Altice USA has reported increase in revenue, EBITDA, EBITDA margin and Capex during the first quarter of 2019.
Altice USA made an investment of $340 million in networks in Q1 2019, , representing 14.2 percent of revenue, vs 258 million in Q1 2018.
The capital expenditure of Altice USA was $92 million in business services, $75 million in CPE, $74 million in FTTH expansion, $71 million in other network infrastructure and $28 million in mobile in Q1 2019.
Altice rolled out Fiber symmetrical 1 Gbps (Gigabit) internet service over Altice’s FTTH network to residential customers in select areas of Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Altice USA’s FTTH network is expected to reduce long-term capital intensity. The new fiber network will offer a better customer experience driving lower interactions and lower technical service visit requirements, as well as structurally reducing maintenance, power costs and customer premise equipment costs.
Altice USA enhanced broadband services on its existing hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network in the Optimum service area, delivering broadband speeds of up to 400 Mbps for residential customers.
The company plans to launch 1 Gbps broadband service with an upgrade to DOCSIS 3.1 and smart WiFi capabilities over HFC in 2019.
Average household data usage has reached over 280GB per month at the end of Q1 2019 and grew over 20 percent. Optimum customers are connecting 12 devices in the home on average.
Altice One is improving customers’ broadband experience with a new WiFi router and WiFi mini repeaters. It achieved 40 percent improvement in WiFi throughput and attenuation compared to legacy customer premise equipment.
Altice USA has completed the development of its core network to support its infrastructure-based MVNO including upgrading and expanding its WiFi network targeting to launch its mobile business in 2019 summer. The company has deployed 19,000 AirStrands with the Sprint partnership in less than a year.
Revenue
Altice USA reported 2.9 percent increase in revenue to $2.397 billion.
Net loss of Altice USA reduced to $25 million in Q1 2019, or $0.04/share, from $129 million in Q1 2018, or $0.17/share.
Altice USA reported Adjusted EBITDA of $1.033 billion (+5.3 percent) with an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 43.1 percent.
Customer growth
Altice USA added 37K residential broadband customers, but lost 10K video customers, and 20K telephony customers in Q1 2019.
During Q1 2018, Altice USA added 26K residential broadband customers and lost 30K video customers, and 8K telephony customers.
Altice USA Residential ARPU increased 2.1 percent to $142.57 thanks to its focus on content mix.
Altice USA’s Business services revenue rose 5.3 percent with the Enterprise & Carrier segment growing 6 percent and SMB revenue growing 4.8 percent.
The company’s SMB customer base grew 1.4 percent due to value offers with voice and data bundles and reduced churn. Altice USA introduced new initiatives including Business Hosted Voice for SMB customers and security / DDOS protection for mid-market enterprise customers.
Altice USA’s Advertising revenue increased 6.8 percent due to an increase in targeted data and analytics revenue.
Altice USA, through its data and analytics subsidiary a4, achieved growth with Athena, a self-serve client application for multi-screen campaign management with one-stop shopping for advertisers.
Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei said: “With our focus on network investment we continue to see improved broadband customer growth and significant growth in the demand for higher speeds and data usage.”
The average broadband speed taken by Altice USA’s customer base increased 29 percent to 191 Mbps in Q1 2019 and average household data usage reached over 280GB.
Altice USA has reached approximately 400K Altice One customers, representing 12 percent of total video customers.
