Charter's 2Q

While Charter was pumped over results in its phone markets, it is behind its internal deployment plan for VoIP due to implementation issues in some markets. "These issues are largely resolved and we’ll do what we can during the remainder of the year to make up for these delays," said interim CEO Bob May. For July, Charter added about 500K homes passed in its 4 existing phone markets. In all, it passes about 2mln homes, with plans to reach 6-8mln by year-end. Charter has about 68K phone customers. Programming: Programming costs have increased about 7% this year, with long-term pacts inked with Disney and Viacom during 2Q. Programming exec Sue Hamilton declined to provide specifics, only saying that the deals are "in line with our overall programming increases" and that Charter is "happy" with them. Currently, the MSO’s contracts are up with about 10% of its programming; another 20% comes up at year end. It expects programming cost increases to remain in the high single digits. Subs: Charter saw less DBS marketing spending in 2Q than it did in 1Q, which may have helped it improve year-over-year basic losses. It lost 41.7K basic subs, better than the 58.5K it lost in 2Q04. More unnerving was the loss of 9K digital subs, which execs chalked up to subs churning due to the end of a deep discount promo for the service. 2Q is the last Q Charter should be impacted by the promo. HSD adds totaled 43.8K down from 58.4K a year ago. Charter lost $356mln for the Q, compared with a loss of $416mln a year ago. Rev rose 7% to $1.32bln. Shares closed down 3%.