Charter 1999 Annual Report Download - page 16

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14 CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS
• the successful “Charterizing” of recently acquired cable systems, bringing these systems
up to Charter’s high standards of operational and financial performance;
• the rapid, effective deployment of new digital services in markets throughout our systems;
• a continued focus on improving service to our customers; and
• the continuation of strategic acquisitions and system swaps to improve clustering of our systems.
I firmly believe that we’ll end 2000 ahead of our original schedule for rebuilding our systems
without increasing our overall cost projections. Our plant architecture is state-of-the-art. Our
current design standards include six fiber-optic strands to each node serving a maximum of 500
homes, and currently averaging 380 homes per node. By activating the fibers reserved for future use,
utilizing dense wavelength division multiplexing, we can segment to 60 home nodes. This positions
us very well to achieve high penetration levels for all of our advanced services.
Our plans call for adding an average of 10,000 new digital video customers and 2,500 new
high-speed Internet service customers a week in 2000. We also plan to offer our Internet
portal service in St. Louis and other select markets in 2000, and to move ahead with trials of video
on demand and telephone service.
STRONG MARKETS NUMBER OF CUSTOMERS
Los Angeles, Calif. 509,000
Greenville/Spartanburg, S.C. 321,000
St. Louis, Mo. 255,000
Madison, Wisc. 231,000
Atlanta, Ga. 210,000
Charleston, W. Va. 189,000
Ft. Worth, Texas 188,000
Worchester, Mass. 165,000
Rochester, Minn. 142,000
Bay City, Mich. 132,000
Kingsport, Tenn. 124,000
Hickory, N.C. 122,000
Birmingham, Ala. 117,000
Fond du Lac, Wisc. 107,000
Charter’s acquisition strategy has resulted in significant progress in
clustering our cable operations. Approximately 45 percent of Charter
customers are in 14 markets with an average of 200,000 customers
each, and 80 percent of all Charter customers are in 14 states.
96 97 98 99
9.6
9.5
10.7
9.1
96 97 98 99
10.0
11.0
11.4
10.6
Over the past four years, Charter has maintained consistently strong
growth in both “same-store” (for systems under Charter management
for 12 months or more) revenues and EBITDA — earnings before inter-
est, income taxes, depreciation and amortization.
CONSISTENTLY STRONG PERFORMANCE
“SAME-STORE” REVENUE GROWTH “SAME-STORE” EBITDA GROWTH
in percent in percent