Whenever you place a Repeater, it will start on 4 ticks, rather than on 1 tick. 1 Tick is the default. If you also take the time to notice, on the right pane of the F3 Screen, it says the Repeater is set at one Tick (delay: 1). But when powered, it acts as 4.
Environment
Windows 8
Java 7
Duplicate of MC-60151 – If you searched the tracker before creating this report, and were unable to find the indicated ticket, please comment with the keywords you searched for so that the original report can be improved.