Chapter 6

Financials and Estimates

Charter's reported numbers are strikingly steady. Revenue has held in a $54–55 billion band for four years, Adjusted EBITDA has edged up to $22.7 billion, and diluted EPS has climbed to $36.21 — mostly through buybacks, not profit growth. The balance sheet carries $94.6 billion of debt against $16.1 billion of book equity that is entirely intangible. Management guides to slight 2026 EBITDA growth and capital spending falling toward sub-$8 billion by 2028. No full sell-side consensus table exists in this run; the forward view below is built from management's own guidance.

Sources: Consolidated Statements of Operations [1]; Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow reconciliation [2]; leverage from the Q1 2026 earnings call [3].

The three-year income statement

Over 2023–2025 the top line barely moved: $54,607 million, $55,085 million, $54,774 million — a compound rate near zero [4]. Income from operations sat between $12.6 billion and $13.1 billion, and net income attributable to shareholders held between $4.6 billion and $5.1 billion across all three years [5]. This is a mature, cash-generative operator whose reported profit has flat-lined, not a grower.

Source: Consolidated Statements of Operations, FY2025 Form 10-K, for 2023–2025 [6]; 2021–2022 from prior filings as reported.

Margins have been stable to slightly improving: the operating margin ran 23.0%, 23.8% and 23.6% across 2023–2025, and the Adjusted EBITDA margin was roughly 41% of revenue [7] [8]. Cost discipline, not revenue, is holding profit steady.

Per-share growth is a buyback story

Diluted EPS rose from $29.99 to $36.21 between 2023 and 2025 — about 10% a year — while net income attributable to shareholders actually fell slightly [9]. The bridge is the share count: the basic weighted average fell from 149.2 million to 135.2 million shares over the same span [10]. All of the per-share progress has come from spending cash to retire stock, a point developed in Cash Conversion.

Source: Consolidated Statements of Operations, FY2025 Form 10-K [11].

Cash flow: EBITDA is flat, free cash flow tracks capex

Adjusted EBITDA rose only modestly — $21,616 million (2022), $21,894 million (2023), $22,569 million (2024), $22,708 million (2025) [12] [13]. Reported free cash flow, by contrast, swung with the capital programme — $6,102 million, $3,490 million, $4,257 million, $5,004 million — because operating cash flow is steady near $14–16 billion while capex is not [14] [15].

Source: Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows [16]; free cash flow per company definition (operating cash flow less capex and the change in accrued capex) [17] [18].

One caveat on quality: the 2025 free cash flow rise of $747 million came mostly from a $669 million drop in cash taxes (100% bonus depreciation restored under the 2025 tax act, a timing benefit) and a $398 million mobile-device working-capital inflow; higher EBITDA contributed just $139 million [19]. Two of those three drivers reverse over time.

The balance sheet and the solvency question

For a reader who wants the chance of bankruptcy near zero, the balance sheet needs its own look. Total assets were $154.2 billion at year-end 2025, but $97.2 billion of that is intangible — $67.5 billion of cable franchises, $29.7 billion of goodwill — against $16.1 billion of book equity [20]. Goodwill alone exceeds book equity, so there is no tangible-asset floor beneath the stock; the equity's worth rests on the franchise cash flows, not on assets that could be sold in a wind-down. Book equity also flatters the picture — an accumulated deficit of $5.4 billion sits against $21.4 billion of paid-in capital, the residue of years of buybacks charged against equity [21].

Solvency, though, is a question of coverage and timing, and on both the near-term reading is comfortable. Adjusted EBITDA of $22.7 billion covers net interest expense of $5.0 billion about 4.5 times, and covers the $4.9 billion run-rate cash interest about 4.6 times [22] [23]. The debt is 87% fixed at a 5.07% average rate, and the maturity ladder is light for years: only about $1.1 billion falls due in 2026 and roughly $31 billion — a third of the stack — matures through 2030, leaving $63.5 billion beyond [24].

Source: interest-rate-risk table (fixed plus variable principal by maturity), FY2025 Form 10-K [25]. The 2031 bar aggregates all maturities thereafter.

The credit market's own verdict points the same way: the $94.6 billion of principal is carried at roughly $85.5 billion of fair value — about a 10% discount that reflects higher market rates since issuance, not distress pricing [26]. Charter also met the CCO Holdings leverage tests with no indenture default at year-end [27].

The forward view

The reader's standing request for forward estimates runs into a data gap worth stating plainly: this run's analyst-estimate feed contains no forward revenue, EBITDA or free-cash-flow numbers, and the external research provider was unavailable, so a sell-side consensus table cannot be assembled here. What can be sourced is management's own guidance, which is specific, and the handful of consensus data points that do exist.

Management's guided markers point to a steady 2026 and a step-change by 2028:

Sources: Q4 2025 earnings call — 2026 capex, slight EBITDA growth [28]; cash taxes, sub-$8bn run-rate capex, cash interest, leverage target [29]; post-close share count [30].

The load-bearing forward number is capex. Management expects spending to fall from about $11.7 billion in 2025 to below $8 billion by 2028, a reduction it frames as worth over $28 of free cash flow per share on the current share count [31]. Two offsets sit against that tailwind and neither is quantified in the corpus: cash taxes normalise upward as bonus depreciation is consumed, and the 5.07% debt stack reprices toward the ~7% coupons now being issued as it matures — the timing and netting of both are worked through in Cash Conversion.

What the consensus that exists is saying

The analysts covering the stock are, on balance, unconvinced. The published rating split is no strong buys, 5 buys, 11 holds, 3 sells and 2 strong sells, with a mean 12-month target price of $209.94 — about 62% above the 22 July 2026 close of $129.22. The forward price-to-earnings multiple sits near 3.1x, which at that price implies a forward EPS around $42, consistent with continued share-count reduction rather than net-income growth.

Source: consensus of covering analysts and company market data, as reported (no backing filing page); price per market close.

Management presses the same arithmetic harder: substituting its expected 2028 capex into consensus 2026 free cash flow, it puts the stock at roughly 3.8 times free cash flow and a free-cash-flow yield above 25% [32] — while acknowledging the market is pricing in "negative perpetuity growth" [33]. That case rests on two conditions this report examines elsewhere: that Adjusted EBITDA holds while the subscriber base shrinks (The Broadband Base), and that the capex relief is not consumed by taxes and interest before it reaches the equity. The multiple is genuinely low; whether it is cheap depends on which of those holds.