▶ Full Post Text
$CHTR is an absolute dog. Has been for years. Down around 80% from ATHs and hit a low around $113 after earnings. Just been brutal.
Trades at a 3.9 P/E at the current share price of roughly $150. Yes, they are doing buybacks. But there is something interesting here, and yall can let me know what you think,
Tomorrow, August 13, the CPUC is scheduled to vote on Charter's merger with Cox. This is one of the last major regulatory steps before the transaction can close. The FCC has already approved the deal. If the merger closes, the combined company is expected to become the largest broadband and cable provider in the United States, with roughly 38 million subscribers, surpassing Comcast.
Whatever. Maybe that's priced in.
In fact, this merger has taken so long that CHTR has fallen from around $400 to $150 since the deal was originally announced, and there's a legitimate argument that Charter would have been better off just continuing to buy back its own stock at these prices.
So the Cox deal itself isn't necessarily the interesting part.
What IS interesting is that on June 26, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX and Charter had held executive-level discussions about a potential consumer mobile phone partnership.
Reuters subsequently reported the story. Charter declined to comment, while SpaceX did not respond to Reuters' request for comment.
[https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/spacex-charter-discussed-mobile-phone-partnership-us-bloomberg-news-reports-2026-06-26/](https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/spacex-charter-discussed-mobile-phone-partnership-us-bloomberg-news-reports-2026-06-26/)
According to the report, Charter could potentially route some SpaceX phone traffic through Charter's ground-based broadband infrastructure.
This makes a lot of sense to me.
SpaceX is clearly serious about becoming a bigger player in mobile. Starlink's satellite network gives it incredible coverage, especially in places terrestrial networks struggle to reach, but satellite-to-phone obviously has limitations compared with dense terrestrial infrastructure, particularly indoors and in obstructed environments.
What better partner than what would become the largest broadband provider in the U.S.?
It would make a lot of sense for a SpaceX partnership to be announced AFTER the Cox transaction closes. Major companies do this all the time. Finish the transformational transaction, establish the combined footprint and capital structure, and then announce strategic partnerships involving the enlarged company. I'm obviously speculating here. There is no announced deal.
But Bloomberg is usually legit. They were on the Stripe paypal offer months before it became official.
Partnership or not, CHTR still trades at a seriously silly \~4x earnings.
CHATGPT SLOP BELOW:
• LTM net income: \~$4.9B
• LTM FCF: \~$4.7B
• Q2 net income: $1.292B
• Q2 FCF: $969M
• Q2 buybacks: $838M, buying 4.0M shares
• Q2 weighted-average shares: down 13.1% YoY
• Debt: $93.8B
• Current market cap: \~$18.2B
The share-count decline is doing enormous work.
Net income actually fell slightly in Q2, from $1.301B to $1.292B, yet basic EPS increased from $9.41 to $10.76 because Charter's weighted-average share count fell 13.1%.
The Bearish Side
The debt is the strongest part of the Charter bear case, and it's the main reason this thing can trade at \~4x earnings without everyone immediately piling into it.
Charter had $93.8B of debt as of June 30, 2026, against an equity market cap of only around $18B. Also subscriber loss is a big issue.
Anyways, position posted
I'm personally not a huge fan of high SI. I'm a contrarian investor, so a lot of stuff I buy ends up having high SI, and in my experience shorts can just sit there beating the shit out of a stock much longer than people expect. However.... Quiver Quant currently reports 22.46M shares sold short, or 50.4% of float as of July 31, with roughly 6.1 days to cover. Do with that what you will.
What do we think?? Am I baked? Position posted