Business Account Executive 2

Cable One reported Q2 2026 revenue of $348.9 million, meeting Wall Street expectations but falling 8.4% year-on-year. The internet, cable TV, and phone provider posted a GAAP loss of $204.35 per share, significantly below analyst estimates of $4.91, primarily due to non-cash asset impairment charges of $462.3 million. The company's adjusted EBITDA of $173.5 million narrowly missed estimates of $176.1 million. Residential data subscribers declined by 62,000 year-on-year, continuing a trend of subscriber losses. Cable One's free cash flow margin decreased to 13.4% from 20.1% in the prior-year quarter. The company's market capitalisation stands at $246 million. Looking ahead, analysts project 7.9% revenue growth over the next 12 months, though this remains below the sector average.

Cable One reported Q1 revenues of $353 million, down 7.3% year on year and missing analyst expectations by 1.8%. The company also missed adjusted operating income estimates, marking a weak quarter overall. Among seven consumer discretionary wireless, cable and satellite stocks tracked, Cable One delivered the weakest performance against analyst estimates and slowest revenue growth. As a group, these companies reported mixed Q1 results with revenues in line with consensus estimates. The market reacted negatively to Cable One's results, with shares falling 52.9% since reporting. The stock currently trades at $43.05. The broader group has also struggled, with share prices down an average of 19.3% since latest earnings.

Cable One seeing inconsistent competition from Starlink. Cable One is seeing haphazard competition from Starlink, as pricing and offers have varied from market to market, but views satellite broadband as a 'formidable competitor,' says CEO Jim Holanda. May 1, 2026 (Source: Timon Schneider) Cable One shed more broadband subscribers than expected in Q1 as churn remained low and as the operator continued to face off with pesky fiber and fixed wireless access (FWA) competition. Cable One, which operates in largely rural areas, is also seeing competition from Starlink, but the pressure it is receiving from the satellite broadband service provider has been far from uniform. There's been "no consistency" from Starlink in the 70 days or so since Jim Holanda took the helm of the company, the CEO said Thursday on Cable One's Q1 2026 earnings call. Starlink's offers, installation costs and monthly pricing "is widely varied territory-to-territory, market-to-market," said Holanda, who succeeded former CEO Julie Laulis earlier this year. Though Cable One has yet to see much consistency from Starlink, he views satellite broadband as a "formidable competitor." Those comments come as Starlink has become more aggressive with its pricing and its marketing, particularly at retail. And while Starlink started out primarily as a rural option, it has been encroaching into more suburban and rural settings as it seeks ways to monetize capacity. Starlink also has partnered with a couple of cable operators - Comcast and Alaska's GCI - to help them provide connectivity to business customers that are out of the reach of terrestrial networks. Starlink leveled up on partnerships this week when it teamed with T-Mobile on a new, fully integrated business-focused offering called SuperBroadband that enables the carrier to use satellite broadband as a fallback. Although Starlink has not stolen a lot of subs yet, Starlink's haphazard market approach could make it difficult for Cable One to come up with a response, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said in a research note (registration required). Holanda said Cable One is keeping a close eye on satellite broadband and how Cable One will need to respond to this emerging threat. "While satellite shows up in very low circumstances and quantities, it certainly continues to go up," he said. "We're not going to let what happened kind of with FWA happen on the satellite front or even going back to my Dish and DirecTV days back in the early '90s." Broadband sub losses worsen in Q1. Meanwhile, Cable One, like its cable industry peers, is still losing broadband subscribers. In Q1, it shed 13,500, worse than the 9,000 loss analysts were expecting and below a year-ago loss of 10,400. Moffett estimates that Cable One's broadband base is declining at an annual rate of 5.7%. Holanda said Cable One has been making moves to improve the broadband business, including new bundled packages and targeted retention offers, and believes that the "business is moving in the right direction. While first quarter connects improved year-over-year, "those efforts are not yet showing up consistently in results," he added. Cable One is hopeful that the recent launch of a Sparklight Mobile will help its broadband business. Cable One did not disclose how many mobile lines it had at the end of the first quarter, but reiterated that it will take time for the new product to make an impact. "While it is too early to draw conclusions around retention or lifetime value, initial customer response has been encouraging," Holanda said. "We continue to believe mobile can become an important component of the broader relationship over time." Moffett contends that Cable One's pricing is too high. Though its broadband average revenue per user (ARPU) rose 0.8% to $79.51 from the year-ago quarter, it is still well above its publicly-traded cable peers and some of its key competitors. According to the analyst, Cable One's Q1 ARPU of $79.51 remained below that of Comcast ($73.65) and Charter ($70.72) as well as Optimum Communications ($76.71), which has not yet reported Q1 results. AT&T Fiber ARPU ($74.09) and AT&T FWA ARPU ($61.01) are both below Cable One's. Financial snapshot. Cable One posted consolidated revenues of $553 million, down 7.3% from a year ago, and residential data revenues dropped 5.1% to $213.6 million. Business services dropped 4.9%, worse than the 2.7% decline expected by analysts, said Moffett, who has previously suggested that Cable One's dropping share price could make it a tempting takeover target. Senior Editor, Light Reading Jeff Baumgartner is a Senior Editor for Light Reading and is responsible for the day-to-day news coverage and analysis of the cable and video sectors. Follow him on X, LinkedIn and Bluesky. Baumgartner also served as Site Editor for Light Reading Cable from 2007-2013. In between his two stints at Light Reading, he led tech coverage for Multichannel News and was a regular contributor to Broadcasting + Cable. Baumgartner was named to the 2018 class of the Cable TV Pioneers. Want more Light Reading stories in your google search results? Join 62,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.