Altice USA, Inc. (NYSE:ATUS) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 3, 2022 4:30 PM ET
Company Participants
Nick Brown - SVP-Corporate Finance and Development
Dexter Goei - Chief Executive Officer
Mike Grau - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Phil Cusick - JP Morgan
Jonathan Chaplin - New Street Research
Brett Feldman - Goldman Sachs
Craig Moffett - Moffett Nathanson
Kutgun Maral - RBC
James Ratcliffe - Evercore ISI
Peter Supino - Wolfe Research
KannanVenkateshwar - Barclays
Steven Cahall - Wells Fargo
Ben Swinburne - Morgan Stanley
Bryan Kraft - Deutsche Bank
Doug Mitchell - Credit Suisse
Matthew Harrigan - Benchmark
Operator
Greetings and welcome to the Altice USA Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded.
I will now turn the conference over to our host, Nick Brown. Please go ahead.
Nick Brown
Hello everyone, thanks for joining. Today we are joined by Altice USA's CEO, Dexter Goei; and CFO, Mike Grau, who will take you through the presentation and then we'll have time at the end for Q&A. As today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements, please read the disclaimer on Slide 2. Dexter, over to you.
Dexter Goei
Hello everyone. I’m kicking off with a summary of our second quarter performance on Slide 3. Revenue declined 2.1% year-over-year, mainly driven by residential business. Residential broadband customer net losses were $40,000 for Q2 which with similar market dynamics to what we’ve seen in the last few quarters, but with some incremental pressure coming from normal seasonality which we’ve not seen in a couple of years due to the pandemic.
Q2 adjusted EBITDA declined 8.8% year-over-year with a margin of 40.9% reflecting both the revenue decline and higher OpEx to drive future growth. Free cash flow remains robust generating $191 million in Q2 and about $400 million year-to-date even with the elevated levels of investment to accelerate our fiber rollout and new-build activity.
Our Optimum fiber network deployment has meaningfully accelerated rolling out at a faster pace than we’ve ever achieved with as many incremental fiber passing added in Q2 and the entire prior year of 2021. At 1.6 million total fiber passings we are very much back on track with our long-term fiber build plan.
In the quarter we surpassed 100,000 fiber customers and expect to continue to grow at an accelerated pace. With the launch of multi-gig speeds we are now positioned as the fastest fiber broadband provider in the New York tri-state area. Our Optimal mobile business also saw significant accelerations of cyber growth reaching more than 200,000 lines with attractive promotional offerings for Optimal broadband customers.