026 and the things that you're focused on that's going to set the company up for long-term sustainable growth?

Yes. I think we've said it that our #1 priority is getting broadband back to growth. And when you think about that, really continuing to grow the converged connectivity business. We're doing that on a number of fronts. So first off, relentless focus on the customer. So how is it that we deliver our value and utility messaging to customers to really work with the marketing side when we're delivering the best products to get the best reactions from those. And then in addition to that, continuing to focus on improving customer service and doing that, utilizing the investments that we've made in our employees and in tools across the business over the last several years. The second piece of that, I think about the network and what we're doing, so first off, to finish up our expansion initiative over the course of this year. And then in addition to that, continuing to work on our network evolution project, where we expect to be about 50% complete by the end of the year this year and driving through that the ability to continue to deliver the best products to consumers. And we couple that wired network with what is a really powerful WiFi network on top of it and utilizing that WiFi network to continue to drive products that we can deliver to customers across the business. As we bring those together, it really is about differentiated products, right? So you think about what we can do with converged connectivity all across our footprint, coupling that with a video product where we've injected value back into the product to be able to deliver better to the consumer and drive value to the total package of products that we provide to customers. And adding to that value-added services, things like our Invincible WiFi product where we can deliver additional value to the consumer, use that to drive some help on the ARPU side while also sort of creating a better experience for the customer. And then inside of this year, we put on top of that efficiency, like how is it that we continue to drive financial results from the business even in what has been a more competitive broadband market. We're doing that by continuing to drive digitization and automation across the business and by continuing to work on the cost side in a way that doesn't impact our sales and service activity. That's it.

Thank you for that. So we're almost at the end of first quarter. Can you provide us an update on broadband trends for the first quarter?

I'm not going to provide a sub number here today. But what I can tell you is the market continues to be competitive. And so that continues to be a trend.

And so what are you seeing in terms of competition from fixed wireless?

I don't think that the overall tension that we see from fixed wireless is significantly different from where it's been previously. We've seen AT&T build out several additional markets or put online additional markets from a fixed wireless perspective over the last few quarters. But the overall tension across the product set, I think, is not different significantly from where it was before.

Got it. So we track some of the Opensignal data. And based on that, it seems like your share in mature fiber markets have been slipping. What can you tell investors that you can do to change that slope of the curve?

Yes. So first, I would say when you look at that data, your definition of maturity matters. When we look at mature markets today, first, I would say we continue to have a market share that's greater than our fiber competitors in mature markets where we compete against fiber. And we're able to do that because we have a converged product all across the footprint, because we have more incumbency advantage that they do because of the size of our footprint, because we continue to deliver those differentiated products in the form of things like our video product that adds value and because of the focus that we've had around continuing to improve on the customer service side. And so I think when there's been some impact from fixed wireless in those spaces. So I won't say that what you're seeing is inaccurate and that I think there are still sort of -- there's new competition in those markets that wasn't there before. But when it comes to the way that we compete against fiber in those markets, I think we continue to compete very well.

Got it. There's a lot of angst amongst investors about Starlink. What have you seen in terms of competition from Starlink? Any impact on your trends?

There's not a discernible impact from Starlink on trends right now. But obviously, we see what you all see, and we're continuing to watch it very closely.

Got it. Switching topics to your appointment of Nick Jeffery as Chief Operating Officer. I think it's a great move, but I would like to hear from you what do you expect from him?

So if we go back to your opening question and say, well, our goal and what we're working on is figuring out how to get back to broadband growth. And the first tenet of that is this relentless customer focus around how do we message the value proposition and utility proposition to customers and how do we focus on customer service. And if I look at where Nick has been really successful over his past couple of roles, it's on exactly those things, right? And so when we -- when I look at sort of bringing him into the team, we're bringing someone who has great experience doing the things that we are trying to do right now. I'm super excited to have him join the team and to be able to take advantage of that experience as we continue to try to push those things for our team and in the market.

You guys were probably like the first operator out there to focus very heavily on customer care. You onboarded, onshored all your customer care executives. Your NPS scores have improved over the years, but it's still well below your peers. Why is that? And what can you do to change that?

So I think that we're still followed by cable's historical reputation with consumers. We've done, as you said, the big things to change that, right? So if I think about the pricing and packaging that we rolled out 1.5 years ago that has longer price locks that has lower roll-offs when you get to the end of those price locks. We're trying to do the right thing for the customer on that front, which is impactful to NPS. We also have been sort of driving at customer service overall. And the things that you talked about, in-sourcing, upskilling our employees, trying to provide them the right tools, to be able to deal with those customer service issues well. Both of those things, I think, take time to sink into the market. The other thing we recognize is that there are 100 different ways that you interact with the customer every day. And across all of those small things, there's an opportunity for paper cuts, right? And in a market that is as competitive as the market that we compete in today, you have to be mindful of all of those paper cuts. And so across the business, we're really thinking about like where do you find the paper cuts today? How do we solve those for consumers because we know -- and you might hear Chris say it, it's a game of inches. And so you've got to be good across all fronts. And so we recognize that we're focused on it. We're continuing to find ways to improve that customer service interaction to try to solve for exactly what you point out.

Got it. You mentioned pricing. So there's a lot of focus on pricing among investors. I think you were quite clear on the last earnings call that you expect to grow broadband ARPU this year. Can you just help us understand like what's driving broadband ARPU growth this year?

Yes. And it's aligned with the things that I just talked about. We want to grow broadband ARPU by driving value into customer packages ultimately, right? So the main tailwinds that we have are actually things that are not just price. It's selling more gig products or where we have them available because of network evolution, more 2x by 1 products into consumers. And our sell-in rates for those products are dramatically higher than they've been in the past. It's selling additional value-added services, things like the Invincible WiFi product that I talked about and continuing to package our products in multiproduct sets with consumers, continued bundling that helps drive overall value to the consumer. Ultimately, with this set of those things, that's how I think that we get there in the ARPU equation. It's being able to pull those things in. And when I think about where our peers had gone over the last several years, we were much slower in getting to some of those higher value sell-ins than some of our peers were. So I think we have more space to gain ground there than maybe some of our peers have had.

Got it. You launched the Life Unlimited pricing last year. On the surface, it doesn't seem like it's impacted subscriber trends much. Like are you satisfied with the Life Unlimited pricing? Or should we expect some major changes in the near future?

So we're not satisfied with where we are in broadband trends, right? And -- but that wasn't the only thing that the Life Unlimited product was about. So the things that it's doing really well is we're selling more products in per consumer. That additional -- those additional products, we think, make customers stickier in the medium and longer term. And so I think there are advantages we get from that, that don't come at the point of sale necessarily. There's also the piece that I talked about having those rate locks and those lower roll-offs as people roll off of the Life Unlimited -- or roll through their promotional periods on the Life Unlimited plans. And I think we expect over time to see things like improved NPS scores as a result of having put ourselves in a better position with those customers, which ultimately should be positively impactful to the business. Obviously, from an overall pricing and packaging perspective, we test all kinds of things all the time to try to see what will move consumers. But I think that with those things that we wanted Life Unlimited to do with driving better bundling and driving a better overall offer structure for consumers that we're happy with how it's performing.

Got it. I want to switch to wireless. Competition seems to have picked up in the last quarter. We saw your net adds slow down a touch in 4Q. What's your take on that?

Look, there's a lot of promotionality out there from a mobile phone perspective right now to a point that I would say, like some of it, I think, is probably irrational. But we continue to grow well despite not having followed down that path. And so I think to the extent that we can continue to do that to continue to have good growth year-over-year increases in our gross line additions in spite of not sort of following down that path, so still having kind of economically rational offers in the market. It's really a testament to the overall value that we can create for consumers with our product and to our continuing ability to grow that business and to grow it in a way that creates good financial returns for the company in spite of what's happening in the broader competitive space there.

Got it. You recently announced savings of -- guaranteed savings of $1,000 for each customer that switches from the big 3 wireless carriers. Your volumes were already doing quite good. So was this a response to the increased competitive intensity?

I think of it as just a restatement of what we've been trying to message to consumers around value and utility already. If you look at our -- at the slide that we put in our quarterly investor deck over the last couple of -- several quarters, it's always been true that we've been able to save customers a dramatic amount of money when they bundle broadband and mobile products and buy converged connectivity from us. And this is just another way to state it to them to try to create that activity in the market. We're really confident that we can continue to do it, which is why the offer ultimately works from an economic perspective.

Got it. You recently renewed your MVNO agreement with Verizon. You signed a new MVNO agreement with T-Mobile for business customers. Do you think you have all the pieces for your wireless business to work?

I think we already have the key piece of the wireless business working, which is that we have a WiFi and CBRS network or a wireless network of our own that delivers now 88% of the data that we deliver to mobile phones on our network. In addition to that, we have great partners in Verizon and T-Mobile. I think that we are well positioned with them and with the network that we already have to continue to drive a leading mobile product that works better for consumers because of being on our network and a place where we can drive good growth in the business going forward.

Got it. Last one on wireless. So your mobile service margins, excluding SAC, have been growing pretty healthy -- at a pretty healthy rate. It was 34% in 3Q '25. Where do you think that goes in the long term?

We can continue to grow our mobile service margin from where we are -- that mobile service, excluding SAC, from where we are right now. I think we haven't yet reached full scale efficiencies. And so we're continuing to gain scale efficiencies as we add mobile lines to the network. In addition to that, the work that we've been doing around digitization and automation across our customer service function will continue to drive efficiencies into that business as well. And with the combination of those, I think there's an opportunity. I fully expect that we'll meaningfully grow that sort of margin, excluding SAC for the next several years.

Got it. Switching to video. So typically, I wouldn't even talk about video because it has generally not mattered much for investors. But your results in 4Q were probably beyond anyone's expectations. I don't suppose you expect that to continue in the future?

The video business is still challenged, right? And that's particularly the case in a quarter like this quarter where we have rate increases from programmers that we then have to pass on to customers in order to maintain a reasonable margin in the product. So even with that, though, I guess, if I go back and look and say, what do we learn from 4Q? We learned that adding value back into the product really does matter. So having $125 worth of programmer streaming apps available with the video product actually does drive value to consumers, and it's made the product stickier. I would couple with it, so not only did we have a positive number, we, for the first time, started seeing an increasing number of customers come back into fully provisioned video products. And for me, that's important because when you think about, well, what kind of video products drives the stickiest customer, it's the video product that actually has all of those apps inside of it, and we're actually being successful in selling that product to customers. So I'm excited about it on that front. As you mentioned, it hasn't mattered that much from a financial perspective. I think there are a couple of things to think about there. One is that the compression of video margin is real. And to the extent that we can be successful at just limiting the compression of video margin, that is really helpful and then allowing on the other side of it, broadband and mobile growth from a financial perspective to stand out. And the other piece is that the real value of the video product is the value that it can add to the broadband subscription, right? And so to the extent that we can continue to be successful inside of that business, I think it continues to drive then better outcomes for the broadband business because of how we differentiate the product.

Got it. your business services revenue has been almost flattish at this point. Like when will it take -- what will it take to reaccelerate growth in that business?

Yes. So in business services, I'll divide the world in 2. On the small business side, think we continue to have a good right to win in that space. We have a great product and packaging set. We are not an incumbent in a lot of that space. And so there's a bigger market opportunity for us to go after. Small business has been challenged by the same fixed wireless pressure that the residential market has been challenged by. But I actually think inside of small business, the portion of the market that you can address with a fixed wireless product is actually smaller. And so ultimately, our -- my expectation is that sort of once we get past that sort of window of pressure from fixed wireless that we should be able to continue to grow in that space. In mid-market and large, we've actually continued to grow pretty well and that in spite of continued pressure from the wholesale business. But in that space, what I'm excited about is what we will get in the Cox acquisition, assuming that it closes. When you think about where they have been from a hospitality business perspective from their investment in Segra, from their investment in things like RapidScale and some of the sort of underlying product set, I think that there are a lot of things that we should be able to bring out of the Cox business and bring it to the broader footprint and actually create some accelerated growth by pulling those 2 businesses together.

Got it. You've set a goal to grow EBITDA this year. Can you just give us some of the key puts and takes on how we get there?

Yes. So first piece, it's a political advertising year. So we'll have political advertising, which I think grows over the course of the year. You have the mobile business, we're continuing to grow quite well and we continue to have expansion in mobile revenue over the year. There are obviously puts and takes in broadband. So you got to think about the customer compression, but on the other side of that the ARPU growth that we talked about. And video, although we're losing fewer customers, there is still margin pressure inside of that business. We offset those things with what I think we can do on the efficiency side, which is really to drive automation and tools that across the business, I think, drive down the cost of transaction volume and in some cases, drive transaction volume out of the business. And I think we can be really successful there. And so when you put it all together, that's how you get to an EBITDA growth plan.

Got it. Investors are nervous about your long-term EBITDA growth. When I look at the valuation of your stock, it implies like a perpetual negative EBITDA growth. What gives you the confidence that you can continue to grow EBITDA in 2027 and beyond? I mean I'm not looking for specific guidance, but any color that you can add there would be helpful.

So the things that I put together, first off, I think we have the right strategic and tactical approach to running our network assets, which is focused on in the long term, having as many customers as we can have attached to that network by driving value to those customers. The second piece then is we have a network that actually has all of the capabilities it needs to be able to win with customers in the long term. Our network today and the delivery to a customer is 99 -- more than 99% fiber. That last mile actually has advantages in that it is powered. It has significant edge components that will allow us to deliver the next generation of products to consumers in a really powerful way. And so I think that we are well positioned to be the kind of product that consumers need on a go-forward basis. You combine with that then, I think we can continue to drive efficiency from a cost perspective over time as well. And when you pull that together, I think you can get to EBITDA growth. Maybe the other piece, when you think about the market itself, I think everybody recognizes that at some point, fixed wireless ends up being capacity constrained. I think that you have -- similarly on the fiber side, folks generally recognize that at some point, we're going to reach the end of what it's economically viable to build. And I think what's left there is a market that can be rational from a long-term perspective because you have capacity limits on fixed wireless and a competitive marketplace, but one that can be a rational competitive marketplace in the long term. You put that together, I think you can get to EBITDA growth. I think also in the short to medium term, we have really significant free cash flow growth. If you put on the back end of that, some sustainable growth in the business going forward, we have the right leverage profile for the moment in terms of being in a place where there is a lot of value that can be generated. And so ultimately, for equity holders, I think that the stock where it is today actually works quite well.

Got it. Switching to CapEx and free cash flow. Your CapEx has been elevated for the past 4 years at this point through rural build network upgrades. You've guided to CapEx falling to under $8 billion in 2028 and beyond. There remains some skepticism among investors that your CapEx will actually come down. What gives you the confidence in the long-term guidance there?

So the thing that took our CapEx from the below $8 billion level to where we are today is our investment initiatives, particularly around expansion and network evolution. And so the thing we have to do to get back to where we were before is just to complete those initiatives. As I said earlier, as we were talking, the expansion initiative for practical purposes is essentially complete this year. The network evolution initiative then substantially complete by the end of 2027. Just pulling that capital out of the plan is enough to get us back to that run rate below $8 billion. And so we're quite confident in our ability to get there.

Got it. I want to talk about Cox for a second. So your proposed acquisition has received the SEC approval. What remains for you to close the transaction?

So as you know, we have our federal as well as all of the state approvals, except for California. We are working with California to do what we can to accelerate the process there. And so we look forward to working through that with them.

Do you have a time line that you can share with us?

So the original time line that we set was midyear this year. I don't have a move away from that.

What do you see as the biggest opportunity with the acquisition of the Cox asset?

So the biggest opportunity is to take our operating strategy and apply it against the assets, right? If I think about -- we have great pricing and packaging and value and utility that we can bring to their customers. We're excited to roll that out to all of the Cox customers and really to all consumers across the Cox footprint. When we do that, if you look today, their mobile penetration and their video penetration are both very low. I think we'll drive more mobile and probably more video penetration into the Cox footprint just by sort of rolling out our strategy over the assets. You combine that with some things that maybe get less attention, but the technology in the advertising side of our business, if we roll it out across the Cox footprint, I think actually, there's some great things that we can drive on the advertising side as we pull the businesses together. We already talked about B2B and where I think it goes the other direction. I think there are actually some great things that they've done on their side that by expanding them across the existing Charter footprint, we'll be able to deliver better for customers. And so there's a lot to like there. I think we're excited when the transaction closes about getting going to drive some additional value out of the Cox assets.

Got it. I want to close with talking about M&A. Once you're done with the Cox acquisition, what's your appetite for further M&A? Do you need to complete the Cox integration before you start to look at other assets? Or would you be actively looking for other opportunities out there?

Look, we like cable businesses. We like cable assets. We believe that we have the right strategic and tactical approach to running those assets. I think when we look at opportunities, what matters is, is it at the right price point that reflects the growth potential for those assets? And through that, does it bring accretive value to shareholders? And so I think we will continue to look where there are those opportunities for sets of assets that we think could bring value to shareholders. And from a Cox integration perspective, I don't think that, that should be limiting in terms of our ability to go and take advantage of ultimately, the value that we talked about of deploying our operating strategy against sets of assets where that can deliver great value.

That was helpful. Any last word for investors?

I don't think so. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We'll wrap it there.