Altice USA sees enhancing metrics, however nonetheless data a Q2 income loss

Residential cellular sees 50% YoY progress, Altice anticipates extra exercise within the second half of 2024

Altice USA made progress throughout a lot of its metrics through the second quarter of 2024, though it nonetheless reported decreased revenues in comparison with the identical time final yr.

“Within the second quarter our firm achieved vital enhancements in operational metrics and buyer satisfaction, progress in our fiber, cellular, and B2B companies, and continued stabilization of ARPU throughout our base,” stated Dennis Mathew, Altice USA’s chairman and CEO. “We elevated product and community high quality, launched refreshed go-to-market methods, that are beginning to achieve traction, and launched Leisure TV, Optimum’s new low-cost web TV package deal obtainable solely on Optimum Stream, offering extra selection and suppleness for purchasers. Wanting forward, we have now an modern roadmap of future product and expertise enhancements that we’re desperate to carry to present and potential clients this yr and past, and we stay targeted on advancing community and repair high quality, driving worthwhile buyer relationships, and sustaining monetary self-discipline.”

On the corporate’s quarterly name, Mathew summed it up by saying, “Q2 was one other quarter of progress in our transformation journey.”

Altice noticed its revenues slide 3.6% year-on-year to $2.2 billion, however CFO Marc Sirota identified that this was a “notable enchancment” from its development in latest quarters; the corporate’s residential revenues had been down 4.4% from the second quarter of 2023, however Sirota stated that was higher than the 5.7% year-over-year lower that the corporate had reported between Q2 2022 and Q2 2023.

Bucking that development was residential cellular service income, the place Altice USA noticed its third consecutive quarter of greater than 50% year-over-year progress. The corporate’s cellular base is small however rising, reaching 385,000 traces through the second quarter.

Cellular web additions for the telco had been 33,000, up from 16,000 throughout the identical time final yr; Altice USA’s cellular penetration inside its buyer base is at 5.8%.

“We’ve quite a lot of runway to proceed to develop the cellular attachment fee and penetration to create stickier clients,” stated Sirota. “We anticipate accelerating cellular progress within the second half of the yr by means of gross sales productiveness and thrilling new choices.”

Altice USA plans to increase its cellular gross sales to extra channels and expands its gadget choice; it added tablets through the second quarter of 2024 and plans in introduce wearables in 2025. Altice additionally not too long ago began promoting cellular in its business-to-business phase, Sirota famous, and plans to additionally add extra managed companies within the B2B phase together with network-as-a-service and LTE backup.

“As we proceed to ramp up on cellular, this could contribute to extra of our residential income traits over time,” Sirota added.

Altice USA added 40,000 fiber clients through the second quarter to carry its fiber buyer base to 434,000, and elevated its fiber buyer penetration to greater than 15%. About 60% of these web additions had been from current clients migrating to fiber, in line with Sirota, who stated that the corporate anticipated such migrations to speed up within the second half of 2024.

Whole broadband subscriber web losses had been 51,000 within the quarter, partly as a result of lack of the Reasonably priced Connectivity Program, firm executives stated.

Altice stated that it added about 62,000 fiber passings through the quarter to achieve 2.8 million and expects to hit the three million mark by the top of this yr.