I have been eyeing CHTR for a while and slowly building a starter position. Sharing a screen shots below Valuation vs ER growth Outstanding shares: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CHTR/charter-communications/shares-outstanding Today I came across one of the more comprehensive write-ups I’ve seen on Charter Communications ($CHTR) shared by a user here on reddit, and I’m curious what this sub thinks.
Link: https://sixerinvestment.substack.com/p/charter-communications-chtr-the-wonderful
The basic thesis is that the market is treating Charter like a melting ice cube, but the cash flow / buyback math may be much more interesting than the headline narrative suggests.
The main points:
Charter is trading around 3.5x earnings with a very high free cash flow yield. The article argues that roughly three years of FCF is close to the entire current market cap.
The company has historically been an aggressive buyback machine. Since 2016, Charter has repurchased about $79B+ of stock/units, which is several times the current market cap. The author argues the buyback is being temporarily throttled around the Cox transaction, not permanently abandoned.
The Cox/Liberty transaction is presented as the near-term catalyst. The write-up says most approvals are already done and California CPUC is the remaining key gating item, targeted around summer/August 2026. If/when the deal closes, the author expects buybacks to eventually restart at scale.
The debt is obviously the biggest bear-case issue. Charter has around $94B of debt, but the author argues the maturity profile and fixed-rate nature make it less fragile than the market assumes. The reverse stress test section was one of the more interesting parts: basically asking what level of subscriber losses would actually break the capital structure.
The other interesting part is the short-interest setup. The article claims roughly 18–27% of the float is sold short, with a structurally tight float due to strategic/value holders. If the buyback restarts while short interest is still elevated, the setup could get interesting. I think the short float might be as high as 50+% since we have no way of telling if this is being calculated only on the open float or total float (part of which is locked ~35-50% similar to CAR). My current read:
The bull case is not “cable is suddenly growing again.” It is more like:
stable-ish broadband cash flow + capex normalization + Cox close + resumed buybacks at a very low multiple = big per-share value creation.
The bear case is also obvious:
broadband losses accelerate, wireless/fiber competition gets worse, debt becomes the story, and buybacks don’t come back fast enough to matter.
I’m long common stock and also own 10 Jan 2028 LEAPS, so I’m biased here. But I’d like to hear the strongest pushback from people who have looked at Charter, Comcast, cable broadband, or the debt side.
Main questions I’m trying to answer:
- Is this genuinely cheap, or is the market correctly pricing a structurally impaired business? 2. Is the debt manageable if broadband declines continue at a slow rate? 3. How realistic is a meaningful buyback restart after Cox closes? 4. Are shorts underestimating the per-share math, or are longs underestimating the terminal decline risk?