Adelphia Loss Widens to $250.8 Million

Adelphia Communications Corp., a cable-television operator in the West and Northeast, posted a wider second-quarter loss on higher spending for its network and slower customer growth.

The loss widened to $250.8 million, or $1.45 a share, from $85.4 million, or 66 cents, a year earlier, the company said. Sales rose 27% to $893.3 million.

Adelphia is at least the fifth company to add customers at a slower rate in the second quarter than in the first. Analysts say consumer spending, which is expanding at the slowest rate in four years, and competition from satellite-TV operators hurt subscriber growth, after the cable industry spent $48 billion in five years to upgrade networks for services such as digital TV.

“The consumer is getting a little gun-shy and not adding cable subscriptions,” said Jefferies & Co. analyst Fred Moran, who has a “hold” rating on Adelphia shares.

Rival operators including Cablevision Systems Corp., Comcast Corp., Cox Communications Inc. and Mediacom Communications Corp. have said second-quarter basic-cable customer growth slowed. Adelphia had 5.67 million customers as of June 30 in states including Pennsylvania, Ohio and California.

Adelphia, based in Coudersport, Pa., was expected to post a second-quarter loss of $1.36 a share, the average of four analysts polled by Thomson Financial/First Call.

Shares of Adelphia rose 30 cents to close at $34.40 on Nasdaq. They have fallen 33% this year.

Adelphia said the number of basic-cable subscribers at the end of the second quarter rose 1% from the end of the year-earlier quarter, assuming all transactions that closed in the period occurred before April 2000.

The increase, which excludes customers with fast Internet access, was less than Moran’s forecast of 1.5%.

Adelphia expects customer growth in the second half to exceed that of the second quarter, Chief Financial Officer Timothy Rigas said on a conference call with investors.