Charter Communications (CHTR) official guidance

Broadband ARPU will improve sequentially in Q3.

For standalone Charter, we continue to expect total 2026 capital expenditures to reach approximately $11.4 billion.

That reduction in capital expenditures on its own from approximately $12.1 billion over the last 12 months to less than $8 billion in 2028 is equivalent to over $30 of free cash flow per share based on our June 30th share count.

We continue to expect that our calendar year 2026 cash tax payments will total between $500 million and $800 million.

Our focus is on penetration as well as connectivity ARPU, and overall customer relationship ARPU, excluding the program or app allocation, both of which I think will grow in FY 2026.

Our focus is on penetration as well as connectivity ARPU, and overall customer relationship ARPU, excluding the program or app allocation, both of which I think will grow in FY 2026.

Based on our June 30 standalone share count at close and on an as converted, as exchanged basis, we expect our total shares to be about 177 million.

Currently, for the full year 2026, we expect standalone Charter EBITDA, excluding the impact of transition costs, to decline around 1% year-over-year.

As of the end of the third quarter, including the impact of the Cox and Liberty Broadband transactions and including the impact of our second quarter debt repurchases, and assuming the success of the exchange offer announced yesterday evening, we expect our ratio of net debt to last 12-month adjusted EBITDA to be just above 3.9 times.

We continue to expect that our calendar year 2026 cash tax payments will total between $500 million-$800 million.

Yeah, I think because of that, from an overall Internet ARPU growth perspective, it'll be close either way in terms of where we land on overall Internet ARPU growth for the year.

By the end of this year, about 50% of the current Spectrum network will be upgraded to symmetrical and multi-gig service, with significant work on the remaining 50% already in play.

I'm not projecting broadband relationship growth this year, but we expect to see an improved trajectory from the investments we've made over the past three years.

We expect to revert to normalized CapEx in the range of $7.5 billion-$8 billion per year by 2028.

We expect our capital intensity to return to 13%-14% of revenue by 2028 at Charter standalone, and we can probably do the same even with the Cox integration.

Yeah, I think that's right. And if you think about how that translates into, you know, something like cost to service customers, like, ultimately, I expect that cost to service customers to be slightly down over the year, in the year versus last year.

I expect that to be meaningfully slower this year than what we saw last year, largely related to sort of investment that we already made, sort of bringing the expense rate up and then changes that we've made that I think Chris talked quite a bit about inside of last quarter, to really try to find the right way to drive our message into the marketplace, and to do so efficiently.

In 2026, we'll nearly complete our rural build-out, providing us with over 1.7 million new subsidized rural passings with growth for years to come, as well as upside from the densification of higher growth areas in places like Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas.

We expect subsidized rural passings growth of approximately 450,000 in 2026, our last large build year, in addition to continued non-rural construction and fill-in activity.

And then, you know, there are multiple headwinds that impact video ARPU that make that one difficult. You've got programmer streaming app allocation, which continues to accelerate. You have some more unfavorable bundled revenue allocation, and you have a higher mix of skinnier video tiers. If you think about that together with programming and programming cost per video sub, I expect that programmer cost per video sub will be up in low single digits when you exclude that programmer streaming app allocation. And we did pass through some programmer costs in our video pricing at the beginning of this year.