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Charter Communications · CHTR · NASDAQ

Charter sells Internet, mobile, video, and voice subscriptions under the Spectrum brand over a cable network passing about 58 million U.S. homes, earning roughly 89% of revenue from recurring monthly fees.

$126.23
Price (Jun 18, 2026)
~$17B
Market cap 138M shares
$54.8B
Revenue (FY2025)
58M
Homes & businesses passed 41 states
A decade of buybacks nearly halved the share count, with stock repurchased at $600–750 apiece in 2021; broadband's stall has since unwound the story — from a 52-week high near $422, a Q1 2026 earnings miss on April 24 cut the shares ~25% in a single day, sliding them from $242 to a multi-year low of $126 by June and out of the Nasdaq-100.
2 · The keystone

The whole case turns on one number: residential-Internet net adds

  • Eleven straight quarters of losses. Residential Internet — the highest-margin product and the anchor of every bundle — shed 510,000 customers in 2024, 393,000 in 2025, and another 120,000 in Q1 2026, even as broadband revenue per customer held near $119 a month.
  • The bull read — a fixable connects problem. Churn is actually falling and 21% of Internet customers now take Spectrum mobile; if the bleed is weak new-customer demand inside an improving-retention base, convergence and the finished network upgrade can stabilize it.
  • The bear read — permanent substitution. Fixed-wireless 5G and fiber overbuild (AT&T overlaps ~27% of the footprint, Verizon ~16%) bypass the sunk-cost cable moat at near-zero marginal cost — a structural breach that no network upgrade reverses.
What settles it: two or more quarters of flat-to-positive residential-Internet net adds. Until that prints, everything downstream — revenue, EBITDA, the buyback — stays unresolved.
3 · The money

A cash machine priced for the scrapyard — if EBITDA holds

~3.5x
P/E on $36.21 FY2025 EPS
~4.9x
EV / EBITDA cheapest profitable peer
25%+
Normalized FCF yield post-capex-cliff math
4.15x
Net debt / EBITDA $94.6B of debt

Charter converts ~40% EBITDA margins into billions of cash and has retired more than half its shares since 2016. The bull's hardest-to-dispute point: run-rate capex falls from ~$11.7B in 2025 to below $8B by 2028 — worth over $28 of free cash flow per share with no subscriber growth required. The catch is the gearing: the ~$17B equity is a thin sliver on a ~$112B enterprise, so the cheapness only holds if EBITDA does — and it slipped about 1.8% in Q1 2026.

4 · What changed

From buyback machine to defend-and-consolidate

Before: For a decade Charter levered the cash engine to ~4.4x and retired stock — shares fell from ~297M in 2017 to ~138M in 2025, and diluted EPS more than doubled on roughly flat ~$5B net income. The product was still growing; broadband customers peaked at 30.6M in 2023.

Pivot: When organic growth reversed, management changed the playbook — pausing the buyback for pending deals and, in May 2025, agreeing to buy Cox to manufacture the scale broadband no longer delivered: ~69.5M passings combined, plus ~$12.6B of assumed Cox net debt, alongside a separate Liberty Broadband merger that absorbs its own largest shareholder.

Today: Charter is effectively co-controlled — Liberty (~29%) and Advance/Newhouse (~13%) hold roughly 42% of the equity and five of thirteen board seats — and is lowering its leverage target to 3.5–3.75x after the deals close. The open question: can bought scale substitute for the organic growth that defined the franchise for a decade?

5 · What the price says

The market has capitulated to the bear case

  • The April 24 break. Q1 2026 EPS of $9.31 missed consensus by ~9%, the −120k Internet print landed, and the stock fell ~25% in a single session on roughly 5x normal volume — the moment the 'broadband-back-to-growth' narrative snapped.
  • Priced at the floor. At $126 the shares sit on the Street's single lowest price target (~$124) against a stale ~$239 mean; Charter was ejected from the Nasdaq-100 effective June 22, 2026, and the structural buyback bid is paused for the mergers.
  • Insiders leaned in. CEO Winfrey's reported 'compensation actually paid' swung to negative $46.1M in 2025 as prior grants went underwater, and insiders bought the crash in the open market rather than selling it.
With the bear case fully in the price and the bull case out of it, a single quarter of stabilization is worth more to the upside than another −120k print is to the downside.
6 · The two-sided close

A cliff worth owning, gated on a base that must stop shrinking

  • What favors the bull. The capex cliff is specific, management-committed, and near-term checkable — ~$28 a share of free cash flow as spending rolls off — and at ~3.5x earnings the market is pricing trough cash as if it were terminal.
  • What cuts against it. Eleven straight quarters of broadband losses, EBITDA flat-to-down, and 4.15x leverage on a thin equity sliver: if the decline is structural, the cheapness is a value trap and the geared equity absorbs the hit.
  • The honest read. Bull and bear read the same facts and split only on what they mean; the evidence, not the argument, decides it. This is a name to underwrite on one number, sized for a binary outcome.

Watchlist to re-rate: Residential-Internet net adds (two-plus quarters flat-to-positive flips the thesis); the direction of Adjusted EBITDA at 4x leverage; and capex actually falling toward sub-$8B as Cox closes and deleveraging proceeds. Next print: Q2 2026 on July 24, 2026.