The US subsidiary of French comms giant Altice has turned in a profit in its latest financial quarter thanks mainly to a spike in subscriber additions.
For its third quarter ended 30 September 2018, Altice USA reported an overall profit of $32.6 million, or 4 cents a share, compared with a loss of $192.6 million, or 26 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue meanwhile rose 4.1% to $2.42 billion, narrowly beating expectations. Analysts had expected a profit of a penny a share on $2.4 billion in revenue.This is the second-ever quarterly profit for Altice USA since its formation in 2017. Its first profitable quarter however came as a result of the tax cut in the United States that went through in the first quarter of the year.
The company in the third quarter used the increasing profit to buy back about $241 million worth of its stock to reward investors; purchasing shares decreases the amount available to the market, automatically increasing the remaining shares’ value.
Altice USA said that it forecasts annual revenue that should be up 2.5% to 3% from the prior year. In terms of what it plans to do with the profit, it also said that it expects to make $500 million in share repurchases in the second half of 2018.
