Altice Down 35,000 Broadband Subscribers
The company was optimistic losses would stabilize.
WASHINGTON, August 7, 2025 – Second quarter losses continue for cable companies. Altice USA lost 35,000 broadband subscribers in the second quarter, fewer than analysts expected but an improvement over the same time last year.
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The cable operator attributed that to internal efforts to reduce churn, plus low-income and “hyperlocal” plans.
“While gross adds remain below prior year levels, the pace of decline is slowing to the lowest quarterly year-over-year index in the last two years,” Altice USA CEO Dennis Mathew said on the company’s earnings call. “Our broadband performance is showing clear signs of stabilization.”
The company added 56,000 subscribers on its fiber network, for a total of 663,000. The ISP counts nearly 4.3 million total consumer and business broadband customers.
The apparent beginning of a recovery in broadband additions, a metric prized by investors, is reason for optimism, MoffettNathanson Senior Managing Director Craig Moffett wrote in an investor note. Cable companies have been steadily losing subscribers in recent months as fiber and fixed wireless ISPs post steady gains.
“Behind that improvement is a recovering broadband market in the wake of last year’s ACP defunding,” he wrote. “Growth rates for broadband overall are still below pre-COVID levels, but the gap is narrowing.”
Still, that generally improving market is partly the result of other technologies improving a bit at cable’s expense, New Street Research analysts wrote earlier this week. Fixed wireless services from the major wireless carriers held strong with nearly a million new subscribers in the second quarter, Meanwhile Comcast posted its worst broadband quarter ever at 226,000 losses and Charter lost more than expected at 117,000.
Altice USA added 38,000 new mobile subscribers, for a total of 546,400. That’s fewer additions than Wall Street had estimated, but higher than the company’s 33,000 additions in the same quarter last year. The cable giants have been pushing their mobile services as a means of keeping customers and improving margins with bundled deals.
Moffett noted Altice has an advantage in offering bundled fixed and mobile broadband, especially in its western U.S. footprint, as do the other major cable companies with their sprawling wireline footprints.
Debt
Altice USA has about $7 billion in debt coming due in 2027, putting the company in a bit of a race against the clock.
“They’ll need to fix broadband trends – and revenue and EBITDA trends while they’re at it – well before 2027 if they are to have any hope at all of refinancing their debt,” Moffett wrote.
New Street Research analyst Vikash Harlalka wrote the company could potentially borrow against its subscribers to raise cash and pay down the debt when necessary. The company took out a $1 billion loan backed by its cable assets in the Bronx and Brooklyn last month.
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