Cable One Expecting to Lose Up to 18,000 Residential Broadband Customers in Q2
The company’s stock fell on financial and operational estimates disclosed in an SEC filing
WASHINGTON, July 9, 2026 – Cable One is expecting to report residential broadband subscriber losses between 16,000 to 18,000 for the second quarter of 2026. That’s worse than analysts expected.
The company revealed the estimate in a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Cable One’s stock was down more than 16 percent Thursday afternoon.
Cable One has not announced its second quarter earnings call. Last year, it held the call on July 31.
Like other cable operators, the company has been shedding broadband subscribers in recent years amid competition from fixed wireless and fiber providers. Assuming the actual second quarter residential losses are around 17,000, that would be worse than the same time last year, BNP Paribas analyst Sam McHugh pointed out in an investor note.
He also noted the year-over-year decline — 3,5000 — would be worse than the year-over-year decline observed in the previous quarter this year.
“On its own this should be taken as a negative for the stock today, and more broadly it adds conviction to our view that headwinds for the US Cable industry are growing, not levelling out or even receding,” he wrote.
The company also said its average revenue per user (ARPU) for residential broadband was expected to be between $80 and $81. That’s just above what analysts were expecting, and an uptick from last quarter.
A higher ARPU means more revenue, which is typically what investors are looking for, but Cable One’s prices are higher than its competitors, and MoffettNathanson’s Craig Moffett has argued those prices have to come down in order for the company to become more competitive.
Jim Holanda, who came on as Cable One’s CEO in February after a 15-year stint at Astound Broadband, said on the company’s earnings call in April that “while we may see some variability from quarter-to-quarter, we continue to expect ARPU trends to remain broadly stable for the year.”
The company ended the first quarter with 887,100 residential broadband subscribers and 98,500 business subscribers.
Cable One is in the early stages of offering a mobile service, which it launched earlier this year. Cable giants Charter and Comcast are focusing on fixed and mobile broadband bundled as a means of retaining more subscribers.
The company's revenue projection for the quarter, between $346 million and $352 million, lined up with investor expectations, according to McHugh.
Vyve debt
The reason Cable One submitted the SEC filing was to say it was considering not closing an offer it made to Vyve Broadband’s lenders, and instead providing no credit support to the company after it acquired it.
The companies announced in January Cable One was acquiring Vyve for between $475 million and $495 million. Cable One already owned 45 percent of Vyve, and Vyve investors exercised a contractual option to sell the rest to the company.
The companies said they expected the deal to close in the fourth quarter of this year, and Vyve would then owe its lenders between $845 million and $895 million. Vyve brought in $310 million in revenue in 2025.
In June, Cable One offered Vyve lenders a deal in which they would receive some cash up front and new loan terms in which Cable One would owe them the rest. Not many were interested in taking the offer.
McHugh wrote that Cable One might feel it has little to lose by negotiating aggressively, since Vyve isn’t making a lot of money, and the lenders likely don’t want to be saddled with taking control of the ISP.
Vyve had 675,000 passings and 210,000 subscribers as of Sept. 30, 2025. The company announced a leadership change in April following the departure of former CEO Andy Parrott.
Vyve “has developed an excellent network in geographies that will be complementary to our existing footprint, enable us to expand our overall market footprint and enhance our long-term growth prospects,” Cable One CFO Todd Koetje said when the deal was announced.
