Charter Communications at NSR/BCG Conference: Strategic Focus on Growth

On Thursday, 26 March 2026, Charter Communications (NASDAQ:CHTR) presented its strategic roadmap at the NSR/BCG Global Connectivity Leaders Conference in New York. Led by CFO Jessica Fischer, the discussion revolved around the company’s ambitious plans to regain broadband growth, enhance customer service, and explore strategic acquisitions. Despite competitive pressures, Charter remains confident in its operational strategies and future growth potential.

Key Takeaways

• Charter prioritizes broadband growth and aims to enhance its converged connectivity business.
• Competitive pressures persist, but Charter maintains a strong market position against fiber competitors.
• The company is optimistic about the synergies from the proposed acquisition of Cox Communications assets.
• Charter plans to reduce CapEx to under $8 billion by 2028 through network evolution and expansion initiatives.
• Strategic focus on customer service improvements and value-added services to boost ARPU.

Strategic Priorities and Broadband Growth

• Regaining broadband growth is the top priority for 2026.
• Charter focuses on enhancing its converged connectivity business through customer-centric strategies and network improvements.
• Product differentiation through advanced Wi-Fi and value-added services aims to boost ARPU and customer satisfaction.

Competitive Landscape

• Competition from fixed wireless and Starlink is acknowledged but not seen as a significant threat.
• Charter maintains a strong market share in mature fiber markets due to its converged product offerings.
• The company is closely monitoring Starlink’s developments.

Customer Service and Pricing

• Efforts to improve customer service include longer price locks, lower roll-offs, and better employee tools.
• Charter aims to grow broadband ARPU by selling more gig products and value-added services.
• The "Life Unlimited" pricing strategy focuses on selling more products per consumer to increase customer retention.

Wireless Business

• Charter faces increased competition in the wireless market but continues to grow without aggressive promotions.
• Offers guaranteed savings for customers switching from major carriers, reinforcing its value proposition.
• Mobile service margins are expected to grow due to scale efficiencies and digitization.

Video Business

• Charter’s video business exceeded expectations by adding value through programmer streaming apps.
• Despite challenges from rate increases, the video product enhances the broadband subscription’s value.

EBITDA and Long-Term Outlook

• Charter aims to grow EBITDA in 2026, driven by political advertising and mobile business growth.
• Long-term confidence in EBITDA growth is supported by strategic network management and customer value delivery.

CapEx and Free Cash Flow

• CapEx is projected to fall below $8 billion by 2028, following the completion of network initiatives.
• The expansion initiative is set to be completed in 2026, with network evolution substantially complete by 2027.

Cox Acquisition

• The acquisition of Cox Communications assets has received FCC approval, with California state approval pending.
• Charter sees opportunities to enhance mobile and video penetration and expand its advertising business.

M&A Strategy

• Charter remains interested in cable businesses and assets that offer shareholder value.
• The integration of Cox assets does not limit Charter’s pursuit of other growth opportunities.

For a detailed insight into Charter Communications’ strategic plans and conference discussions, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - NSR/BCG Global Connectivity Leaders Conference - New York:

Unidentified speaker: Good morning, everyone. I am delighted to introduce Jessica Fischer, CFO of Charter Communications. Jessica, thank you for being here.

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: Happy to be here.

Unidentified speaker: All right, let’s just dive into it. Can you tell us about your key priorities for 2026 and the things that you’re focused on that’s gonna set the company up for long-term sustainable growth?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: Yeah, you know, I think we’ve said it, that our number one priority is getting broadband back to growth, and when you think about that, really continuing to grow the converged connectivity business. We’re doing that on a number of fronts. First off, you know, relentless focus on the customer. How is it that we deliver our value and utility messaging to customers to really work the marketing side when we’re delivering the best products to get the best reactions from those? In addition to that, continuing to focus on improving customer service and doing that utilizing the investments that we’ve made in our employees and in tools across the business over the last several years.

The second piece of that, I think about the network and what we’re doing, so first off, to finish up our expansion initiative over the course of this year, and then in addition to that, continuing to work on our network evolution project, where we expect to be about 50% complete by the end of the year this year. Driving through that, the ability to continue to deliver the best products to consumers. We couple, you know, that wired network with what is a really powerful Wi-Fi network on top of it, and utilizing that Wi-Fi network to continue to drive products that we can deliver to customers across the business. As we bring those together, it really is about differentiated products, right?

As you think about what we can do with converged connectivity all across our footprint, coupling that with a video product where we’ve injected value back into the product to be able to deliver better to the consumer, and drive value to the total package of products that we provide to customers. Adding to that, value-added services, things like our Advanced WiFi product where we can deliver additional value to the consumer, use that to drive some help on the ARPU side, while also sort of creating a better experience for the customer. Then inside of this year, you know, we put on top of that efficiency. Like, how is it that we continue to drive financial results from the business, even in what has been a more competitive broadband market?

We’re doing that by continuing to drive digitization and automation across the business, and by continuing to work on the cost side, in a way that doesn’t impact our sales and service activity. That’s it.

Unidentified speaker: Thank you for that. We’re almost at the end of first quarter. Can you provide us an update on broadband trends for the first quarter?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: You know, I’m not gonna provide a sub-number here today. What I can tell you is the market continues to be competitive, and so that continues to be the trend.

Unidentified speaker: What are you seeing in terms of competition from fixed wireless?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: You know, I don’t think that the overall tension that we see from fixed wireless is significantly different from where it’s been previously. We’ve seen AT&T build out several additional markets or put online additional markets from a fixed wireless perspective over the last few quarters. The overall tension across the product set I think is not different significantly from where it was before.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. We tracked some of the Opensignal data, and based on that, it seems like your share in mature fiber markets have been slipping. What can you tell investors that you can do to change that slope of the curve?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: Yeah. First, I would say when you look at that data, your definition of maturity matters. When we look at mature markets today, first I would say we continue to have a market share that’s greater than our fiber competitors in mature markets where we compete against fiber. We’re able to do that because we have a converged product all across the footprint because we have more incumbency advantage than they do because of the size of our footprint because we continue to deliver those differentiated products in the form of things like our video product that adds value and because of the focus that we’ve had around continuing to improve on the customer service side.

I think when there’s been some impact from fixed wireless in those spaces, so I won’t say that what you’re seeing is inaccurate and that I think there are still sort of new competition in those markets that wasn’t there before. When it comes to the way that we compete against fiber in those markets, I think we continue to compete very well.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. There’s a lot of angst among investors about Starlink. What have you seen in terms of competition from Starlink? Any impact on your trends?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: You know, there’s not a discernible impact from Starlink on trends, right now, but obviously, we see what you all see, and we’re continuing to watch it very closely.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Switching topics to your appointment of Nick Jeffery as Chief Operating Officer. I think it’s a great move, but would like to hear from you what you expect from him.

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: If we go back to your opening question and say, well, our goal and what we’re working on is figuring out how to get back to broadband growth, and the first tenet of that is this relentless customer focus around how do we message the value proposition and utility proposition to customers, and how do we focus on customer service? If I look at where Nick has been really successful over his past couple of roles, it’s on exactly those things, right? When I look at sort of bringing him into the team, we’re bringing someone who has great experience doing the things that we are trying to do right now.

I’m super excited to have him join the team, and to be able to take advantage of that experience as we continue to try to push those things for our team and in the market.

Unidentified speaker: You guys were probably, like, the first operator out there to focus very heavily on customer care. You onboarded onshored all your customer care executives. Your NPS scores have improved over the years, but it’s still well below your peers. Why is that? And what can you do to change that?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: I think that we’re still followed by cable’s historical reputation with consumers. We’ve done, as you said, the big things to change that, right? If I think about the pricing and packaging that we rolled out a year and a half ago that has longer price locks, that has lower roll-offs when you get to the end of those price locks, we’re trying to do the right thing for the customer on that front, which is impactful to NPS. We also have been sort of driving at customer service overall, and the things that you talked about, insourcing, upskilling our employees, trying to provide them the right tools to be able to deal with those customer service issues well. Both of those things, I think, take time to sink into the market.

The other thing we recognize is that there are 100 different ways that you interact with the customer every day. Across all of those small things, there’s an opportunity for paper cuts, right? In a market that is as competitive as the market that we compete in today, you have to be mindful of all of those paper cuts. Across the business, we’re really thinking about, like, where do you find the paper cuts today? How do we solve those for consumers? Because we know, and you might hear Chris say it’s a game of inches, and so you’ve got to be good across all fronts. We recognize it. We’re focused on it.

We’re continuing to find ways to improve that customer service interaction to try to solve for exactly what you point out.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. You mentioned pricing. There’s a lot of focus on pricing among investors. I think you were quite clear on the last earnings call that you expect to grow broadband ARPU this year. Can you just help us understand, like, what’s driving broadband ARPU growth this year?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: Yeah. It’s aligned with the things that I just talked about. We wanna grow broadband ARPU by driving value into customer packages ultimately, right? The main tailwinds that we have are actually things that are not just price. It’s selling more gig products or where we have them available because of network evolution, more 2-by-1 products into consumers. And our sell-in rates for those products are dramatically higher than they’ve been in the past. It’s selling additional value-added services, things like the Advanced WiFi product that I talked about, and continuing to, you know, package our products in multi-product sets with consumers, continued bundling that helps drive overall value to the consumer.

Ultimately, with this set of those things, that’s how I think that we get there in the ARPU equation. It’s being able to pull those things in. When I think about, you know, where our peers had gone over the last several years, we were much slower in getting to some of those, you know, higher value sell-ins than some of our peers were. I think we have more space to gain ground there than maybe some of our peers have had.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. You launched the Life Unlimited pricing last year. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like it’s impacted subscriber trends much. Like, are you satisfied with the Life Unlimited pricing, or should we expect some major changes in the near future?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: We’re not satisfied with where we are in broadband trends, right? That wasn’t the only thing that the Life Unlimited product was about. The things that it’s doing really well is we’re selling more products per consumer. Those additional products we think make customers stickier in the medium and longer term. I think there are advantages we get from that that don’t come at the point of sale necessarily. There’s also the piece that I talked about having those rate locks and those lower roll-offs as people roll off of the Life Unlimited or roll through their promotional periods on the Life Unlimited plans.

I think we expect over time to see things like improved NPS scores as a result of having put ourselves in a better position with those customers, which ultimately should be positively impactful to the business. Obviously from an overall pricing and packaging perspective, we test all kinds of things all the time to try to see what will move consumers. I think that with those things that we wanted Life Unlimited to do with driving better bundling and driving a better overall offer structure for consumers, that we’re happy with how it’s performing.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. I wanna switch to wireless. Competition seems to have picked up in the last quarter. We saw your net adds slow down a touch in Q4. What’s your take on that?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: Look, there’s a lot of promotionality out there from a mobile phone perspective right now, to a point that I would say, like, some of it I think is probably irrational. We continue to grow well, despite not having followed down that path.

I think to the extent that we can continue to do that, to continue to have good growth, you know, year-over-year increases in our gross line additions, in spite of not sort of following down that path, so still having kind of economically rational offers in the market, it’s really a testament to the overall value that we can create for consumers with our product, and to our continuing ability to grow that business and to grow it in a way that creates good financial returns for the company, in spite of what’s happening in the broader competitive space there.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. You recently announced guaranteed savings of $1,000 for each customer that switches from the big three wireless carriers. Your volumes were already doing quite good, so was this a response to the increased competitive intensity?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: You know, I think of it as just a restatement of what we’ve been trying to message to consumers around value and utility already. If you look at the slide that we put in our quarterly investor deck over the last couple of several quarters, it’s always been true that we’ve been able to save customers a dramatic amount of money when they bundle broadband and mobile products and buy converged connectivity from us. This is just another way to state it to them to try to create that activity in the market. We’re really confident that we can continue to do it, which is why the offer ultimately works from an economic perspective.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. You recently renewed your MVNO agreement with Verizon. You signed a new MVNO agreement with T-Mobile for business customers. Do you think you have all the pieces for your wireless business to work?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: I think we already had the key piece of the wireless business working, which is that we have a Wi-Fi and CBRS network, a wireless network of our own, that delivers, you know, now 88% of the data that we deliver to mobile phones on our network. In addition to that, you know, we have great partners in Verizon and T-Mobile. I think that we are well-positioned with them and with the network that we already have to continue to drive a leading mobile product that works better for consumers because of being on our network and a place where we can drive good growth in the business going forward.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Last one on wireless. Your mobile service margins, excluding SAC, have been growing pretty healthy, at a pretty healthy rate. It was 34% in 3Q 2025. Where do you think that goes in the long term?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: We can continue to grow our mobile service margin from where we are, and that mobile service excluding SAC from where we are right now. I think we haven’t yet reached full-scale efficiencies, and so we’re continuing to gain scale efficiencies as we add mobile lines to the network. In addition to that, the work that we’ve been doing around digitization and automation across our customer service function will continue to drive efficiencies into that business as well. With the combination of those, I think there’s an opportunity. I fully expect that we’ll meaningfully grow that sort of margin excluding SAC for the next several years.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Switching to video. Typically I wouldn’t even talk about video because it has generally not mattered much for investors, but your results in Q4 were probably beyond anyone’s expectations. I don’t suppose you expect that to continue in future.

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: The video business is still challenged, right? That’s particularly the case in a quarter like this quarter where we have rate increases from programmers that we then have to pass on to customers in order to maintain a reasonable margin in the product. Even with that though, I guess if I go back and look and say, "Well, what did we learn from Q4?" We learned that adding value back into the product really does matter. Having $125 worth of programmer streaming apps available with the video product actually does drive value to consumers, and it’s made the product stickier.

I would couple with it, so not only did we have a positive number, we for the first time started seeing an increasing number of customers come back into fully provisioned video products. For me, that’s important because when you think about, well, what kind of video product drives the stickiest customer, it’s the video product that actually has all of those apps inside of it, and we’re actually being successful in selling that product to customers. I’m excited about it on that front. As you mentioned, it hasn’t mattered that much from a financial perspective. I think there are a couple of things to think about there. One is that the compression of video margin is real.

To the extent that we can be successful at just limiting the compression of video margin, that is really helpful in then allowing on the other side of it broadband and mobile growth, from a financial perspective to stand out. The other piece is that the real value of the video product is the value that it can add to the broadband subscription, right? To the extent that we can continue to be successful inside of that business, I think it continues to drive then better outcomes for the broadband business because of how we differentiate the product.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Your business services revenue has been almost flattish at this point. Like, what will it take to re-accelerate growth in that business?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: In business services, I’ll divide the world in two. Excuse me. On the small business side, I think we continue to have a good right to win in that space. We have a great product and packaging set. We are not an incumbent in a lot of that space, and so there’s a bigger market opportunity for us to go after. Small business has been challenged by the same fixed wireless pressure that the residential market has been challenged by. I actually think inside of small business, the portion of the market that you can address with a fixed wireless product is actually smaller.

Ultimately, my expectation is that once we get past that sort of window of pressure from fixed wireless, that we should be able to continue to grow in that space. In mid-market and large, we’ve actually continued to grow pretty well, and that in spite of, you know, continued pressure from the wholesale business. In that space, what I’m excited about is what we will get in the Cox acquisition, assuming that it closes.

When you think about where they have been, from a hospitality business perspective, from their investment in Segra, from their investment in things like RapidScale and some of the sort of underlying product set, I think that there are a lot of things that we should be able to bring out of the Cox business, and bring it to the broader footprint and actually create some accelerated growth by pulling those two businesses together.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. You’ve set a goal to grow EBITDA this year. Can you just give us some of the key puts and takes on how we get there?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: Yes. First piece, it’s a political advertising year. We’ll have political advertising, which I think grows over the course of the year. You have the mobile business where we’re continuing to grow quite well, and where you’ll continue to have expansion in mobile revenue over the year. There are obviously puts and takes in broadband, so you gotta think about the customer compression, but on the other side of that, the ARPU growth that we talked about. Video, although we’re losing fewer customers, there is still margin pressure inside of that business.

We offset those things with what I think we can do on the efficiency side, which is really to drive you know automation and tools that across the business I think drive down the cost of transaction volume and in some cases drive transaction volume out of the business. I think we can be really successful there. When you put it all together, that’s how you get to you know an EBITDA growth plan.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Investors are nervous about your long-term EBITDA growth. When I look at the valuation of your stock, it implies like a perpetual negative EBITDA growth. What gives you the confidence that you can continue to grow EBITDA in 2027 and beyond? I mean, I’m not looking for specific guidance-

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: Yeah.

Unidentified speaker: Any color that you can add there would be helpful.

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: The things that I put together, first off, I think we have the right strategic and tactical approach to running our network assets, which is focused on, in the long term, having as many customers as we can have attached to that network by driving value to those customers. The second piece then is we have a network that actually has all of the capabilities it needs to be able to win with customers in the long term. You know, our network today and the delivery to a customer is more than 99% fiber. That last mile actually has advantages in that it is powered, it has significant edge components that will allow us to deliver the next generation of products to consumers in a really powerful way.

I think that we are well-positioned to be the kind of product that consumers need on a go-forward basis. You combine with that, you know, I think we can continue to drive efficiency from a cost perspective over time as well. When you pull that together, I think you can get to EBITDA growth. You know, maybe the other piece when you think about the market itself, I think everybody recognizes that at some point fixed wireless ends up being capacity constrained. I think that you have similarly on the fiber side, folks generally recognize that at some point we’re gonna reach the end of what it’s economically viable to build.

I think what’s left there is a market that can be rational from a long-term perspective, because you have capacity limits on fixed wireless and a competitive marketplace, but one that can be a rational competitive marketplace in the long term. You put that together, I think you can get to EBITDA growth. I think also in the, you know, short- to medium-term, we have really significant free cash flow growth. If you put on the back end of that some sustainable growth in the business going forward, we have the right leverage profile for the moment in terms of being in a place where there is a lot of value that can be generated.

Ultimately for equity holders, I think that the stock where it is today actually works quite well.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Switching to CapEx and free cash flow, your CapEx has been elevated for the past four years at this point due to rural build network upgrades. You’ve guided a CapEx falling to under $8 billion in 2028 and beyond. There remains some skepticism among investors that your CapEx will actually come down. What gives you the confidence in the long-term guidance there?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: The thing that took our CapEx from below $8 billion level to where we are today is our investment initiatives, particularly around expansion and network evolution. The thing we have to do to get back to where we were before is just to complete those initiatives. You know, as I said earlier as we were talking, the expansion initiative for practical purposes is essentially complete this year. The network evolution initiative then is substantially complete by the end of 2027. Just pulling that capital out of the plan is enough to get us back to that run rate below $8 billion. We’re quite confident in our ability to get there.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. I wanna talk about Cox for a second. Your proposed acquisition has received the FCC approval. What remains for you to close the transaction?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: As you know, we have our federal as well as all of the state approvals except for California. We are working with California to do what we can to accelerate the process there. We look forward to working through that with them.

Unidentified speaker: Do you have a timeline that you can share with us?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: The original timeline that we set was midyear this year. I haven’t moved away from that.

Unidentified speaker: What do you see as the biggest opportunity with the acquisition of the Cox asset?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: The biggest opportunity is to take our operating strategy and apply it against the assets, right? If I think about, we have great pricing and packaging, and value and utility that we can bring to their customers. We’re excited to roll that out to all of the Cox customers and really to all consumers across the Cox footprint. When we do that, if you look today, their mobile penetration and their video penetration are both very low. I think we’ll drive more mobile and probably more video penetration into the Cox footprint just by sort of rolling out our strategy over the assets.

You combine that with some things that maybe get less attention, but the technology and the advertising side of our business, if we roll it out across the Cox footprint, I think actually there’s some great things that we can drive on the advertising side as we pull the businesses together. We already talked about B2B, and where I think it goes the other direction, I think there are actually some great things that they’ve done on their side that by expanding them across the existing Charter footprint, we’ll be able to deliver better for our customers. There’s a lot to like there. I think we’re excited, you know, when the transaction closes about getting going, to drive some additional value out of the Cox assets.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. I wanna close with talking about M&A. Once you’re done with the Cox acquisition, what’s your appetite for further M&A? Do you need to complete the Cox integration before you start to look at other assets, or would you be actively looking for other opportunities out there?

Jessica Fischer, CFO, Charter Communications: Look, we like cable businesses. We like cable assets. We believe that we have the right strategic and tactical approach to running those assets. I think when we look at opportunities, what matters is it at the right price point that reflects the growth potential for those assets, and through that, does it bring accretive value to shareholders? I think we will continue to look where there are those opportunities for sets of assets that we think could bring value to shareholders. From a Cox integration perspective, I don’t think that should be limiting in terms of our ability to go and take advantage of ultimately the value that we talked about of deploying our operating strategy against sets of assets where that can deliver great value.

Unidentified speaker: That was helpful. Any last word for investors?

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