Optimum Communications, Inc. (OPTU) Stock Analysis

Price updated 4 days ago · SEC data refreshed 3 months ago ⓘ · Not investment advice

Optimum Communications, Inc.

OPTU Communication Services Cable & Media📄 SEC filings ↗ CUSIP 02156K103
Valuation N/A
Long-term trend (200d) 43% below 200-day Risk 68/100 High
▾ What's in the 68/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Fundamental health (43%) 91/100 → +39.0
leverage 92/100 · FCF trend 90/100
Smart money (short interest + insider buying) (31%) 65/100 → +20.4
Macro backdrop (VIX, curve, credit, fear/greed + week-over-week momentum) (26%) 35/100 → +9.0
early-warning: macro conditions deteriorating week-over-week
Total68/100

Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.

💵 Price $1.02 · 4 days ago 📄 Financials SEC EDGAR · refreshed 3 months ago
📍 START HERE

How to read OPTU (pre-profit growth)

This company is reinvesting instead of generating profit, so a standard DCF cannot price it. The useful question is whether the growth the market is paying for is achievable — and whether the company can fund itself until then.

Where to start — the sections that matter most for this stock
  1. 1 Reverse-DCF — the growth the price demands ↓
    It shows exactly how fast the business must grow to justify today's price. Compare that to what comparable companies have actually achieved.
  2. 2 Cash runway ↓
    Can it reach profitability before it has to raise money and dilute shareholders?
  3. 3 Interactive calculator ↓
    Set your own growth + margin assumptions and see what the business would be worth if you are right.
Or — what are you trying to decide?
A note on process: fear-driven decisions — including fear of missing out — tend to be the expensive ones. A stock up 10% a day for three days is excitement, not evidence. Whichever reader you are, the data below is there to be checked before anything is decided.
🚀
"It's surging — should I chase it?"
The momentum / FOMO trade. Before you chase, see whether the people who know it best are quietly selling into the rally.
🏷️
"Is it a cheap bargain?"
The deep-value trade. How far below assets and our value it trades — and whether it's cheap for a reason.
ⓘ Foreign filer — financials appear to be reported in a non-U.S. currency

OPTU looks like a foreign company (ADR) whose SEC filings are denominated in its home currency, while the share price is in U.S. dollars. Mixing the two would produce a meaningless dollar fair-value, so we suppress the single intrinsic-value number rather than show a wrong one.

What to use instead: the growth trends, margins and ratios below (which are currency-independent), the peer comparison, and the company's own filings. A currency-converted valuation is on our roadmap.

ⓘ Why does OPTU trade at $1.02?

Optimum Communications, Inc. has 467.8 million shares outstanding. At $1.02 per share, the market values all outstanding OPTU equity at $477 million. That's market capitalization, not enterprise value — enterprise value also accounts for debt and cash — and it matters here because OPTU carries substantial debt. The share price by itself tells you almost nothing — a company can pick any share price by splitting or issuing more shares. What matters is the total value (Market Cap?Market Cap — The total dollar value the market is assigning to the entire company.
Why it matters: This is the number that actually matters when comparing companies. Two companies with the same business but different share counts have the same market cap.
Reference: Mega cap >$200B · Large $10–200B · Mid $2–10B · Small $300M–2B · Micro <$300M
Full explanation →) compared to what the business actually produces. This page values OPTU in Per Share?Per Share — A company-level figure divided by total shares — what one share represents.
Why it matters: Per-share metrics are the only way to fairly compare two companies with different share counts.
Full explanation → economics — what each share represents of the underlying business. Play with the share-price calculator on the homepage →

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Checking filings for failure warnings…
PEER BASKET — TIGHT COMPARABLES

How does OPTU stack up against its closest peers?

We take the 5 same-industry companies most similar to OPTU (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If OPTU is much more expensive on the same yardstick, that's a red flag — unless you have a specific reason it deserves a premium. For a leveraged business, EV/EBIT and FCF yield (both in the table) are usually more reliable than EV/Sales, because revenue multiples ignore differences in margins and debt.

▾ What's "EV / Sales" in plain English?

EV (Enterprise Value) = market cap + total debt − cash. It's "what you'd pay to buy the entire company outright" — you pay the market cap to shareholders and take over their debt, but you keep their cash. EV is fairer than market cap alone because it includes the debt the new owner inherits.

EV / Sales = EV ÷ annual revenue. So "2.5×" means investors pay $2.50 of enterprise value per $1 of yearly sales. Higher = market is paying more per dollar of sales (usually because they expect future growth or fat margins).

p25 / median / p75 are the 25th, 50th (middle), and 75th percentile of the peers' multiples. Half the peers fall between p25 and p75. The median (p50) is the typical peer — that's the benchmark we compare to.

What peers trade at (p25 / median / p75)
EV / Sales?EV / Sales — For every $1 of yearly revenue, this is how many dollars investors pay to own the whole business (including debt).
Why it matters: Works for pre-profit growth companies where P/E and FCF don't apply. The most apples-to-apples cross-company multiple because it ignores accounting choices.
Reference: 1–3x for mature companies · 4–10x for software/SaaS · 10–20x for hypergrowth · >20x is rare and demanding
Full explanation →		 1.6x / 1.6x / 2.3x

Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Computed over 5 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.

Peer-implied value check
Peer-implied value isn't meaningful for OPTU: its net debt per share is larger than what peers' sales multiples imply the whole enterprise is worth — a sign of heavy leverage, where almost all of the enterprise value belongs to lenders rather than shareholders. The multiples table above still works as context.

⚠️ Important caveat: peer multiples only work if the peers are genuinely comparable. Always check the peer list below — if the auto-picker grabbed micro-caps or unrelated businesses, the comparison is noise. A medical-device giant priced against tiny biotech startups won't produce a useful signal.

▾ View peer list (8)
Ticker Company Industry Mcap EV/Sales EV/GPEV/EBIT FCF Yield
AMCX AMC Global Media Inc. Cable & Media $550M 1.0x —17.3x 42.1%
GLIBA GCI Liberty, Inc. Cable & Media $692M 1.6x —— 15.8%
GLIBK GCI Liberty, Inc. Cable & Media $693M 1.6x —— 15.7%
CABO Cable One, Inc. Cable & Media $298M 2.3x —— 79.5%
AREN Arena Group Holdings, Inc. Cable & Media $791M 6.6x 13.0x21.8x 4.9%
ZD ZIFF DAVIS, INC. Telegraph & Other Message ·fallback $534M 1.0x —7.7x 37.2%
STRZ STARZ ENTERTAINMENT CORP /CN/ Film & Video ·fallback $393M 0.7x —— 37.8%
UCL uCloudlink Group Inc. Telecom Services ·fallback $382M 4.7x 9.0x48.2x 0.6%
FINANCIAL HEALTH SCREENS

Bankruptcy + quality screens

Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.

Altman Z-Score?Altman Z-Score — A bankruptcy-risk score combining 5 financial ratios into one number. Predictive of bankruptcy within 2 years.
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
0.26
Distress zone

Distress zone under the classic Altman thresholds — scores here have historically preceded a high rate of financial distress within ~2 years. This is a warning signal, not a direct bankruptcy probability, and its reliability varies by industry. Be very skeptical of any "cheap" valuation on this name.

The classic Z-score was calibrated on manufacturers. It is less reliable for asset-light or non-manufacturing businesses (broadcasters, media, software, services) and not applicable to banks, REITs, or insurers — for those the coefficients and the asset-turnover term distort the result. Read it as one screening input, not a verdict.

Piotroski-style checks (partial — not a standard F-score)
3 passed · 5 failed · 1 n/a
Partial result, not a standard F-score: 3 of 8 measurable checks passed. 1 of the 9 standard checks couldn't be measured, so this is scored out of 8, not 9 — it isn't comparable to a published F-score.
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
  • ✗ Positive net income
    Net income -$1,869.0M in FY2025.
    Why this matters: Does the company actually earn a profit? Sustained losses eventually force it to raise money — diluting you — or take on debt.
  • ✓ Positive operating cash flow
    Operating cash flow $1,228.5M (was $1,582.4M the prior year).
  • ✓ Cash flow backs up reported profit
    Operating cash flow $1,228.5M vs net income -$1,869.0M.
  • ✗ Return on assets improving
    Return on assets -6.1% vs -0.3% a year ago.
    Why this matters: Is the company squeezing more profit out of each dollar of assets than last year? Rising = getting more efficient; falling = the opposite.
  • ✗ Debt load (vs assets)
    Long-term debt is 85.4% of assets vs 79.0% a year ago ($26,206.2M of $30,703.8M assets).
    Why this matters: Rising debt relative to assets means more risk and more cash going to interest instead of shareholders. Falling debt is a sign of strengthening.
  • ✓ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)
    Current ratio 0.80x vs 0.32x a year ago — improved, but still below 1.0: the ✓ grades the trend, the level remains a caution flag.
  • ✗ Share count (dilution)
    Share count rose 1.7% (459.9M → 467.8M year-over-year).
    Why this matters: Issuing lots of new shares splits the pie into more pieces, shrinking your slice. Stable or falling share count protects existing owners.
  • · Pricing power (gross margin) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
  • ✗ Sales per asset (asset turnover)
    Asset turnover 0.28x vs 0.28x a year ago.
    Why this matters: Asset turnover measures how much revenue each dollar of assets generates. Rising = more productive use of the asset base.

Missing data is never counted as a pass or a fail — it's shown as n/a and excluded from the denominator. Each check compares the company against its own prior year.

INTERACTIVE — TWEAK YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

What if you assume different inputs?

Here's where we land — and what happens if you change the assumptions. Drag the sliders to set your own Discount Rate?Discount Rate — The annual return you demand for taking single-stock risk instead of buying a safe Treasury or index fund.
Why it matters: Higher discount rate = stricter valuation (a stock has to produce more cash to be worth holding). Lower = more generous.
Reference: 8–12% is standard · 9–10% matches S&P 500 historical return · Below 7% is illogical for single-stock risk
Full explanation → (the annual return you demand for single-stock risk) and terminal growth; the value updates live so you can see whether the stock looks cheaper or richer. The discount rate starts at 10.0%, the figure our model used for OPTU. Open Advanced to also change beta, growth and the rate path.

Note: no headline intrinsic value is published for this stock (the valuation is held for a data-quality reason — see the notes above). The calculator below is a what-if tool: the values it produces are your assumptions played out, not our estimate.

4.5% (risk-free)9-10% normal18% (deep-risk)
0%2-3% (GDP)5% (rarely sustainable)

A full intrinsic value isn't shown for OPTU because the valuation is currently held for a data-quality reason (see the guardrail notes above). The reverse-DCF reading still works — it needs only the price and cash flow — but we won't publish a forward value until the underlying data passes our checks.

For comparison — the revenue growth today's price already assumes
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—

—

⚙ Advanced — tinker with every input (beta, growth, rate path, margin → full intrinsic value)
Where the discount rate comes from — discount rate = risk-free + beta × equity-risk-premium
What you'd earn risk-free from government bonds — the floor under every other rate. Slide it down to model the market expecting rate cuts (value rises); up for higher-for-longer.
The extra yearly return investors demand for owning stocks instead of safe bonds — the price of risk. History runs ~4.5–6.5%; we default to 5.5% (slightly conservative). It's an estimate, not a law — lower it if you think equities are less risky than that.
Inflation reduces the purchasing power of a nominal return: a 9% gain at 3% inflation is about 6% in real terms. The intrinsic value above is already in today's dollars (a nominal DCF carries inflation in both the growth and the discount rate), so this switch does not change the value — it restates the return in real terms.
Higher beta → higher discount rate (sets the rate above). 1.0 = moves with the market.
What you think OPTU can grow revenue for ~5 years, then fades to terminal.
For a pre-profit company: the % of revenue that eventually becomes free cash flow once mature. (Our published value uses the sector norm.)
All inputs start at the values our model used.

    Copy shareable link to this scenario →

    Price$1.02
    Model IVNot applicable — DCF couldn't price this stock. The other valuation lenses on this page (reverse-DCF, peers, sector lens — whichever apply to this filer) carry the read instead.

    This significant discount likely reflects the company's declining revenue (-3.9%/yr over 4 years) and current ratio below 1 (0.8), indicating liquidity concerns. The primary quantifiable risk is the negative historical FCF?Free Cash Flow (FCF) — Operating cash flow minus capital spending: cash left after a company covers operating costs, taxes and interest and reinvests in the business — but BEFORE repaying debt principal or paying dividends. The cash actually available to investors.
    Why it matters: A company can show big profits on paper while burning through cash. FCF is what actually fills the bank account.
    Reference: Healthy mature businesses convert 8–15% of revenue into FCF · Growth companies often negative
    Full explanation →     decline of 0.4%.

    ⚠️ Operating CF declining

    As of 3 months ago

    ANATOMY

    Anatomy of a share

    What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.

    OPTU Optimum Communications, Inc. stock anatomy showing per-share revenue, operating expenses, free cash flow, and debt
    −21.8%
    loss
    Where each $1 of revenue goes
    For every $1 of revenue, OPTU currently loses 21.8¢ — costs exceed sales. A money-losing business can still be a good investment if losses are shrinking toward profitability; check the trend, not just the snapshot.
    Net margin = net income ÷ revenue (most recent fiscal year).
    Plain English: each share (at $1) represents $18.36 of revenue per share per year, $4.00 lost per share per year, and $0.39 of cash burned per share (negative free cash flow) from the latest fiscal year. Each share carries $56.02 of total debt (interest-bearing borrowings, current + long-term).
    What's free cash flow / what do these mean?

    Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.

    Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.

    Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.

    Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.

    THE KEY DEBATE

    What you actually need to decide

    Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.

    🐂 The Bull Case
    Operating cash flow must continue to be positive and grow from its current level of $1.83B to support the business and address debt obligations.
    🐻 The Bear Case
    Continued revenue decline and a current ratio below 1 could lead to further liquidity issues and make it challenging to service the stable long-term debt of $26.21B.
    📌 Signposts to watch — update your view as these print
    • Next quarter's revenue growth rate
    • Changes in operating cash flow
    • Improvement in the current ratio
    MOMENTUM — WHAT'S GETTING BETTER & WORSE

    The trend, in plain numbers (FY2024 → FY2025, latest reported)

    Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.

    ⚠ Worsening
    • Revenue fell -4% to $8.59B.
    • Free cash flow is negative at -$182.9M — the cash burn widened vs last year.
    • Still unprofitable at -$1.87B — loss widening.

    Nothing was clearly improving year-over-year.

    WHO

    Management & Leadership

    Patrick Drahi is the founder of Altice, the parent company of Optimum Communications, and serves as its chairman. Dennis Mathew is the current CEO of Optimum, overseeing its operations in the competitive telecommunications sector.

    Patrick Drahi
    Founder and Chairman
    Dennis Mathew
    Chief Executive Officer
    WHAT

    What They Make

    Optimum Communications provides internet, television, and phone services to residential and business customers, primarily in the United States.

    End Markets

    Residential broadbandBusiness communicationsCable television

    Revenue Drivers

    Broadband internet subscriptions
    Video services
    Voice services
    Market Cap: 477.1MBeta: 1.41
    WHY

    Why Is It Priced Like This?

    Why Customers Pay

    High-speed internet access
    Bundled service convenience
    Reliable communication infrastructure
    No discounted-cash-flow value for this filer This company's reported free cash flow is negative, so a discounted-cash-flow valuation has no positive cash stream to discount. That is a fact about the business, not missing data — the reported figures below are complete.

    What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value (P/B) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.

    The market prices OPTU at a 94.4% discount to the model, likely due to deteriorating fundamentals. This includes declining revenue (-3.9%/yr over 4 years) and a current ratio of 0.8, which signals that current liabilities exceed liquid assets, raising concerns about short-term financial health. The company has also been unprofitable in 2 of the last 5 years.

    HOW

    Business Model & Valuation

    How They Make Money

    Subscription fees for internet services
    Subscription fees for cable TV packages
    Subscription fees for voice services

    The company funds itself through its positive operating cash flow, but its long-term debt has remained stable at around $26 billion.

    Normalized FCF

    Mature company (rev $8.6B) with negative current FCF but positive OCF in 5/5 years: using normalized cash flow (median OCF minus maintenance capex).

    Show advanced inputs
    Revenue Growth-3.9%
    Historical Fcf Growth-62.2%
    Sector Default8.0%
    Best Estimate-0.4%
    Methodblend(70% revenue_cagr, 30% sector)
    Growth Basistotal

    What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project content, subscriptions, advertising and licensing independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.

    WHEN

    Maturity & Competitive Position

    Mature / low-growth

    Moat Signals

    Established infrastructure network
    High switching costs for bundled services
    Local market dominance in service areas

    Revenue has been declining at -3.9%/yr over the last four years.

    WHERE

    Geography & Markets

    Optimum Communications primarily operates in the United States, providing services across various regions. Specific geographic mix percentages are not available from current data sources.

    Geographic Risks

    Regional market competition
    High long-term debt ($26.21B)
    SIGNALS

    Market Signals

    These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.

    Model bullish, tape bearish - divergence suggests timing risk.
    RSI?RSI — Relative Strength Index — a 0-100 momentum gauge. Above 70 = overbought; below 30 = oversold.
    Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
    Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
    Full explanation →     (14)    26.4OversoldHeavily sold off recently — sometimes a bounce setup, sometimes a falling knife.
    MACD?MACD — Moving Average Convergence Divergence — compares a fast and a slow price trend to gauge momentum direction.
    Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
    Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
    Full explanation →    BearishLine below signalThe fast trend is below the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently downward.
    50-Day Average$1.24Price below (-17.7%)Price below its 50-day average = near-term downtrend.
    200-Day Average$1.79Price belowThe 200-day line is the long-term trend divider — above it is generally considered a bull market for the stock.
    50 vs 200 CrossDeath50-day below 200-dayA "death cross" — the medium trend is below the long trend (often read as bearish).

    Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.

    QUALITY

    Data Quality & Risk Flags (5 notes — click to expand/collapse)
    MEDIUM Operating CF declining
    Guardrail Notes (3)
    • Median OCF: $1.83B, est. maintenance capex: $1.10B, normalized FCF: $730.56M.
    • Historical FCF growth is negative (-0.4%) - likely reflects commodity cycle peak. Flooring at 0%.
    • Illiquidity discount 7% applied (small/micro-cap — harder to exit, demand a margin).
    FINANCIALS

    Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)

    From Optimum Communications, Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).

    Income (5yr)

    YearRevenueNet IncomeEPS
    20258.6B-1.9B$-4.00
    20249.0B-102.9M$-0.22
    20239.2B53.2M$0.12
    20229.6B194.6M$0.43
    202110.1B990.3M$2.14

    Cash Flow (5yr)

    YearOperating CFCapEx− SBC & adj.Free Cash Flow
    2025 1.2B 1.3B 64.1M -182.9M
    2024 1.6B 1.4B 67.2M 82.2M
    2023 1.8B 1.7B 47.9M 73.7M
    2022 2.4B 1.9B 160.0M 292.6M
    2021 2.9B 1.2B 98.3M 1.5B

    How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). Latest year: 1.2B − 1.3B − 64.1M (SBC & adj.) = -182.9M. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses, though the DCF's starting value is a mid-cycle estimate (median operating cash flow less estimated maintenance capex and stock compensation — by design NOT the table's FCF, which deducts every year's full capex), not this single year.

    Balance Sheet

    Total Assets30.7B
    Total Liabilities33.0B
    Equity-2.3B
    Total Debt26.2B
    YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

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    PG
    Methodology by Pouyan Golshani, MD — founder of Gighz. Savng was built by a physician for busy professionals: every number on this page comes from SEC filings (EDGAR) and FINRA data through transparent, rules-based models — no analyst opinions, no hidden inputs. How we calculate every number →
    ⚠️ Not investment advice. Automated model outputs, last refreshed May 30, 2026 (the analysis-refresh date, not the latest filing period). All models have blind spots. Full disclaimer →
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