Conferencia de resultados del 3T 2026 de Charter Communications (CHTR): pérdidas en internet y plan de costes de más de 3.000 millones de dólares

Puntos clave

• Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) registró unos ingresos proforma en el tercer trimestre de 2026 con un descenso interanual del 1,5%. El EBITDA ajustado se redujo un 4%, o un 3% si se excluyen los gastos de transición de Cox.
• Legacy Charter perdió 156.000 clientes de Internet, frente a una pérdida de 109.000 un año antes. Legacy Cox perdió 77.000 clientes de Internet.
• La dirección anunció un nuevo modelo operativo enfocado en reactivar el crecimiento de clientes de Internet y simplificar la organización. Charter tiene como objetivo alcanzar 2.000 millones de dólares en ahorros incrementales y anualizados de gastos operativos durante los próximos 18 meses.
• La empresa ha identificado más de 1.000 millones de dólares en sinergias de costes anualizadas derivadas de la operación de Cox. Se espera alcanzar casi la mitad de esa tasa de ejecución en el primer semestre de 2027, y el 90% en un plazo de 24 meses.
• El flujo de caja libre del tercer trimestre fue de 674 millones de dólares. Charter cerró el trimestre con un principal de deuda de 109.000 millones de dólares y un apalancamiento neto de 3,93x, con un objetivo de 3,5x en un plazo de tres años tras el cierre de la transacción de Cox y Liberty Broadband.
• La dirección prevé unos gastos de capital proforma de aproximadamente 13.000 millones de dólares para 2026, excluyendo las inversiones de transición. Sobre esa misma base, prevé que los gastos de capital de 2027 se sitúen en 11.000 millones de dólares o por debajo.

Datos financieros principales

La pérdida neta proforma de 2.100 millones de dólares reflejó principalmente el deterioro contable del valor de las franquicias por 6.300 millones de dólares, los gastos vinculados a la transacción y un menor EBITDA. Estas partidas se compensaron parcialmente con una ganancia de 1.400 millones de dólares procedente del canje de deuda de agosto y un beneficio fiscal contable relacionado.

Rendimiento operativo y del negocio

Tendencias de Internet y de clientes

Legacy Charter perdió 156.000 clientes de Internet en el tercer trimestre, como consecuencia de un menor número de altas interanuales, mientras que la tasa de cancelaciones (churn) se mantuvo prácticamente estable. La dirección citó la mayor competencia del acceso inalámbrico fijo, menores ventas a consumidores de bajos ingresos, la sustitución móvil, la continua superposición de fibra y las agresivas promociones de los competidores.

Legacy Cox perdió 77.000 clientes de Internet. Desde el lanzamiento de Spectrum Day en el área de cobertura de Cox el 16 de septiembre, la dirección señaló que el ritmo de pérdidas de clientes de Internet se redujo a la mitad, impulsado principalmente por un aumento de las ventas. La tasa de bajas de Cox se mantuvo aproximadamente un 10% por encima de la de Legacy Charter.

Charter sumó 48.000 relaciones netas con clientes en su área de cobertura rural subvencionada. Las unidades inmobiliarias pasadas en zonas rurales aumentaron en 116.000 durante el trimestre y en 479.000 en los últimos 12 meses.

Móvil y vídeo

Legacy Charter sumó 440.000 líneas móviles en el tercer trimestre y más de 1,6 millones de líneas en el último año, lo que representa un crecimiento de casi el 15%. Legacy Cox sumó 70.000 líneas móviles, y su ritmo mensual de incorporaciones netas se triplicó tras el lanzamiento de Spectrum.

Legacy Charter perdió 38.000 clientes de vídeo, en comparación con las 70.000 pérdidas del tercer trimestre de 2025. La dirección atribuyó la mejora a un menor número de reducciones de paquetes, una menor pérdida de clientes y un mayor número de mejoras de plan tras las optimizaciones en la oferta de Seamless Entertainment.

Legacy Cox perdió 39.000 clientes de vídeo durante el trimestre, aunque la dirección señaló que la cifra de clientes de vídeo aumentó ligeramente en octubre.

Integración de Cox y modelo operativo

Charter cerró la adquisición de Cox Communications el 19 de agosto. La compañía combinada cuenta ahora con una red que pasa por más de 70 millones de hogares y empresas y atiende aproximadamente 37 millones de relaciones con clientes, incluidos 34 millones de clientes de Internet.

El nuevo modelo operativo tiene dos prioridades: devolver el negocio principal al crecimiento y crear una organización más simple y eficiente. Charter planea renovar por completo su propuesta de Internet, marketing, distribución, precios y ejecución del servicio, manteniendo al mismo tiempo el ARPU de Internet mediante un mayor valor aportado al cliente.

La empresa tiene como objetivo alcanzar 2.000 millones de dólares en ahorros incrementales y anualizados de gastos operativos en un plazo de 18 meses, al margen de los más de 1.000 millones de dólares en sinergias por la transacción de Cox. La dirección indicó que el plan de ahorro priorizará la reducción de niveles organizativos, la ampliación de los tramos de control, la eliminación de proyectos y una base de proveedores más reducida. El programa no está dirigido a los empleados de primera línea de ventas y atención al cliente.

Previsiones de la dirección

• Charter prevé unos gastos de capital proforma para todo el año 2026 de aproximadamente 13.000 millones de dólares, excluyendo el capital de transición.
• Para 2027, la dirección prevé unos gastos de capital iguales o inferiores a 11.000 millones de dólares, excluyendo el capital de transición.
• Se espera que los pagos de impuestos en efectivo del año natural 2026 se sitúen entre 500 y 800 millones de dólares, incluyendo a Cox.
• Se prevé alcanzar casi la mitad de la tasa de ejecución de sinergias identificada para Cox en el primer semestre de 2027, y capturar el 90% en los próximos 24 meses.
• Charter tiene como objetivo lograr 2.000 millones de dólares en ahorros adicionales anualizados de gastos operativos durante los próximos 18 meses. La dirección pretende que estos ahorros respalden el EBITDA y el flujo de caja libre, al tiempo que proporcionan flexibilidad competitiva.
• La empresa espera cerrar 2026 con un apalancamiento inferior a 3,9x y alcanzar su objetivo de apalancamiento neto de 3,5x en un plazo de tres años tras el cierre de las operaciones de Cox y Liberty Broadband.
• La dirección no proporcionó un calendario específico para el regreso al crecimiento de los abonados de Internet o del EBITDA, pero afirmó que planea mostrar avances mediante un mayor número de altas, una menor tasa de bajas, un ARPU estable y una mayor convergencia de productos.

Riesgos y aspectos a vigilar

La pérdida de clientes de Internet sigue siendo el principal desafío operativo. Charter identificó la expansión del acceso inalámbrico fijo, la sustitución móvil, la competencia de la fibra y las agresivas ofertas promocionales como presiones clave.

La dirección señaló que los proveedores de satélites en órbita terrestre baja han tenido un impacto mínimo hasta la fecha, incluso en los mercados rurales, aunque reconoció su sólida capitalización y recursos de ingeniería. La penetración satelital ha sido mayor en zonas rurales de reciente construcción donde ya operaban proveedores alternativos.

El riesgo de ejecución sigue siendo significativo. Charter está integrando Cox de forma simultánea, al tiempo que rediseña su estructura operativa, transforma su modelo comercial y busca sustanciales reducciones de costes.

La empresa también arrastra un principal de deuda de 109.000 millones de dólares. Aunque Charter prevé un mayor flujo de caja libre gracias a un menor gasto de capital y al ahorro de costes, planea destinar una parte sustancial de su flujo de caja libre a corto plazo a reducir su endeudamiento.

Puntos destacados de la sesión de preguntas y respuestas con analistas

Volumen frente a ARPU: La dirección señaló que su objetivo es aumentar las ventas de Internet y reducir la tasa de bajas sin sacrificar el ARPU. La estrategia se centra en aportar valor en la conexión inicial y a lo largo de toda la relación con el cliente, en lugar de depender únicamente del vencimiento de promociones o de aumentos de tarifas.

Plazos para volver al crecimiento: Charter no proporcionó una fecha específica. Las prioridades a corto plazo incluyen reducir la brecha interanual de abonados de Internet de Legacy Charter y extender la incipiente mejora de ventas observada en el área de cobertura de Cox.

Ahorro de costes y reinversión: La dirección describió el programa de 2.000 millones de dólares como un plan de simplificación ascendente. El objetivo declarado es que los ahorros se trasladen al EBITDA y al flujo de caja libre, al tiempo que permiten a la empresa ser más ágil y competitiva.

Asignación de capital: Charter tiene la intención de equilibrar la reducción de deuda con la recompra de acciones. La dirección indicó que la mayor parte del flujo de caja libre del cuarto trimestre se destinará a una reducción eficiente de la deuda, aunque la compañía también prevé ciertas recompras de acciones a medida que avance hacia un apalancamiento de 3,5x.

Infraestructura inalámbrica: Charter continúa desplegando infraestructura CBRS en función de umbrales de rentabilidad y espera llegar a aproximadamente 50 mercados para finales de año. La dirección afirmó que la adquisición de Cox no ha acelerado sus planes de despliegue de CBRS.

Oportunidad en servicios para empresas: La dirección ve margen para aumentar la penetración en pequeñas empresas dentro de los mercados de Cox, al tiempo que extiende las capacidades de Cox en hostelería, empresas, Segra y RapidScale a lo largo de la mayor área de cobertura de Legacy Charter.

Transcripción completa de la conferencia de resultados

Transcripción completa de la conferencia de resultados

Comentarios de la dirección

Operator

Hello, and welcome to Charter Communications Third Quarter 2026 Investor Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]Also, as a reminder, this conference is being recorded today. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. .

I will now turn the call over to Stefan Anninger.

Stefan Anninger

Thanks, operator, and welcome, everyone. The presentation that accompanies this call can be found on our website, ir.charter.com. I would like to remind you that there are a number of risk factors and other cautionary statements contained in our SEC filings, and we encourage you to read them carefully. Various remarks that we make on this call concerning expectations, predictions, plans and prospects could constitute forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from historical or anticipated results. Any forward-looking statements reflect management's current view only, and Charter undertakes no obligation to revise or update such statements.

During the course of today's call, we will be referring to non-GAAP measures as defined and reconciled in our earnings materials. These non-GAAP measures, as defined by Charter, may not be comparable to measures with similar titles used by other companies.

We will also refer to pro forma results. While our COGS transactions closed on August 19, 2026, these pro forma results present information regarding the combined operations as if our transactions had closed at the beginning of the earliest period presented in our materials in order to provide a more useful discussion of our results. Please refer to the pro forma disclosures throughout today's materials.

As a reminder, all growth rates noted on this call and in the presentation are calculated on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise specified.

On today's call, we have Chris Winfrey, our President and CEO; Kevin Howard, our Interim CFO; and Jeff Murphy, our Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance and Development will also join us during Q&A to help us answer finance questions.

With that, let's turn the call over to Chris.

Christopher Winfrey

Thanks, Stefan. Before we discuss our results, I want to start with an important update on our business priorities and the significant changes we're making to how Charter operates and competes. We're announcing a new path forward for Charter to address a more competitive and complex market. We recognize that we've not generated the customer growth and performance we expect and our customer satisfaction is not where it needs to be.

Returning Charter to growth requires more than incremental improvements to how we operate. So today, I'm announcing a new operating model for Charter. We're fundamentally rethinking how we compete, how we allocate resources and how we run our business. This represents a significant change and with greater urgency and sharper focus we will transform our ability to compete to market with growing customer expectations for service delivery, experience and value.

Going forward, we'll maintain a relentless focus on two clear priorities: doubling down on returning our company to growth; and secondly, transforming Charter into a simpler, more efficient organization. Let me walk through how we intend to deliver on each of these objectives, which will strengthen our competitive position, unlock efficiency with faster decision-making, significantly increase cash flow over time.

Our top priority is to return to growth in our core business by winning more Internet customers. We have over 70 million passings, 37 million customer relationships and 34 million Internet customers leaving significant runway for more penetration of our footprint. We'll win more Internet customers by reformulating our value proposition and go-to-market approach to significantly accelerate the pace of new connects and grow market share. We'll make our offer stronger, more simple and more transparent and will perfect our single-play Internet go-to-market, including the offer proposition, the marketing and distribution. And then layer in our unique convergence capabilities, mobile, as well as our market-leading video product.

We also plan to modify our sales channel capabilities to drive better connects and maintain the same or higher ARPUs that connect and over the course of the customer relationship by delivering additional value over time. More details to come when we fully launch, but we will grow our Internet sales rate. But to really accelerate growth must also reduce churn. While we have low historical churn, we can be even more competitive through smarter pricing, enhanced customer service and an even better network.

Too often, our most loyal, long-term customers are at risk through aggressive price competition. And we also fully recognize the importance of Internet ARPU. And while our average ARPU is competitive, we'll reconfigure our offers at promotion and retail by adding value into the relationship and earning ARPU. We'll also significantly enhance our service with an even more disciplined focus on what drives customer calls and dissatisfaction. And we'll continue investment in AI technology to give our teams the tools to provide the best service and to reduce unnecessary service events.

Our second major priority is becoming a simpler, more agile and efficient organization. We're undertaking a fundamental redesign of how we operate at every level. will reduce complexity, accelerate decision-making and focus our resources on the activities that contribute most directly to growth and stronger performance. We've already begun putting these changes into motion, starting with our leadership. On September 1, Nick Jeffrey, the former CEO of Frontier and Vodafone U.K., joined Charter as our new Chief Operating Officer. Nick is already acting as an important change at Charter bringing a fresh perspective and challenging us to fundamentally rethink how we operate, compete and deliver for our customers. And he's helping me put this new model in place, which we introduced earlier this week to our 100,000-plus teammates nationwide.

That comes down to the two priorities of growth and efficiency that I mentioned, and we're bringing that to life across the entire company through four strategic imperatives: winning more Internet customers, improving customer service, upgrading our networks and becoming more efficient. We'll find an appropriate venue, whether in our conference call -- conference or an earnings call for you to hear from Nick and me directly on the operating strategy and transformation.

Alongside Nick's appointment, we've announced other changes to our leadership team and operating structure to address the evolving needs of our business as we build an organization to win in the future. We've also established dedicated leadership for Spectrum consumer, Spectrum business and spectrum wholesale.

Another critical one here is our ongoing investment to ensure we retain the best network for our customers across our footprint. As we complete our network evolution, we'll deliver even better reliability and faster upstream and downstream speeds and our network investments are set to decline after next year, consistent with our previous outlook.

A critical part of our transformation is capturing the full value of our combination with Cox while driving meaningful cost reductions. That means realizing the benefits of our expanded scale, simplifying our combined operations and eliminating duplicative activities. In addition to the more than $1 billion in transaction synergies that we anticipate from the Cox transaction, we're now targeting an incremental $2 billion in annualized run rate operating expense savings over the next 18 months. Much of that will come from simply eliminating projects that don't contribute to Internet growth. And we'll be also organizing our leadership and teams for maximum effectiveness, increasing spans of control and reducing layers, will drive even more meaningful partnership from a more focused and a narrowed set of vendors requiring better speed, quality and pricing.

I want to be very clear, these savings are not targeted at frontline service and sales employees, and we'll continue to invest in employee progression and market meeting benefits like education. Our frontline employees will benefit from simpler offerings, faster responsiveness to the market and continued technology deployment where we already used AI, allowing our team members to serve happier customers more effectively and reducing unnecessary service transactions.

We'll continue to drive higher quality and lower service transactions, higher job satisfaction, will reduce hiring needs as a result, all while moving Cox service calls from offshore to our 100% U.S. employee base without increasing headcount. And we're building a winning culture, raising our competitive metabolism with faster execution and a stronger sense of urgency across the company. This transformation represents an opportunity for us to take an uncompromising approach to strengthening our culture and it stronger performance across the business.

By simplifying how we operate, we'll be able to make decisions faster, execute more effectively and create greater capacity to focus on our Internet business and return to growth.

We recognize that ultimately, our progress was being measured by results. that we intend to provide you with greater visibility into our performance as we execute against these two main priorities. Right now, we're focused on a variety of measures of success to drive the right outcomes. But the most obvious ones are increasing the rate of customer connects, reducing churn, increasing customer lifetime while maintaining ARPU, increasing convergence across our existing and new footprint and bringing planned cost efficiencies online. -- and we look forward to updating you on our progress on these as we go forward.

The ultimate success of these initiatives will be reflected in stronger revenue, EBITDA and significantly higher free cash flow generation over time, supported by declining capital expenditures all of which also ties into prudent capital allocation, including debt reduction, which has already started.

Next, let's quickly review our newest high-value asset, Cox and our third quarter performance. On August 19, we closed our acquisition of Cox Communications, adding 11 million passes and over 5 million customers, making Spectrum the leading Internet and video provider in the United States. We now pass over 70 million homes and businesses with a 50% customer penetration rate more importantly, a great opportunity to grow our base.

With the addition of Cox, our footprint now includes key attractive and growing markets like Phoenix and Las Vegas; large adjacent markets like Virginia, Kansas, Oklahoma and Bird Island; and better in-market sales and service coverage in places like Los Angeles, San Diego, New Orleans and North Florida. And we've been busy welcoming Cox's former customers and our new team members to Spectrum.

The Cox transaction offers us significant transaction synergies, but also significant operating synergies like the growth opportunity offered by Cox's lower penetration across all of its residential products and the combination of Fox's well-known B2B capabilities with Legacy Charter gives us the ability to offer highly competitive business services on a much more national basis. There are many other opportunities like a recent porting over of Cox' successful AI network reliability team and local advertising upside.

During the third quarter, Legacy Charter added 440,000 mobile line, and over 1.6 million lines over the last 12 months for growth of nearly 15%. In video, our 38,000 loss at legacy Charter was half the size of last year's third quarter loss given driven by significant video product improvement over the past couple of years. In Internet, where competition remains intense, Legacy Charter lost 156,000 customers more than last year's loss of 109,000. We're not satisfied with that result, and we're taking active steps to shift momentum and gain share.

Legacy Cox lost 77,000 Internet customers in the quarter, and it's fair to think Cox is about 1/5 the size of legacy Charter. We knew Cox subscriber results and underlying financials were more challenged when we agreed to for the asset, which is partly what creates the opportunity in front of us. Importantly, since the launch of Spectrum Day on September 16, Internet sales were up significantly, already cutting the run rate Internet losses at COGS by half, still a higher loss than Spectrum when size adjusted but it's getting better quickly and the lower starting penetration is a big opportunity.

The monthly net add rate of mobile line for the legacy Cox is now increasing, and it's up 3x. And video customers grew slightly in October at legacy Cox and we see opportunities for that trend to continue. Those trends will certainly vary after initial launch period, but building the Spectrum brand to improve product and service offerings and an improved go-to-market for spectrum at large means will do well with the former Cox assets. Pro forma charter revenue was down 1.5% year-over-year, driven by lower residential revenue. And third quarter EBITDA, excluding COX transition expenses declined 3%. Kevin will cover more, but run rate transaction synergies are expected to be over $1 billion, with a little of that realized in the third quarter stub period but beginning to ramp in the fourth quarter with the separate cost transformation benefits I talked about beginning next year.

Beyond the immediate benefits of the Cox integration and our transformation program, I want to take a moment to remind you of our key assets and the competitive advantages those assets provide and why we win long term. We are America's Internet company with the capability no other company has to deliver Internet to more Americans, a purpose that we call connecting gigabit America.

Our fully deployed fiber-powered gigabit network is 100% converged, and will be multi-gig capable everywhere unlike our competition. Demand for data and overall data usage continues to grow, particularly in the upstream given massive secular trends, electric vehicles, uploading data at night, AI applications and other new low latency demands like physical AI in the future will ultimately separate our network from those with slower speeds and more latency.

We also have unique mobile and video products that support Internet customer growth. And today, we're the fastest-growing mobile provider in our footprint in an increasingly converged world. We have an economically advantaged capital-light mobile business with the fastest mobile speeds driven in part by our near nationwide automatic WiFi connection, including our speakers future with partners like Comcast.

It isn't just better speed in seamless connectivity nationwide. We also have the best value proposition in the market, and our video product is already the best video product in the country with extraordinary utility and value, driven in part by our seamless entertainment offering, providing over $130 per month and included program or app value.

We combine those great products and value with our Internet relationships together with customer service platform that's 100% U.S.-based, operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all backed by our industry-first and industry-leading customer service commitment.

Stepping back, we're reinvigorated by our new approach, and we're excited to shift the company into offense, where we can take full advantage of our leading assets and significant advantages can ignite our competitive culture and improve service execution for our customers.

Finally, I'd like to address our CFO transition. Kevin Howard, our Interim CFO, who's here with us today, has been our Chief Accounting Officer since 2006. He's highly experienced and knows our business extremely well. Kevin was our Interim CFO in 2010 just before I joined as Charter CFO. And I understand finance operations know the team well. We have top-notch capabilities across accounting, tax, planning, procurement, capital markets and IR. And with the in-house talent that we have in place and a premier CFO position available at a compelling inflection point for the company, we should be able to move pretty quickly in identifying a new CFO. Kevin will run through the quarter and also cover more on our balance sheet strategy, but I'd note that we've already come down to 3.9x leverage already, and we're committed to making steady progress using our significant free cash flow towards our 3.5x target leverage.

Now I'll turn it over to Kevin.

Kevin Howard

Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone. Please refer to Slide 10 for a summary of our reporting approach as it relates to the Cox and Liberty Broadband transactions. Let's start with our customer results on Slide 11. A legacy Charter, including residential and small business, we lost 156,000 Internet customers in the third quarter, driven by lower connects year-over-year, while the churn rate was essentially flat. As Chris noted, we see opportunities in both with our plan to return to Internet growth.

During the quarter, we continue to see expanded fixed wireless competition versus a year ago including lower sales from lower income consumers, ongoing mobile substitution and fiber overlap at a rate similar to prior quarters and with the continued aggressive promotions by certain competitors. We haven't observed meaningful share loss to Starling, including in our subsidized rural footprint, but we continue to monitor it closely and take it seriously.

In mobile, Legacy Charter added 440,000 lines with higher gross additions year-over-year, more than offset by higher disconnects even with a lower churn rate, given our larger mobile line base. Video customers declined 38,000 versus a loss of 70,000 in 3Q 25, with the improvement primarily driven by lower video downgrades, lower customer churn, and higher upgrades year-over-year, resulting from continued seamless entertainment product improvements, including our program app inclusion package in rule. We continue to see strong customer relationship growth generating 48,000 net customer additions in our subsided rural footprint in the quarter. Subsidized rural passings grew by 116,000 in third quarter and by 479,000 over the last 12 months.

Turning to Slide 12. Legacy Cox lost 77,000 Internet customers and 39,000 video customers during the quarter to gain 70,000 mobile lines. Legacy Cox remains an underpenetrated asset across virtually all of its products. As Chris mentioned, we've seen significant sales improvements across Internet, mobile and video since our Spectrum Day launch and a Legacy Cox footprint on September 16, and we expect it to continue to get better.

Moving to third quarter pro forma revenue results on Slide 14. Over the last year, pro forma total Charter Residential revenue declined 2.7%. Residential revenue per customer relationship declined 1.6% year-over-year, but was essentially flat when excluding GAAP allocation of the programming costs related to the streaming apps netted in video revenue, which was a headwind of $286 million this quarter, almost entirely at Legacy Charter versus $106 million in prior year period.

There were other puts and takes, including rate adjustments legacy Charter in the third quarter of this year and last, the growth of Spectrum Mobile lines pricing and packaging mix within our customer base and a decline in video customers during the last year.

As Slide 14 shows, in total, pro forma residential revenue declined 4.1% and was down 2.6% when excluding GAAP allocation of programming costs related to the streaming apps in both periods.

Turning to Commercial. We've not yet harmonized Legacy Charters and Legacy Cox commercial business reporting practices. So I'll discuss those businesses separately today. Legacy Charter's mid-market and large business revenue grew 2.1% year-over-year. And when excluding all wholesale revenue grew by 3%. Legacy Charter's small business revenue grew by 0.1%. Legacy Cox's commercial business declined 1.1% year-over-year. I would note that given the sizable business that legacy Cox has with hyperscalers and the unique timing of revenue recognition associated with the hyperscaler business, we anticipate some lumpiness as it relates to legacy Cox commercial revenue.

In total, pro forma commercial revenue grew by 0.3% year-over-year. Third quarter pro forma advertising revenue grew by 21%, given higher political revenue year-over-year. Excluding political, advertising revenue declined 5.2% year-over-year. Other revenue grew by 18.1% driven by higher mobile device sales. In total, pro forma consolidated third quarter revenue was down 1.5% year-over-year or 1% when excluding both the advertising revenue and program at GAAP allocation.

Looking at revenue by legal entity. Legacy Charter revenue declined 0.9% year-over-year in the third quarter, while legacy Cox revenue declined 4.5%, primarily driven by a decline in residential customers. But as Chris mentioned, the Legacy Cox customer trajectory is already looking more similar to Legacy Charter.

Moving to pro forma operating expense and adjusted EBITDA on Slide 15. On a pro forma basis, third quarter total operating expenses were relatively flat year-over-year, growing 0.2% and very little Cox transaction synergy realization in the quarter. Programming costs declined 10.3% due to the growth in costs allocated to the programming streaming apps and then within video revenue previously discussed, a 1.8% decline in video customers year-over-year and a higher mix of lighter video packages, partly offset by higher programming rates.

Other cost of revenue increased 15%, primarily driven by higher mobile device sales, mobile service direct costs and higher advertising sales costs, given the higher political revenue. Cost to service customers, which combines field and technology operations and customer operations grew 1.8% year-over-year, driven by higher fuel and vehicle maintenance expense and higher full rent driven by our rural construction initiative, partly offset by lower labor expense.

Marketing and residential sales expense declined 1.8% year-over-year due to lower marketing expense from procurement initiatives late last year, but our volume of impressions and our marketing activity generally was much higher year-over-year. Transition expense related to the Cox transaction totaled $76 million in the quarter, driven by system disentanglement from Cox Enterprise, system integration with Cox Communication and branding and marketing expense related to Spectrum Day and the Legacy Cox footprint. Finally, other expense declined 6.3%, primarily driven by lower labor expense.

Adjusted EBITDA declined 4% year-over-year in the quarter and declined 3% when excluding transition expenses. Due to the mid-quarter closing of the Cox transaction, we only saw a small benefit from the operating cost synergies in our third quarter results. Synergies will materialize in the fourth quarter, and we will highlight estimates of how much is captured within each quarter going forward. We've already identified a run rate annualized operating expense transaction synergies of over $1 billion, with nearly half that run rate expected to be achieved in the first half of 2027, and 90% of that expected to be captured over the next 24 months.

As a reminder, we define transaction synergies as those which result purely from the combination of the companies. They do not reflect operating synergies to come from operating decisions and investments that increase revenue and lower service transaction costs. Chris also mentioned our additional $2 billion in run rate cost savings plan to be achieved over the next 18 months. We will report progress on that initiative as well.

Turning to third quarter net income. Pro forma net income declined year-over-year from $1 billion in the third quarter of 2025 to a net loss of $2.1 billion in the third quarter of 2026. The decline was driven by a onetime noncash franchise impairment charge at Legacy Charter of approximately $6.3 billion, which was less than 10% of Charter's overall franchise valuation on the balance sheet.

Onetime M&A expenses related to the transactions booked in other operating expense and lower EBITDA year-over-year, partly offset by a $1.4 billion gain related to the debt exchange that we completed in August and the noncash tax benefit associated with franchise impairment charge. Our total share count on an as-converted as-exchanged basis grew by a little over 40 million shares this quarter, given the closing of the Cox and Liberty Broadband transactions. Slide 18 on our presentation shows a buildup of our total share count.

Turning to Slide 16. Pro forma capital expenditures totaled $3.2 billion including $33 million of transition capital expenditures. Excluding transition CapEx, our third quarter pro forma CapEx declined $440 million, driven primarily by a lower spend on line extensions given the decline in spend on our subsided rural construction initiative. For full year 2026, we expect total pro forma capital expenditures, excluding transition CapEx and totaled approximately $13 billion, well below the sum of our 2026 CapEx guidance for Legacy Charter of $11.4 and the $2.5 billion of 2026 CapEx, we originally expected for legacy Cox.

We're building the combined operating plan for 2027. We'll have more to say on that in the fourth quarter investor call. But for the moment, when excluding transition capital, we expect 2027 capital expenditures to land at or below $11 billion, which is some of our previous legacy charter guidance of approximately $9.5 billion and $1.5 billion of capital expenditures at Legacy Cox.

Turning to cash taxes. Third quarter cash taxes totaled $431 million. We continue to expect our actual calendar year 2026 cash tax payments will total between $500 million and $800 million, even when including Cox.

Slide 17 shows actual free cash flow, $674 million we generated in the third quarter. The year-over-year decline in free cash flow was mostly driven by onetime or temporary impacts including working capital timing with supply chain financing benefits in the prior year, higher cash taxes this quarter and third quarter cash costs related to the closing of the Cox transactions.

As we said before, we expect significant free cash flow growth over the next several years, driven in part by declining capital expenditures as we complete our subsidized rural construction initiative and our network evolution project, which, in addition, will be supported by over $1 billion in Cox transaction synergies and do not include CapEx synergies and $2 billion cost transformation that we announced today. Further, those savings do not assume any significant efficiencies from agentic-AI.

We finished third quarter with $109 billion in debt principal, which includes impacts related to the Cox transaction and the Liberty Broadband transaction. Our third quarter debt exchange and some Legacy Cox debt pay down in September.

As of September 30, our weighted average life for debt was 11.1 years, and our weighted average cost of debt remains an attractive 5.3%. Our current run rate annualized cash interest totaled $5.8 billion. And as of the end of the third quarter, our ratio of net debt to last 12 months adjusted EBITDA, excluding transition expense, was 3.93x as expected. Our leverage target is a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio 3.5x, which we expect to achieve within 3 years of the close of the Cox and Liberty Broadband transactions while making consistently leveraging progress along the way. We continue to evaluate the pace of that delevering.

And as a reminder, we repurchased over $1.2 billion of our own debt in the open market for $1 billion in cash in the second quarter reducing our total leverage by capturing approximately $250 million of discount. During the third quarter, we executed a debt exchange, which further reduced our debt principal by approximately $1.5 billion. As part of normal operations, we expect to use a substantial portion of our free cash flow and liability management to delever.

In the fourth quarter, we expect that the majority of our free cash flow will go to efficient debt reductions. We expect to exit 2026 below 3.9x leverage. The combination of proactive balance sheet management and opportunistic repurchases will underpin our deleveraging and maturity management efforts on our way to 3.5x leverage. During the quarter, we repurchased 140,000 Charter shares, totaling $19 million at an average price of $135 per share driven by repurchase from Liberty in July and August prior to the transaction closing. Since then, we have not purchased the shares or partnership units. We do expect to repurchase some shares this quarter while we simultaneously deleverage. Importantly, we anticipate being in a position to continue to repurchase shares as we progress to our 3.5x leverage target over the next 3 years.

Now I'll pass it back to Chris for a few final remarks.

Christopher Winfrey

Thanks, Kevin. Just a few final comments before we turn it over to Q&A. Charter has the assets, the advantages and the scale to win, and we're taking decisive action to improve our execution. Our priorities are clearly returning to Charter to growth and simplifying our organization to move faster while reducing cost. That will drive free cash flow growth, which, as Kevin said, is supported by declining capital spend, Cox synergies and the additional expense transformation announced today and while maintaining a prudent and disciplined approach to capital allocation benefiting both debt and equity holders. So we're moving with the urgency, and we're confident that our actions will drive stronger operating and financial performance. We look forward to updating you on the progress there in the quarters ahead.

Now we'll open it up to Q&A. Operator?

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Sean Diffley with Morgan Stanley.

Preguntas y respuestas

Sean Diffley

Great. And helpful on the new operating model. I was hoping you could dig in on how you're balancing volume and pricing going forward. It sounds like the new goal is to win more customers. Maybe just talk about the go-to-market. And in the past, you've talked about more of a perception than a product problem in the marketplace. What's the new strategy for winning these new customers while also maintaining ARPU?

Christopher Winfrey

Sure. So look, you kind of hinted at it. Our competitive advantage is they remain. We've got a fully deployed network with gigabit capability if we're increasing the multi convergence. But really, the change here is how we bring them to market and how we operate. And so fundamental rethinking of how we compete. It's not just an offer strategy difference. It's a way that we're going about allocating the resources, putting priority certainly on Internet growth and how we run our business. So they're not small changes, and it's not tied to one particular activity.

But if you think about it, the first priority of growth, which is Internet growth, we are transforming the go-to-market. That includes the customer proposition. It includes the propositions we have for existing customers over time, the marketing and the full distribution across sales channel. So I think we have significant upside, not only in our sales but also in our service execution and to drive churn a lot lower.

I won't go back through all the efficiency side again, but the $2 billion of savings, much -- it's all coming from a bottoms-up plan. It's designed to great additional flexibility and flow to the EBITDA line, but really to make us faster, more decisive and have more efficient execution and to reinvigorate the culture towards competition.

The ARPU side, we understand the importance. We take a look at it really from a connectivity ARPU and from a customer relationship ARPU. It's not lost on us the importance of Internet ARPU, particularly towards investors. And so the goal here is to grow volume, to your point, have higher sales. More importantly is the best cell you can make is by not losing the customer that you already have, but also by maintaining ARPU at the miniconnect and do that by adding value into the relationship, both at the point of connect as well as over time into the existing relationship.

We're not at a point for competitive reasons and where we're at on the rollout to really get into a whole lot more detail. The only thing I can tell you is that I'm very excited about where Nick and our team is going and taking this and confident that we can drive both sales as well as maintain ARPU along the way as key objectives here.

Operator

Our next question comes from Craig Moffett with MoffettNathanson.

Craig Moffett

I'm going to see if I could squeeze in two questions, if I could. First, maybe, Kevin, and/or Chris, could you talk a little bit more about how you think about the trade-off between buying back debt in the open market versus buying back equity in the open market? And is there a scenario where you would delever faster because of the dislocations in the credit market. We certainly heard from equity investors that they would love to see lower leverage sooner. And then I don't know if Nick is there in the room, but I'd love to hear from Nick about his -- what his own insights have been since he started and where his priorities are for the next year.

Christopher Winfrey

So let me start there, Craig, and I'm actually going to hand over to Jeff Murphy, who runs all of our Corporate Finance and Development to all of our financing and M&A. So Nick is not in the room. He's squarely focused on getting us back to Internet growth. And our view is always has been the best Investor Relations is to deliver great results, and then you don't have to say a whole lot. And so that we're squarely focused.

I mentioned in the prepared remarks that I think I do understand the importance of hearing more details, both for me as the operating strategies to deploy but also together with Nick. And so we'll find the right venue to go do that periodically to make sure that we're helpful to investors without providing a lot of distraction to the operating team because we have a clear focus. It's on Internet growth and it's about becoming more efficient and it's hard to be in two places at the same time.

As it relates to the balance sheet strategy before Jeff chimes in, like we're highly aware of the different feedback that we're getting pretty universal from debt investors recognized this has got a load of free cash flow attached to it, but we'd still like to see a decline in leverage and a mixed view from equity investors, many of which would like to have both the cake and eat it too and some that would like us to focus more on buybacks exclusively. And so what we're trying to do is find a really balanced approach here, given the confidence that we have in the business plan, the significant free cash flow that we have today. The explosion of free cash flow that's about to take place as capital steps down -- capital expenditure steps down and the savings programs layer in and really trying to find the right balance here of using free cash flow for both debt reduction and for equity. And I may have just stolen everything that Jeff was about to say, but going to pass it over to Jeff in case he's got other thoughts around the topic.

Unknown Executive

I thought that was a great answer, Chris. Look, in addition, we see where our debt securities are trading. We see an equity security that trades at a level that I think is really difficult to justify given the cash flow that Chris has outlined, we think that there's advantages to going after both sides of the balance sheet, Craig, and we'll continue to pursue a balanced strategy. I think we've said that at least in the short term, we're going to deploy a majority of free cash flow against debt reduction, and we plan to do that in the most efficient manner we can do that, but it will continue to evolve with time. We're not pragmatic. We've already shown an ability to change the leverage targets have moved over just a short 18-month period from effectively being 4.5, 3.5 make strong progress against that every quarter. So I think we'll continue to do those types of activities and be good stewards of capital.

Christopher Winfrey

And Conor, what we say along the way and make sure that as the Internet growth picks up and company performance gets in place that we're not pivoting back and forth as it relates to the capital allocation and market strategy as well is important. I'd just highlight what Jeff said, the opportunity for providing liquidity into the debt markets and doing debt repurchases, taking down the profit debt and creating every value along the way at the same time through the debt discount is hard to ignore. And it's something that we clearly understand has been focused on. And in some sense, that's a win-win. So -- it is a way.

Operator

Your next question comes from Vikash Harlalka with New Street Research.

Vikash Harlalka

Two, actually. Chris, the word growth has been used several times in the press release today and on the conference call. Is there a time line you can share with us when you expect to return to growth on the major metrics like broadband subscribers and EBITDA? Is this like a long-term growth are we talking about like the next couple of years? And just a clarification, how much of the $2 billion of cost reduction do you expect to reinvest in the business versus falling to the EBITDA line?

Christopher Winfrey

Yes. So we're not providing any guidance or outlook for exactly when we returned to growth, but I want to be very clear. That's the objective. That's the determination of success that we're going to be providing regular updates in terms of the steady progress that we make. So right now, the focus is day by day, just getting better from where we were. And that's the type of progress that you'll be able to see. Look, midterm, I think, is what people have different definitions of that. Even in the short term, I think we'll be able to have additional success, and we'll be able to measure that. We'll be able to show that. And that's really the outlook. From a Legacy Cox footprint perspective, that's already happening. From a Legacy Charter perspective, the goal here is to minimize the year-over-year gap that you saw in Q3 on Internet subs and start to make an immediate and headway on that year-over-year gap. And then from there, to get better and put ourselves in a position to grow at both the Legacy Cox and the Legacy Charter footprint for Internet and have they focused early on Internet, but not lose side of the convergence advantage, the mobile economics and the mobile stickiness that we have and its true reduction capabilities without overcomplicating the offer set or the understanding of the gold inside the company.

The cost transformation, I almost forgot you ask that. Let me take a step back on that. The first goal isn't really just taking out cost. It's putting ourselves in every way, and I talked with Sean about the different things you're looking at, but -- the reduction of cost is really about simplification and increasing our focus and having faster decision-making, making this agile and getting our retire team, including leadership closer to the customer.

So I think we're going to clearly produce big cost savings. This is a bottoms-up plan. This is an aspirational putting that into place in short order. The goal is for that to follow the EBITDA line and ultimately drive free cash flow. But clearly, also gives us additional competitiveness along the way. I don't want that to be misinterpreted. We've talked about very clearly the importance of maintaining ARPU at Connect and over time. And the fact that when you step back from an ARPU standpoint, because I think that's what underlies your question. If you look at our average ARPU, average ARPU is healthy and it's competitive. It's really at the end when you think about promotional and a retail rate where we have ways that we can add value into the equation without sacrificing ARPU or sacrificing average ARPU along the way and earn ARPU as opposed to relying exclusively on rate increases and roll-offs without adding additional value...

Operator

The next question comes from Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan.

Sebastiano Petti

Chris, I mean can you just unpack the comment that you made about improving, I guess, the Cox losses by half or just to clarify, I guess, what you kind of meant there and thinking about from a source, is that from a connect perspective? Are you reducing churn as you kind of help with some of the bundling efforts better maybe go-to-market on the mobile side as well as a video product? So just a quick clarification question there.

And then separately, you did -- moving to the wireless business. You did buy some CBRS licenses or at least it was reported that you did last month. Do you see the potential returns from maybe a more robust CBRS or small cell strategy, mobile strategy now that you have the larger, maybe more attractive Cox footprint? I mean any -- has that changed your calculus? How you think about maybe deploying more infrastructure on the wireless side to accelerate some of your convergence efforts and strategy there? Just if anything is different, that would be great.

Christopher Winfrey

So the improvement of Cox, it's a -- what I said is I'd say from the run rate was for Internet net adds, we've cut that in half. It's still not at the Legacy Charter performance, but it's a very significant improvement in a very short period of time. We just rolled out Spectrum Day and the pricing and packaging on September 16. And already, we've cut the Internet losses in half. Vast majority of that is coming through sales, which continue to get better or not at the sales rate that we have at Legacy Charter. And the churn Legacy Cox is about 10% higher than it is at Legacy Cox than it is a Legacy Charter. So those improvements on both sides. The latter will take a little bit more time as it usually does.

So we have ways to get added from the sales perspective and from a disconnect perspective, which will -- sales, I think, is just going to continue to increase because of what you said, the first, the pricing is better under the Spectrum model for Internet, but also the addition of a high-quality mobile products as well as video and the ability to save more in your bill by adding those in addition to the better Internet pricing.

That doesn't mean -- I just want to be clear that getting to the Legacy Charter performance is not to go. We're not happy with the Legacy Charter performance on the Internet, and that's why we talked about rolling out the new operating model today, which is pervasive across all the aspects that I've described. The other question you had is a more robust small cell deployment. Cox also had CBRS. We have CBRS. We purchased a sliver more that was available in the market. Our strategy there hasn't changed. We're deploying the CBRS on an ROI basis and also keeping in mind. It's not a whole lot of capital overall for the full deployment, but also pacing ourselves based on the attractiveness of other capital projects that we have and knowing that while the ROI is very good today on deploying it on a need basis or usage-based across the footprint, more mobile customers we have, actually, the better the ROI gets faster and you get a better IRR. So success against more success in the ROI. It doesn't get better in state, but gets faster and better IRR. So we're pacing ourselves as we go. We are fully deploying. I think we'll be at something like 50 markets by the end of this year. But the acquisition of Cox itself hasn't accelerated to this point, has it accelerated our deployment plans for CBRS.

Operator

Your next question comes from John Hodulik with UBS.

John Hodulik

Two quick ones, if I could. First, Chris, I'd love to get your perspective on broadband competition from LEO constellations. Do you think that -- in your view, do you think that intensifies over the next couple of years? And especially in rural markets, how do you think the company is positioned, especially as it relates to you guys return to growth? .

And then number two, Cox was sort of pioneered the penetration of the business market going back years. Now that you've added Cox and the capabilities combined with the national footprint, can you talk about potential upside to revenues from -- in the business market as you pull those two companies together?

Christopher Winfrey

Sure. look, the lower forged satellite providers are well capitalized, and they are very well capitalized and they have released more engineers. So we don't discount them whatsoever. We've taken out the word of what they're looking to do. I do think there's still capacity capabilities where our network for the foreseeable future is going to be faster on the upstream, downstream has a lower latency and is a much easier install and service proposition. But that doesn't mean that we discount them whatsoever. So far, we've seen very minimal impact, and that includes in the rural areas.

The one area that we've talked about recently is that in the newest rural footprint when we're building out, we are finding that they have a higher penetration there than the past. You'd expect nobody else is there. But we also find the ability to go win that market share in the rural footprint because of not only the faster speeds that we provide on Internet. But in addition to that, the ability to offer mobile and video. And strangely enough in the rural footprint, lever or not wireline phone because a lot of these households have been paying for phone and paying $60 per month. And even there, we can say point. I'm not saying that's our go-to-market strategy. I'm saying that's added benefit of value that we can provide into a world household.

So long story short, we don't see anything material today, but our eyes are wide open in terms of where they could go and it's factored into as much as it can be factored into our thinking of included in our thinking for return to growth.

The Cox and business capabilities, it's really opportunity for both footprints. The small business footprint, despite all of the success that Cox has had over the year, a pound for pound, the as cable operators as it relates to B2B and that's been well known. Small business side is underpenetrated relative to what we've done in Legacy Charter. And so I think there is an upside for us in there penetrating the Cox markets.

On the other hand, Cox has always done well. In particular, if you think about the hospitality segment, I will name off for privacy reasons, I won't name off a number of high-profile clients that Cox has, but they've done extremely well in the hospitality space, think about stadiums, arenas, hotels in particular. And a lot of that comes out of the Las Vegas footprint where they've done very well, and that's pretty well known. But if you think about our footprint, it's all our footprint now the legacy Charter footprint.

When you think about Los Angeles, Orlando and New York from a hospitality perspective, these are some of the biggest, if not the biggest, when you think of Orlando hospitality markets in the world. And the ability to take those relationships that leadership capability and product set over to the Charter markets is significant.

And then on the enterprise side, I think both companies have complementary products that we can deploy across our respective bases. And then Segra and rapid scale, which are different assets than what with the existing Legacy Charter and offer the opportunity to penetrate across a much larger footprint. And even in the Segra base, a lot of that network was across the Legacy Charter market. So there's -- it will take a little time, but there's cost synergies as well because we have owned network in place that had been previously leased. So I think it's -- look, it's residential and Internet, in particular, is what drives this engine, and that's where our focus is going to be. We have a separate B2B proof that is very excited about the opportunity additive towards the growth rate of the combined company.

Operator

Your next question comes from Michael Rollins with Citi.

Michael Rollins

I'm curious, when we look at your metrics, especially Heritage Charter, you've been successful at not just the wireless bundle, but really influencing the attach rate, it would seem for video with the seamless entertainment platform. And so I'm just curious, as you look at individual markets, and you look at your portfolio more on a micro basis versus a macro basis. Are you starting to see a set of conditions form where you're like, okay, this is where equilibrium can get to for Charter and this is the recipe or the APIs that are needed to start turning the market around, stabilize and potentially get back to growth?

Christopher Winfrey

Yes. look, I want to make sure I understand your question, but I'm going to answer it the way I understood it. And if it's not what you're looking for, let me know. But the wireless and video attach rates are pretty universal across the footprint as it relates to Internet penetration. So at the end of the day, the thing that matters most is Internet penetration. And now what does help and boost up Internet penetration is both video and mobile, when attached to a customer reduces churn. And so it becomes a virtuous cycle of benefits there.

All of our markets. When you think about equilibrium and the ability for growth, the factors that go into that or Internet penetration, which then allows us to have video and mobile attached to that Internet penetration, those factors include the quality of the local service that we provide, the amount of competition that's inside the footprint, both wireline and terms of others. And our ability to respond at a localized level from a sales channel perspective and a SIP service perspective. And I would say more than anything else, our execution capabilities is the biggest driver of Internet acquisition churn.

And therefore, for video and mobile, it's not overly complicated. We have wireline overbuilding a large portion of our footprint and it's pretty diversified in terms of where it exists across DMA, there's a substantial amount of wireline over building that's new -- and not new, and we've competed very well against fiber once the newness wears off. But I think we can do a whole lot better both at the point of attack in wire line overbuild is occurring and against the embedded base of our line over book penetration.

Operator

Our last question comes from Steven Cahall with Wells Fargo.

Steven Cahall

Chris, I just wanted to maybe finish up the call on the go-to-market strategy a little more. And -- we have seen a little bit of a change in go-to-market when you did Spectrum 1. I know that was more about mobile churn reduction, yet a peer who announced a new go-to-market strategy about a year ago. And so I'm just wondering what you think has really changed in how you can go to market, what you've learned through the last few years? Telco continues to be very aggressive with pricing on the fiber side. And so I think we'd love to get confidence in that return to growth. So I would just, again, like to know what you think is different now in order to achieve that with your transformation.

Christopher Winfrey

Yes. Look, I think it's a very fair and it's an excellent question. And one that I've been thinking about also in terms of speaking with our own employees who have witnessed the same. I think the big difference, if I'm honest, is that we kept taking a look and saying, our competitive advantages long term are very clear. We've got faster speeds, more deployed network. We've got convergence capabilities. We've invested in video and turn it around and it's agreed at. And therefore, the only thing that we need to do is to find a better offer structure at promotion, and that's going to solve everything. And so when you think about everything that you described with the pricing and packaging changes, it really was just about an offer, and that's the point I was trying to make today.

Because that's where all of us to not consider myself one as well, the -- you go to, okay, what's the offer. This isn't about an offer. The consumer proposition is really about the end-to-end. Once the product that you're going to put in front, the pricing of the product, the way that you're going to surround it with value. But equally important is how are you going to bring it to market and to get the attention of the customer and to convince them that this is a fair price as to the great product and how that's going to evolve over time. It's a complete fundamental change for our distribution channels. And it's a much more aggressive approach in terms of the focus on Internet first. And part of that, we're getting out with the efficiency inside of the organization to get the entire management team closer to the customer to make ourselves faster, more agilent decisions. But the other piece I talked about really on that side is really how do you go to market, how you sell and it's a dramatic change of end-to-end on that front the other one is service. recognizing that just because we have some of the lowest churn that we've ever had. That doesn't mean it's good, and it doesn't mean that we should pat ourselves on the back. And that doesn't mean that it can't get better. In fact, it should get better, and it's too high.

And the way that it gets better is really being maniacally focused on addressing the reasons that customers call. And addressing those pain points in a pareto analysis, I'm not saying that it hasn't been done before, but doing it in a very different sort of way that we get after the issues and fix those. And make sure that the other second major pain point in addition to service and reliability is on pricing structure over time. And while maintaining ARPU and being very careful around that, adding more value so that customers who are at a retail rate feel that they've got a fair and competitive price along the way, can maintain that ARPU and not be exposed to competition. And so it's a holistic, completely different approach. And I really am glad you asked the question because it's not about a simple offer structure and that's going to be a magic on that changes everything. This is an end-to-end change. And when -- Nick is not here and as our new COO, he's very focused and the reason he's not here is because he's very focused. But when I sat down and we talked together and I ended up hiring them, we talked about what we needed to do together. And I think what he wanted to understand was, was he going to have the flexibility to go make some of an end-to-end dramatic change. And the reason we were talking to begin with is simply because I recognize that some of the things that you had mentioned, I felt like at the time, should have worked, and it should have been a magic quant and a simple offer change given our assets should have changed the trajectory and it didn't. And therefore, it was time to do something more fundamentally different. So we made that hire in January, and Nick's been on leave for 8 months, and he's had a lot of time to think about what he's going to go do, and he started to implement that here.

And on the way, I wanted to make sure that we didn't fundamentally make too many changes while we were going to have a new Chief Operating Officer. And so we were steady in the market as it relates to offers and operating structure and the things that we were doing because you didn't want to introduce multiple rounds of change into the organization. And frankly, we also had the second largest ever cable integration that was about to take place in August with the Cox transaction. So for both of those good reasons, we stayed relatively static at the really first three quarters of this year. And set the stage to be able to do something more transformational and fundamental across the entire company, what you're hearing about today. So it's not just offer structure. It's entirely the way that we operate, we go to market, we provide service and how we get more efficient along the way.

Stefan Anninger

Thanks, operator, and Steve, and we will see you at our next call.

Christopher Winfrey

Thank you.