Charter's Revenue Just Misses Estimates

Shares of

Charter Communications

(CHTR) - Get Report

pulled back Tuesday after the company missed revenue targets for the second quarter due to a shrinking basic video customer base.

The St. Louis-based cable operator said its first-quarter loss narrowed to $276 million, or 74 cents a share, matching Wall Street's average estimate. Those numbers compare with a year-ago loss of $360 million, or 98 cents a share.

Sales for the quarter rose 8.3% from a year ago to $1.62 billion, but still came up just short of analysts' average forecast of $1.63 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

Charter said its basic-video customer count fell by 44,800, while digital-video customers increased by only 33,900. By comparison,

Comcast

(CMCSA) - Get Report

said it lost 138,000 basic video subscribers in the second quarter, although it added 320,000 digital-cable users as customers swap to digital boxes.

Cablevision

(CVC)

added 7,000 basic-video customers in its second quarter.

Shares of Charter were slipping 3.5% to $1.10 in early trading. Cablevision, which said Tuesday it will explore options to enhance value for its shareholders, was higher by 4.1% at $27. Comcast was flat at $20.55.

Charter said that revenue generating units, or RGU, rose 6.4% from a year ago with 98,900 net additions in the quarter, bringing the company's total subscriber count to 5.55 million. The company also said that average revenue per subscriber increased by 12.2% to $104.35, which Charter said was due to an increase in its bundled services.

The company added 90,500 telephone customers in the quarter, meaning 11.8% of the homes it passes now have Charter phone connections. The company said it also saw increases in high-speed Internet customers.