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Bethpage, N.Y.—When employees at the small cable operator Suddenlink Communications requested money to fix a broken ice machine in West Virginia, they weren't expecting so many questions.

But during a March "investment committee" meeting, executives from the company's new owner, Altice NV, quizzed them on everything from the differences between various ice-machine suppliers to whether it was better to buy or lease. "A complete waste of people's time and energy," said one former Suddenlink employee.

Altice views it as cost discipline. "That's our whole philosophy," said Charles Stewart, chief financial officer of Altice's U.S. unit. "It triggers a discussion at a very nitty-gritty level, which is where the difference is made."

The European telecom company's strategy of drastically reducing costs as it expands globally will soon face its biggest test yet as it digests the $17.7 billion acquisition of New York cable operator Cablevision Systems Corp., six months after its $9.1 billion acquisition, including debt, of Suddenlink.

Altice is under pressure to prove that its formula of slashing expenses on everything from customer call centers to set-top boxes and then reinvesting those savings in networks and services can lead to subscriber growth in the mature U.S. cable market. Altice has promised to squeeze out an ambitious $900 million in cost savings from Cablevision, including by reducing programming costs as channel contracts come up for renewal.

A lot is riding on Altice's success in the U.S. Its shares have declined 59% in the past 12 months as investors questioned the effectiveness of Altice's strategy and its debt burden, which is forecast to increase to just above $50 billion by the end of this year. While its cost-cutting has helped boost the bottom line, Altice has yet to prove that it can deliver sales growth.

Some U.S. cable executives question whether Altice's playbook with St. Louis-based Suddenlink, a more rural operator that it purchased last year, can work at Cablevision, which faces intense competition from Verizon Communications Inc.'s Fios service and already has 3 million customers that account for a relatively high percentage of its greater New York service area.

In a series of interviews in New York last week during their first 48 hours of owning Cablevision, Altice executives made no secret of their bigger ambitions to end up in the top two in U.S. cable.

"It's easier to go from No. 4 to No. 1 than it is from number zero to No. 4," Altice founder and controlling shareholder Patrick Drahi told employees as he helped change a "Cablevision" sign to "Altice" last week, standing on a construction worker's orange hydraulic lift. "This is the first day of paradise."

Asked about a potential bid for No. 2 Charter Communications Inc. after this year's integration of Cablevision, Altice USA Chief Executive Dexter Goei said he is going to be patient. "There can be a couple of meaningful acquisitions before thinking about something as large as that," he said.

One challenge for future deals is that some of the only remaining sizable U.S. cable operators, such as Cox Communications Inc. and Mediacom Communications Corp., are controlled by families and not public shareholders. Altice executives said they would also look for deals in wireless and content.

At Suddenlink, Altice created an authoritarian investment committee that scrutinizes every expense in hourslong meetings each week, as it does with all of its takeovers and will do with Cablevision. The goal is to use Altice's global clout to negotiate better deals with suppliers.

"It creates consternation for about two months," Mr. Goei said. "Then people realize, 'Boy, I really don't want to go to the investment committee. We just got 500 printers a year ago; we can probably extend their life one more year.'"

At Suddenlink, Altice didn't announce job cuts when the deal closed. Instead, workers have exited in threes and fours each week as Altice has created new teams, contributing to what one former Suddenlink employee called a "culture of fear." An Altice spokesman said the departures represented normal churn.

The contrast between Cablevision's former owners—the Dolan family of New York—and Altice's executives was on stark display in recent days.

Altice's top executives dined in the staff canteen on their first day after the deal closed, much to the surprise of several Cablevision employees. Cablevision's former CEO James Dolan would rarely be seen outside the executive suite and was often accompanied by bodyguards outside the building.

While Altice has told New York regulators it won't reduce customer-facing jobs for four years, it is looking for other cuts. In the past few weeks, Altice has given Cablevision the blessing to close Freewheel, the Wi-Fi mobile service it launched last year.

Altice executives also said they would focus on channel-carriage costs, which have ballooned in recent years. "We have about half of our programming lineup that's up for renewal very soon," Mr. Goei said. "There is clearly a lot of channels that we'd like to get rid of." But he noted many networks are part of broader programming deals that require all of a company's channels to be carried.

Last week, curious Cablevision employees streamed out to congratulate Mr. Drahi as he roamed Cablevision's Long Island headquarters—a far cry from Altice's appearances in France where it has been met by union protests. He told them about his first company, "South Cablevision," which he started at age 28.

"This has been our life: every year we are a bigger group," he said. "For us, everything is possible."

Write to Nick Kostov at Nick.Kostov@wsj.com and Shalini Ramachandran at shalini.ramachandran@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 28, 2016 10:45 ET (14:45 GMT)

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