Share prices for Dish Network parent EchoStar have taken a dive in the days since the company published its second quarterly earnings report, revealing about $2 billion in debt due over the next three months.

Currently, stock for the media giant is trading at $16.23, with overall share price down more than 14% in the past five days.

Before EchoStar reported its earnings Friday, shares for the company were up as high as $20.

Also Read: Dish and Sling TV Revenue Collapses, Down a Record 10% in Q2

That disparity inspired investment banking giant JP Morgan to drop EchoStar’s investment outlook Monday from neutral to underweight.

EchoStar, which closed Q2 with $521 million in cash and cash equivalents, confirmed in its financial results that it does not have the cash to pay off its debts.

However, the company is in discussion with outside parties to compensate for its cash shortage, and is working to refinance its debt obligations.

Also Read: EchoStar Posts Q2 Loss as It Sheds 104,000 Pay TV Subscribers

“We continue to make progress and are in constructive discussions with counterparties, which we feel best support our objective,” Dish CEO Hamid Akhavan told investors on Friday. “The complex and delicate nature of this process demands time and confidentiality. We will certainly have more to share in due course.” 

Akhavan emphasized the use of EchoStar’s spectrum assets, many of which it gained after acquiring Dish Network at the beginning of this year, as a possible point of sale to recover some financial runway.

According to Akhavan, the only reason the company hasn’t used its spectrum assets as collateral is because it has yet to secure a desirable deal.

Veteran analyst Craig Moffett has a less optimistic outlook — according to a report published by MoffettNathanson, he believes that auction dynamics for the company’s spectrum holdings are “unfavorable for a host of reasons.”

Even more, Moffet believes that EchoStar’s shares are “likely to be worthless,” and predicts that the company may see bankruptcy by the end of the year.

MoffettNathanson joined the recent chorus of a steeper-than-anticipated slowdown in broadband subscriber growth for the second quarter, expecting large operators like Comcast and Charter Communications to report less than half the customer gains they did in Q1, while wireless customer additions are anticipated to maintain their recent upward momentum.

After its purchase by SVB Financial Group, MoffettNathanson was required to reinitiate its coverage of the sector, and on Tuesday (July 12) it did just that. Of the nine cable and telecom stocks MoffettNathanson follows, four have an “outperform” rating: T-Mobile, Comcast, Charter and fixed-wireless access provider Starry. The rest — Altice USA, Cable One, AT&T, Verizon Communications and Dish Network — have a “market perform” rating.

Several analysts have already modified their broadband subscriber growth forecasts for the bigger operators, with some expecting full-year 2022 additions to be nearly one-third of those of the peak year of 2020. Driving those modifications are the added pressure of increased fiber buildouts by telcos like AT&T and Verizon, aggressive pricing, the near disappearance of digital subscriber line customers — once a top feeding ground for cable broadband — and sluggish new household formation. 

In his report, MoffettNathanson senior analyst Craig Moffett estimated that both Comcast and Charter would report broadband growth of 91,000 and 90,000 in Q2, less than half the 262,000 and 185,000 they added, respectively in Q1. 

Broadband to Rebound a Little

Moffett, like other analysts, expects the declines to soften over the next five years, but not enough to reach even the prepandemic levels of 2019. He expects Comcast, the largest cable operator in the country, to end 2022 with an additional 698,000 broadband customers, about half the 1.358 million it added in 2021. Charter, he wrote, should add about 716,000 broadband customers in 2022, compared to 1.2 million additions in 2021. 

In later years, the gap between Comcast and Charter should widen. Moffett expects Comcast to add 751,000 broadband customers in 2023; 767,000 in 2024; 784,000 in 2025; and 800,000 in 2026. For Charter, year-end additions should be 824,000 in 2023; 873,000 in 2024; 902,000 in 2025; and 925,000 in 2026.

But in his report, Moffett attributed the slowdown in broadband additions for both Comcast and Charter to the fact that the market is nearing saturation, not new or more competition. That, he wrote, is “a view that implies further slowing but no outright reversals.”

Moffett also believes that the market is not giving either Comcast or Charter enough credit for their respective wireless businesses. And he expects them to continue to grow robustly.

In the report, Moffett estimated that Comcast would add 320,000 wireless subscribers in Q2, up slightly from Q1 additions of 318,000 customers. For the full year, he predicts Comcast will add about 1.3 million customers — up from 1.15 million in 2021. Between 2023 and 2026, Moffett anticipates wireless additions to be a steady 1.25 million customers per year. 

Charter’s wireless additions should dip to 318,000 in Q2 from 373,000 in Q1, but for the full year Moffett anticipates growth to 1.4 million additions, up from 1.2 million in 2021. However, he sees wireless additions slowing to 1.2 million in 2023, 1.1 million in 2024; 960,000 in 2025 and 860,000 in 2026.

Altice USA, which reported a loss of 13,000 broadband subscribers in 2021, should lose about 9,000 in Q2 and 6,000 for the whole of 2022. From there, the prospects look a little better — Moffett estimates it will gain 23,000 broadband customers in 2023; 78,000 in 2024; 81,000 in 2024 and 83,000 in 2025. Wireless additions are expected to be about 41,000 in 2022, rising to 76,000 by 2026, according to Moffett. 

Cable One should continue with modest gains in broadband customers, adding 7,100 in Q2 —  down from 13,000 in Q1 — and 41,700 for the full year. Growth should be fairly steady from there, according to Moffett, who estimates it will add 42,100 in 2023; 41,700 in 2024; and 41,900 in 2025. Cable One does not have a wireless offering yet.

On the telco side, aggressive fiber buildouts and pricing should help boost subscriber numbers significantly. 

High Upside for T-Mobile

Moffett was most impressed with T-Mobile, his top pick in the telecom sector, for its aggressive deployment of 5G technology and its competitive pricing structure. 

“The combination of a single telecom operator having both the industry’s best network and its lowest prices is unprecedented, and we believe paves the way to significant share gains,” Moffett wrote, adding that opportunities in rural markets and business customers “underscore the attainability of these gains.”

As a result, Moffett expects T-Mobile’s postpaid net additions to be 1.3 million in Q2, even with Q1. For the full year, he expects postpaid net additions to be 5.9 million, up from 5.6 million in 2021.

Telcos AT&T and Verizon aren’t expected to fare as well, mainly due to saturation and the wireless threat from cable. Moffett expects AT&T to have about 750,000 postpaid additions in Q2, down from 965,000 in Q1. For the year, net additions should be 2.8 million (down from 4.4 million in 2021) and sliding to 1.1 million in 2023, 850,000 in 2024 and 650,000 in 2025 and 2026. 

“As subscriber growth in an already-saturated wireless industry decelerates back towards population growth, we believe AT&T will be hard-pressed to post positive unit growth,” Moffett wrote.

At Verizon, aggressive pricing should boost subscriber numbers briefly -- Moffett predicts they will add 440,000 postpaid subs in Q2, nearly double the 269,000 additions in Q1. And though that will boost growth in 2022 above the prior year (2.3 million versus 2.1 million), those additions are expected to temper in later years. Moffett predicts postpaid net additions at Verizon will slip to 2.1 million in 2023, 1.8 million in 2024, 1.5 million in 2025 and 1.4 million in 2026.  

“We believe Verizon faces a challenging path forward,” Moffett wrote.

Fixed-wireless access provider Starry should continue to do well, reaching about 63,200 customers in 2021. That number could increase ten-fold by 2026 to 649,200 according to Moffett, but it will depend on the company’s ability to raise capital. It already has proven its technology works and can reach apartment dwellers relatively easily, and Moffett wrote that he expects costs to serve single-family homes will fall enough to make serving that segment attractive. 

“We believe they can achieve sufficient penetration at sufficiently high prices to earn an attractive return on capital in each individual market they launch, and that they can, in turn, ‘stack’ markets to achieve attractive returns as a whole,” Moffett wrote. “The fly in the ointment may be a circular argument related to their stock price itself: scaling their business will require raising additional capital. If their stock price is close to or above warranted value, it would not be a problem (and it won’t be dilutive). If, on the other hand, their stock price is meaningfully below warranted value (as it currently is), then a capital raise — which should be necessary one way or the other — would be substantially dilutive.” ■

With the second-quarter earnings season almost upon us, cable investors should prepare themselves for an even steeper falloff in broadband subscriber growth, according to Barclays Group media analyst Kannan Venkateshwar.

Comcast is expected to kick off the Q2 earnings season on July 28, followed by Charter Communications on July 29. But in a research report Thursday, Venkateshwar wrote that there is little hope that the months-long slowdown in broadband growth is nearing an end.

It’s been almost a full year since analysts began bracing for cable broadband additions to slow, and it seems like every quarter there is another call that the impact could be even greater than expected. Analysts have already modified their forecasts for the bigger operators, with some expecting full-year 2022 additions to be nearly one-third of those of the peak year of 2020. Now, with the added pressure of increased fiber buildouts by telcos like AT&T and Verizon Communications, aggressive pricing, the near disappearance of digital subscriber line customers — once a top feeding ground for cable broadband — and sluggish new household formation, that impact could be even worse.

On the telco side, Venkateshwar believes that fixed wireless offerings from Verizon and T-Mobile could have greater unit growth “than the entire cable industry” during the quarter. 

Charter Communications chief financial officer Jessica Fischer pointed to another potential pitfall for cable at the Credit Suisse Communications conference in June, telling the audience that about 60,000 to 70,000 broadband subscribers that had been part of the Federal Communications Commission’s Emergency Broadband Benefit program did not make the transition to the fed’s new broadband subsidy offering, the Affordable Connectivity Program. While Fischer said she believes broadband is a growth business and still expects Charter to add subscribers in Q2, it has caused analysts some pause. 

Venkateshwar, who had earlier predicted Charter would add about 100,000 broadband customers in Q2, now believes they will add none, adding that the gap between it and No 1 cable operator Comcast could be bigger than usual. 

In his note, Venkateshwar wrote that while Q2 is generally seasonal as students leave college and residents move to summer homes, “the slowdown being seen intra quarter goes beyond seasonality impacts.” 

“Charter talked down broadband sub growth for Q2 due to the impact of the rollover from old subsidy programs into new programs in late Q1, and the company’s consumer broadband net adds may tip into negative growth in the quarter,” Venkateshwar wrote. “This is difficult to explain without assuming continued structural impacts on gross adds due to competition as well as broader market saturation.”

The Barclays analyst expects Comcast to add about 74,000 broadband customers in the quarter (down from 354,000 last year), while Altice USA should lose about 20,000 high-speed internet subscribers in the period, compared to zero additions in the same period last year.

While telcos seem to have an advantage given their increased fiber deployment, Venkateshwar wrote that their efforts have been largely tactical, adding that there isn’t much visibility as to the long-term trends. And any big dropoff in cable broadband could lead operators to focus more heavily on wireless, which wouldn’t be good news for telcos. 

“Longer-term, it is tough to see how either industry ends up benefiting from the ongoing convergence in wireless/wireline offerings,” Venkateshwar wrote. “The end state of this process is likely to be potentially more M&A; however, with capital costs rising and a tougher regulatory environment, this may not be available as a solution for a while.” ▪️

In a quarter when analysts expected growth to slow substantially, Comcast surpassed almost every expectation, adding 354,000 broadband customers and reporting strong revenue and cash flow growth in the second quarter. 

Comcast’s broadband subscriber additions were its best second quarter results ever and beat analysts’ consensus estimates of 270,000 additions soundly. On the cable side, revenue grew 11% to $16  billion (ahead of analysts’ consensus estimates of $15.7 billion) and cash flow rose 14.5% to $7.1 billion, beating consensus predictions of $6.8 billion. Even video customer losses at 399,000 in the quarter beat expectations of a loss of 430,000 customers. Comcast also added about 280,000 wireless customers, ending the period with about 3.4 million Xfinity Mobile subscribers.

Overall, consolidated revenue was up 20.5% to $28.5 billion and consolidated cash flow rose 12,6% to $8.9 billion. 

In a press release, Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said he was pleased with results. 

“I have great confidence in our strategy and our ability to execute, which is reflected in our decision to restart our share repurchase program during the quarter, earlier than previously planned," Roberts said in a press release.   

Analysts were impressed with the Q2 results, which they expected to be the first period in a long growth slowdown after 2020’s record growth.   

“The strong broadband results, combined with better home broadband performance at AT&T and Verizon, give us comfort that overall broadband subscriber growth trends remain healthy, without material broadband pull-forward at the national level,” Evercore ISI Group media analyst Vijay Jayant wrote in a note to clients. . 

FuboTV reported a 53% year-to-year uptick in second-quarter revenue to $44.2 million, driven by a 47% increase to more than 286,000 paid users for its core virtual pay TV service. 

But with operating expenses coming in at $111.5 million for Q2, the company posted a $99.8 million net loss in the quarter. 

While the narrative for the New York-based company is scattered right now, make no mistake, the company is moving fast. 

In April, OTT startup fuboTV merged with virtual and augmented reality company FaceBank Group, a lesser known technology outfit that already trades over-the-counter where smaller-cap stocks usually reside. The combined company is now run by fuboTV founder and CEO David Gandler, and is branded fuboTV. 

In a letter to shareholders Thursday, Gandler confirmed reports that fuboTV is working with the SEC to uplist itself into listing that will remain “FUBO.”

“As is customary with mergers, we have a large number of SEC filings. We have made significant progress and are focusing our comments today on the go-forward strategy and business of the company, which is fuboTV,” Gandler wrote. 

“The company has been focused on strengthening its balance sheet,” he added. “As previously announced, we added $46 million in equity funding from institutional and private investors, including Credit Suisse Capital, LLC.

FuboTV said subscription revenue in Q2 rose to $39.5 million. With fuboTV increasing the per-month cost of its service in Q2, per-user average revenue rose 8% to $54.79. 

Advertising coin up 71% yer over year to $4.3 million. In addition to operating the sports-focused fuboTV virtual MVPD service, the company is also building Fubo Sports Network, a digital channel play that runs on multiple OTT platforms. It’s a similar model to how news startup Cheddar (now owned by Altice USA) was built. 

Programs aimed at keeping residential customers connected online during the nationwide pandemic helped fuel growth at Charter Communications in Q2.

Charter said it added 102,000 video subscribers in Q2, a reversal of the 150,000 video customers it lost in the prior year but entirely the result of programs like the Federal Communications Commission Keep America Connected pledge and others, where providers agreed not to disconnect customers for non-payment.

Charter said that 149,000 video customers signed up in Q2 as part of the FCC Keep America Connected pledge and 12,000 joined through its Remote Education Offer. The company said nearly 50% of REO customers chose to subscribe to other services like video, voice and mobile and were billed for those products.The REO program expired on June 30, and Charter said 90% of cumulative connects through that program have retained service through July 27.

On a conference call with analysts, Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge said regardless of how those customers came to the company, they are acting like any other subscriber that joined via a traditional promotion.

“From a profile perspective they look just like our regular customer base and they are just like our regular customer base,” Rutledge said. “They very much are behaving like all customers we create. We look at that offer in many ways as a conventional offer with a broadband benefit, but it brought in real customers that subscribe and act like existing customers.”

However, he didn’t expect to see continued video growth, adding that it was a combination of the pandemic which kept people stuck in their homes and in front of their TV sets, and the programs.

“The secular trends for video haven’t changed,” Rutledge said.

Despite subscriber gains, Charter said video revenue was down 0.4% for the period to $4.4 billion, which the company said was due to a higher mix of lower-priced video packages and the waiver overdue customer balances.

The FCC program also was a big factor in broadband gains. Charter said it added about 825,000 residential and business broadband subscribers in the quarter, but added that about 600,000 residences and 100,000 businesses applied for the FCC program, and at its peak, 208,000 residences and 14,000 businesses would have been disconnected for non-payment. About 30% of those Keep America Connected customers’ bills were current and more than 60% were making partial or full payments. Charter said that to help those customers with overdue balances, it waived $76 million residential, $6 million business and $3 million of mobile receivables in the quarter.

Charter also said it added 325,000 wireless customers in the period, ending the quarter with 1.7 million Spectrum Mobile subscribers.

The subscriber growth helped fuel a 3.1% lift in total revenue to $11.7 billion. Adjusted EBITDA rose 7.3% to $4.5 billion.

Programs aimed at keeping residential customers connected online during the nationwide pandemic helped fuel growth at Charter Communications in Q2.

Charter said it added 102,000 video subscribers in Q2, a reversal of the 150,000 video customers it lost in the prior year but entirely the result of programs like the Federal Communications Commission Keep America Connected pledge and others, where providers agreed not to disconnect customers for non-payment.

Charter said that 149,000 video customers signed up in Q2 as part of the FCC Keep America Connected pledge and 12,000 joined through its Remote Education Offer. The company said nearly 50% of REO customers chose to subscribe to other services like video, voice and mobile and were billed for those products. The REO program expired on June 30, and Charter said 90% of cumulative connects through that program have retained service through July 27.

On a conference call with analysts, Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge said regardless of how those customers came to the company, they are acting like any other subscriber that joined via a traditional promotion.

“From a profile perspective they look just like our regular customer base and they are just like our regular customer base,” Rutledge said. “They very much are behaving like all customers we create. We look at that offer in many ways as a conventional offer with a broadband benefit, but it brought in real customers that subscribe and act like existing customers.”

However, he didn’t expect to see continued video growth, adding that it was a combination of the pandemic which kept people stuck in their homes and in front of their TV sets, and the programs.

“The secular trends for video haven’t changed,” Rutledge said.

Despite subscriber gains, Charter said video revenue was down 0.4% for the period to $4.4 billion, which the company said was due to a higher mix of lower-priced video packages and the waiver overdue customer balances.

The FCC program also was a big factor in broadband gains. Charter said it added about 825,000 residential and business broadband subscribers in the quarter, but added that about 600,000 residences and 100,000 businesses applied for the FCC program, and at its peak, 208,000 residences and 14,000 businesses would have been disconnected for non-payment. About 30% of those Keep America Connected customers’ bills were current and more than 60% were making partial or full payments. Charter said that to help those customers with overdue balances, it waived $76 million residential, $6 million business and $3 million of mobile receivables in the quarter.

Charter also said it added 325,000 wireless customers in the period, ending the quarter with 1.7 million Spectrum Mobile subscribers.

The subscriber growth helped fuel a 3.1% lift in total revenue to $11.7 billion. Adjusted EBITDA rose 7.3% to $4.5 billion.

Altice USA added more broadband customers in the second quarter than ever, spurred by stay at home orders throughout its service territory as the pandemic rages on, and prompting the company to reinstate guidance for the rest of the year.

Altice USA said it added 70,000 broadband customers in the period, more than five times the 13,000 it added in the prior year. Including complimentary Altice Advantage Internet customer net additions, residential broadband customers rose by 79,000 in the quarter. That growth fell to 53,000 additions when adjusted for customers receiving broadband via programs like the FCC Keep America Connected Pledge and a New Jersey order prohibiting companies from disconnecting broadband service for non-payment. But even with the lower number, Altice had its best broadband quarter ever.

At the same time, video subscribers fell by about 35,000 in the period, up from a loss of 21,000 customers in the same period last year.

Like its other cable peers, Altice USA attributed the broadband gains to the pandemic. The company added that internet usage in its service territories rose by 59% in the quarter, while video streaming was up 46% year-over-year. 

Total revenue was up 1% to $2.47 billion and EBITDA grew 2.5% to $1.1 billion.

“Our core cable business performed extremely well, and we remain committed to serving our broader community with the connectivity and news they need during this unprecedented time,” Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei said in a press release. “For the second consecutive quarter, we delivered best-ever customer net additions, driven by organic broadband growth, and increased revenue, net income and Adjusted EBITDA year-over-year. We saw resilience in our Business Services segment, where we grew revenue more than two percent, and began to see a recovery in our News and Advertising business as we exited the quarter. While the pandemic continues to pose some uncertainty in the back half of the year, we are encouraged by the strength and resilience of our business, and by the opportunity set presented.”

As a result, Altice USA has decided to reinstate guidance for the full year -- it withdrew guidance in Q1 because of the pandemic. Now the company said it projects revenue and EBITDA growth for the full year, capital expenditures of $1.3 billion and $1.7 billion in share repurchases. The company has set a year-end leverage target of 4.5 times to 5 times net debt/adjusted EBITDA.

Comcast lost a total of 477,000 pay TV customers in the second quarter across its residential and business channels, the cable company disclosed Thursday. 

Residential losses totaled 427,000 customers in Q2, while another 50,000 business customers shed their video services, with restaurants, bars and other public establishments shuttered amid the pandemic.

The losses represented a doubling of the 424,000 Xfinity TV subscribers that quit Comcast video services in the second quarter of 2019. 

Comcast has now lost 815,000 Xfinity TV customers in the first six months of 2020. Comcast, which once called its vaunted X1 video platform a “churn buster,” has lost nearly 1.6 million pay TV customers in the last 12 months. 

Earlier this month, equity research company Cowen released data suggesting that as much as 42% of the Comcast video subscriber base is on promotional pricing. With many of those customers facing steep price increases in the next 12 months, Comcast is likely looking at the attrition getting worse, not better. 

Comcast remains the No. 1 supplier of traditional linear pay TV service in the U.S. Its residential video subscriber base hovered at just more than 19,400.

The losses came despite Comcast/NBCUniversal’s soft launch of new SVOD service Peacock in mid-April—the $4.99 premium version of the service was available for free to Xfinity TV subscribers. 

Comcast did post its second-best broadband subscriber growth in the last 13 years, adding more than 340,000 subscribers during a lockdown period during which most people needed internet to get by. 

Also read: NBCU Announces 10M Signups for Peacock

Growing high-speed internet has been the expressed priority for Comcast over the last several years. The company now gives away a free shiny-bundle streaming TV service, Xfinity Flex, to its broadband-only users.

While disclosing the downer pay TV numbers, Comcast did say that it had signed up 10 million Peacock users since its April 15 soft launch.  

Video subscriber losses doubled and broadband customer increases reached record levels at Comcast in the second quarter, the first full quarter affected by COVID-19.

Comcast said it lost 477,000 video customers in the period, more than double the 224,000 it lost in the prior year. At the same time, broadband had its best second quarter in 13 years, with subscribers rising by 323,000 in the period, compared to an increase of 209,000 in the same period last year. Comcast said the broadband growth did not include more than 600,000 additional high-risk or free Internet Essentials customers that receive service but were not included in reported results.

Despite the decline in video customers, Cable Communications revenue was essentially flat at $14.4 billion, while EBITDA at the distribution segment was up 5.5% to $6.2 billion, driven exclusively by broadband gains.

Overall consolidated revenue was down 11.7% to $23.7 billion and EBITDA declined 9.1% to $7.9 billion, mainly due to a sharp falloff in its cable network and movie studio businesses.

At NBCUniversal, revenue dipped 25.4% to $6.1 billion and EBITDA fell 29.5% to $1.6 billion as declining ad revenue and pressure from pandemic-related closures at its Theme Parks and movie studio ruled the day.

Cable network revenue fell 14.7% in the quarter, as ad sales dipped 27% and distribution revenue was down 14.8% reflecting credits accrued at some of its regional sports networks from the decreased number of games played by pro sports leagues and declines in pay TV customers. EBITDA was up 3.5% in the period, mainly because of lower programming and operating costs.

Broadcast revenue was down 1.6% in the quarter to $2.4 billion, reflecting a 28% decline in ad revenue. Content licensing revenue was up 58.5%, primarily due to licensing deals with its own Peacock streaming service, which debuted to Comcast customers in April but launched nationally on July 15, and retransmission consent revenue was up 9.2%, primarily due to higher retransmission consent fees. That helped drive a 20% increase in adjusted EBITDA to $641 million in the period.

Filmed Entertainment revenue was down 18.1% to $1.2 billion, driven by a 96.8% decline in theatrical revenue.

Content licensing revenue increased 19.5%, helped by titles that were made available on premium video on demand like Trolls World Tour and The King of Staten Island, and deals with Peacock in the period. Lower operating costs as the pandemic shut down most production in the quarter, helped drive adjusted EBITDA up 24.8% to $228 million in the quarter.

Comcast announced earlier this month that it is narrowing the window between theatrical and VOD releases with theater chain AMC Entertainment from 75 days to 17 days.

“Our response to COVID-19 has been extraordinarily fast and effective, and our products and brands continue to resonate strongly with our customers across all segments and all geographies,“ Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said in a press release. “The solid results that we delivered in the quarter highlight the resilience of our company...Overall, based on our results and the many organic growth opportunities that we have across our company, I am confident in our ability to continue to successfully navigate the impact of COVID-19, and emerge from the crisis even stronger. I could not be more proud of how our teams across Comcast Cable, NBCUniversal and Sky are together managing the business."

Once surpassing 5 million customers and capturing the imagination of forlorn cable TV subscribers with splashy Michael Bay commericals, Verizon Fios TV has hit the cord-cutting skids along with the rest of the linear pay TV business.

The platform shed another 81,000 customers in the second quarter. Fios hasn’t lost massive quarterly chunks of users as, say, the satellite TV platforms have. But it has steadily declined to below 4 million users.  

Also read: Verizon’s Video Strategy: Everything You Need to Know About the Wireless Giant’s Tortured TV History

Overall, Verizon posted a strong quarter, beating consensus revenue forecasts from equity analysts with $30.45 billion in sales. Postpaid wireless customers were up. The company’s millimeter wave 5G wireless service is expanding—the fastest, lowest-latency iteration of 5G will reach 60 cities this year, the wireless giant says. 

And wired Fios high-speed internet service is still a growing concern—Verizon added 10,000 customers in the second quarter. 

But to serve the bundling needs of its customers, Verizon is now mostly relying on third-party streaming services. Verizon already had in place promotional deals to offer subscription OTT services Disney Plus and YouTube TV to its wireline broadband customers when they sign up. 

On Thursday, it kicked off a deal with ViacomCBS to natively integrate AVOD platform Pluto TV into devices ranging from smart phons to Fios set-tops. 

AT&T said it lost another 886,000 customers in the second quarter across its “premium video” portfolio, a grouping that includes linear pay TV services DirecTV, U-verse TV and AT&T TV. 

The attrition represents an acceleration from the 778,000 premium video customers AT&T lost in the second quarter of 2019. It lost 879,000 customers in the first quarter. 

AT&T announced across-the-tiers price increases for AT&T TV and DirecTV earlier this month. It is no longer selling U-Verse TV. 

The company also reported another 68,000 lost subscribers for its virtual pay TV service, AT&T TV Now, with its base whittled to just 720,000 customers as of the end of June. 

AT&T’s revenue from pay TV video was down 13.2% to $7 billion in the second quarter. The company attributed it to the subscriber declines, as well as the impact of COVID-19 on advertising, commercial revenue and “certain fees.”

Also read: AT&T TV: Everything You Need to Know About the Streaming Version of AT&T’s Premium Pay TV Service

Last year, ahead of the March national rollout of AT&T TV, company executives expressed hope that the new IP-based service would stem the steady customer losses being experienced by decaying satellite TV brand DirecTV, as well as U-verse, a pay TV product AT&T no longer sells to new customers. 

While AT&T TV now certainly hasn’t reversed the company’s linear pay TV fortunes, AT&T does credit it for sales of bundled fiber broadband services—AT&T announced the addition of 225,000 fiber-based high-speed internet customers in Q2. 

Overall revenue at Fox Corp. was up 5% in the fiscal second quarter to $3.78 billion, driven by strong affiliate fee growth at its cable and broadcast networks.

Overall affiliate fees rose 7% in the period to $1.4 billion, while total ad revenue was up about 1% to $2 billion. The ad revenue gain was despite tough comparisons to the prior year, which had record political ad sales because of the midterm elections.

On a segment basis, revenue at the cable networks was flat at $1.47 billion, while cash flow increased 7.1% to $556 million in the period, from $519 million in the prior year. Affiliate fee growth at the cable nets was about 2% to $957 million in the period, and advertising revenue was down 4.5% to $337 million.

At the television segment, which includes the Fox broadcast network and owned and operated TV stations, revenue was up slightly to $2.27 billion from $2.15 billion in the prior year. But affiliate fees (mostly retransmission consent revenue) was up 18% to $479 million and ad revenue rose 2.4% to $1.7 billion. The TV unit reported a loss of $214 million, up from $14 million in the prior year, mainly because of higher costs associated with the NFL and WWE Friday Night SmackDown, as well as higher programming rights amortization at Fox Entertainment.

“Our results reaffirm that Fox Corporation is delivering on the operational and financial objectives that we established less than twelve months ago,” said Fox executive chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch in a press release. “Our brands are exhibiting strength in a competitive marketplace and delivering healthy top-line growth as we continue to invest strategically to expand the reach of our portfolio and further diversify our revenue streams. Meanwhile, we are taking a balanced approach to capital allocation, including the return of $500 million to shareholders in the form of share repurchases since our last earnings release. Coming off an incredibly successful Super Bowl LIV and with the buildup to the November Presidential Election ahead of us, we look forward to continuing our momentum through calendar 2020.”

Shares of Netflix fell nearly 12% in after-hours Nasdaq trading after the SVOD giant missed guidance on both domestic and global subscriber growth in the second quarter.

The Los Gatos, Calif. technology company reported a loss of 100,000 subscribers, well off forecasted growth of 300,000 users. This came after Netflix raised the price of its most popular tier, the one that supports two simultaneous HD streams, from $10.99 a month to $12.99 a month. The low-end, single-stream SD plan went up one dollar to $8.99 a month. And the premium 4K/HDR-enabled, four-stream plan increased by two dollars to $15.99 a month.

The company also undershot on international paid subscriber adds, bringing in 2.83 million new customers vs. forecasts of 4.81 million.

Revenue rose 26% during Q2 to $4.92 billion. But again, it was off forecasts of $4.93 billion.

“Our missed forecast was across all regions, but slightly more so in regions with price increases,” the company said in its letter to shareholders.

Netflix expects better results in the third quarter, which it says will factor in exceptional viewership of recently refreshed original series Orange Is the New Black and Stranger Things. The company told investors to expect global subscriber growth of around 7 million.

Oh, and despite speculation that Netflix might turn to advertising to improve its revenue profile, the company said not to expect such a move anytime soon.

“We, like HBO, are advertising free,” the company said in its shareholder note. “That remains a deep part of our brand proposition; when you read speculation that we are moving into selling advertising, be confident that this is false. We believe we will have a more valuable business in the long term by staying out of competing for ad revenue and instead entirely focusing on competing for viewer satisfaction.”