Time Warner Cable chief financial officer Rob Marcus told an audience
at an industry conference Wednesday that the second largest cable
operator in the country is on track to lose customers in the third
quarter, a reflection of the stagnant economy.
As a result, Time Warner Cable stock fell $1.66 (3%) in afternoon trading Wednesday to $53.52 per share.
Speaking at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications
& Entertainment conference in Newport Beach, Calif., Marcus said
that Primary Service Units (or PSUs, a measure of voice, video and data
customers) will likely fall below second quarter levels.
Marcus said that continued high unemployment, high home vacancy rates and anemic new home formation are all having an impact.
"Video
in particularly has been challenged," Marcus said. "Video net losses
are pacing ahead of where they were in last year's Q3, voice growth is
slower than it was last year and HSD [high-speed data] while the
strongest performer, is still lower than last year. The net-net of all
of that is that we may actually see a PSU loss for Q3."
Marcus did
not estimate how big a video loss Time Warner Cable is bracing for, but
the company lost about 84,000 video customers in the third quarter of 2009. PSUs in the year -ago period were up by 109,000, according to company financial statements.
