Theme Parks Bounce Back For Comcast

• NBCUniversal takes $363 million loss related to Peacock

Comcast Corp. posted a 25% jump in profit in the second quarter, as its broadband and wireless businesses added more customers and its theme parks benefited from the country’s reopening.

The Wall Street Journal reports revenue at the Philadelphia-based company, which operates Xfinity-branded cable services, NBCUniversal media properties and the U.K. pay-TV giant Sky PLC, rose more than 20% to $28.55 billion. The company reported a profit of $3.74 billion, or 80 cents a share, compared with $2.99 billion, or 65 cents per share, in the pandemic-hit quarter a year earlier.

NBCUniversal, the Comcast unit most severely affected by Covid-19, began to recover as the pandemic eased. The segment’s overall revenue increased 39% to nearly $8 billion.

The theme park segment generated more than $1 billion during the second quarter, an eight-fold increase from the year-earlier period when theme parks were closed because of the pandemic, and was profitable for the first time since the first quarter of 2020.

Revenue for the media segment, which includes Peacock, broadcast and cable TV, rose nearly 26% to $5.15 billion. NBCUniversal’s advertising revenue also improved, with an increase of nearly 33% to roughly $2.2 billion.

Revenue in the film and TV studio segment was $2.22 billion, up more than 8% compared with the same period last year. While NBCUniversal’s film segment suffered during the pandemic, its latest installment of the “Fast & Furious” franchise recently gave Hollywood its best opening weekend at the box office since December 2019, collecting roughly $70 million from domestic theaters.

The Xfinity broadband unit, which surged last year as Americans stayed home during the pandemic and ramped up their internet usage, continued to show strong growth. The unit added 354,000 new customers in the quarter, compared with 323,000 a year ago.

The company’s wireless business was another bright spot, adding 280,000 new customers and posting a profit for the first time. Comcast launched Xfinity Mobile in 2017 and recently introduced multiline discount plans. Xfinity Mobile now has nearly 3.4 million lines. Verizon Communications Inc. said last week it gained 275,000 postpaid phone customers, while AT&T posted a net gain of 789,000 postpaid phone subscribers.

Comcast’s cable-TV business continued to face defections as customers abandon traditional TV bundles for streaming services like Netflix Inc. and Walt Disney Co.’s Disney+ and Hulu. The unit lost 399,000 subscribers during the second quarter. Comcast’s NBCUniversal launched its flagship streaming service, Peacock, last year and is hoping the Tokyo Summer Olympics will help it draw more viewers.