Altice Still Seeing Broadband Subscriber Slide

Altice saw a second consecutive year of declining residential broadband subscribers in 2023. Announcing its Q4 results after the market's close Wednesday, Altice said it ended the year with 4.2 million residential broadband primary service units, down 114,000 from the end of 2022. It lost 103,000 in 2022. In a call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer Marc Sirota noted a "challenging macroeconomic environment" for the 27,000 subs lost in Q4. CEO Dennis Mathew said Altice saw competitors in Q4 "really outspending us in advertising and marketing ... effectively reducing our share of voice in the market." Altice was accelerating its mobile and fiber growth, said Mathew, noting its fiber penetration reached more than 12% of its footprint by the end of 2023. He said the 8 Gbps symmetrical speeds the carrier offers on its fiber network to more than 2.7 million subscribers offers "a strong competitive advantage everywhere we overlap with a fiber competitor in the Northeast." Fiber network growth is a chief goal for this year, said the CEO, with Sirota adding fiber passings will expand to 3 million homes by 2024's end. Mathew said fixed wireless competitors were aggressively courting its mobile subs with lower-end data plans. He said Altice's western markets were seeing aggressive fiber overbuilding. The company is now about 40% overbuilt. Having launched Optimum Stream last year as its main video product, Altice will roll out additional video package options this year, the CEO said. Asked about the ESPN/Fox/Warner Bros. Discovery streaming sports joint venture (see 2402070006), Mathew said it points to the "broken" traditional linear video model, with viewership at record lows while rates are at all-time highs. During talks with programmers, Altice is pushing for its video subscribers gaining access to the programmers' streaming services, he said. The 27,000 subscribers lost was worse than the 20,000 Wall Street had expected, and most of its financial metrics were better than expected, though still declining, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote.