“And EBITDA growth in the fourth quarter will be pressured by at least as much as it was in the third quarter, given last year's political advertising strength and the same macro pressures we saw in the third quarter.”

In context

“operations, decreased 0.7% year-over-year, primarily due to lower bad debt expense and labor costs, partly offset by higher network utility costs. Excluding bad debt, cost to service customers was essentially flat year-over-year. Marketing and residential sales expense grew by 5.4% due to some higher marketing spend with dramatically higher impressions at lower cost and continued channel mix shift from lower-cost channels like in-house call centers to digital and affiliates. Finally, other expense increased by 0.7%. Adjusted EBITDA declined by 1.5% year-over-year in the quarter and was essentially flat when excluding advertising. We expect 2025 full year EBITDA growth to be flat or marginally positive year-over-year with higher underlying growth absent the impact of political advertising. And EBITDA growth in the fourth quarter will be pressured by at least as much as it was in the third quarter, given last year's political advertising strength and the same macro pressures we saw in the third quarter. Turning to net income. We generated $1.1 billion of net income attributable to Charter shareholders in the third quarter compared to $1.3 billion last year, given this quarter's lower adjusted EBITDA and higher other operating expenses, driven by merger and acquisition costs related to the pending Cox transaction and severance costs. Turning to Slide 14. Capital expenditures totaled a bit less than $3.1 billion in the third quarter, nearly $500 million higher than last year's third quarter due to CPE spend timing and higher network evolution spend. We continue to expect total 2025 capital expenditures to reach approximately $11.5 billion, lower than our original outlook of $12 billion, primarily as a result of some network evolution capital pushed into 2026. Despite that push, our goal is”