Charter Communication CHTR Spectrum recently announced that it has begun construction of a fiber optic network that will bring its services to more than 4,700 homes and small businesses in Wexford County, MI.
Spectrum offers its internet gig services throughout the deployment area. For rural households, it offers Internet services with download speeds of 1 Gbps, while the company provides Internet connectivity services for small and medium-sized businesses with download speeds of 300 Mbit/s, 600 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s.
Charter also offers its Spectrum wireless services to customers who use its Internet services along with telephone services through Spectrum Voice. This allows unlimited calling in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and Mexico with up to 28 popular calling features including Call Guard that helps block unwanted automatic calls.
In addition, Spectrum offers its TV services across Wisconsin with more than 200 HD channels and access to 85,000 on-demand movies and shows. The Spectrum TV app allows viewers to stream content across other platforms such as Kindle Fire, Samsung Smart TVs, and Apple’s (AAPL) Apple TV and Spectrum Originals.
Spectrum also recently introduced Spectrum Internet, mobile, TV and voice services to more than 540 homes and small businesses in the Northwoods regions of Arbor Vitae, Woodruff, Three Lakes and the city of Piehl, WI.
Spectrum is expanding its US presence to support the top line
CHTR reported slow revenue growth in the second quarter of 2022. It reported revenue of $13.598 billion, up 6.2% year over year.
CHTR’s shares are down 29.7% year-to-date, compared to a 24.5% decline in Zacks’ cable TV industry.
Growth slowed due to lower activation of internet users. CHTR had 30.253 million internet customers in the second quarter of 2022, up 2.1% year-on-year. Charter lost 21,000 internet customers in the most recent quarter.
Also, CHTR lost 226,000 video subscribers in the second quarter, with the market mostly saturated. The space is dominated by major streaming service providers such as Netflix NFLX and Amazon Prime Video intensifying competition for charters to capture a decent market share.
Netflix has invested aggressively in building its original content portfolio, and the company still enjoys its leading position in the streaming industry. It is CHTR’s most prominent competitor in the video streaming space.
CHTR has collaborated with Komcast CMCSA develops and offers a new streaming platform on 4K streaming devices and smart TVs of different brands. The joint venture will supply CHTR with Comcast Flex and hardware and help attract new customers to counter the competition.
As viewers from other platforms stream through the Spectrum TV app, CHTR will benefit from its strategic offering of Apple TV services to its customers.
Apple TV+ recently broke records with 52 Emmy Award nominations across 13 titles, growing the total number of Emmy Award nominations by more than 40% year-on-year in less than three years since its global launch.
The availability of Apple TV and other streaming platforms in its TV app will help Charter fend off competition from Netflix and Amazon. As of June 30, 2022, CHTR had a total of 32.124 million customer relationships, up 1.1% year-on-year.
Charter’s recent strategy to expand operations in Wexford County underscores its strategy to invest $5 billion to build a fiber optic network. This will help provide broadband access to approximately 1 million customer locations in 24 states in the years to come. This, in turn, is expected to significantly expand the customer base of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company. You can see the full list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks can be found here.
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