NBCUniversal Rebounds For Comcast

Comcast, the Philadelphia-based company, owner of Xfinity-branded broadband and cable services, the NBCUniversal media empire and the U.K.’s Sky TV business, reported a 9.6% decline in fourth-quarter net profit to $3.06 billion, or 66 cents a share, from $3.38 billion, or 73 cents a share, a year earlier.

The Wall Street Journal reports revenue rose 9.5% to $30.34 billion as Comcast’s media and theme park businesses continued to rebound.

Comcast added 212,000 broadband subscribers in the fourth quarter, down 61% from the same quarter last year. Its cellphone business, Xfinity Mobile, added 312,000 customers, while Comcast’s pay-TV business continued to shrink, losing 373,000 subscribers.

Even with the slowdown in broadband subscriber growth, the Comcast Cable segment, comprising the broadband, cable-TV, landline and mobile units, made up the bulk of revenue with $16.41 billion, up 4.5% from the same period last year.

Comcast’s results since the third quarter show how consumer habits changed drastically at the height of the pandemic lockdowns—when Americans relied heavily on home broadband connections for work and school—and are now slowly going back to normal.

Industry analysts are forecasting cable broadband providers will continue to face pressure and see slowing growth as telecommunications competitors such AT&T Inc. build out their broadband strategies.

The company said its theme parks, which have suffered and slowly rebounded during the pandemic, recorded their most-profitable fourth quarter ever. Theme park revenue nearly tripled to $1.89 billion during the quarter. Comcast has said that while there is an influx of domestic visitors at its parks in the U.S., China and Japan, it is still missing out on international visitors due to various travel restrictions.

Here are the key numbers:

• Earnings per share: 77 cents, adjusted vs. 73 cents estimated per a Refinitiv survey of analysts
• Revenue: $30.34 billion vs. $29.61 billion estimated, according to Refinitiv
• High-speed internet customers: 212,000 net additions vs. 220,000 estimated, according to FactSet
• Comcast said its dividend increased 8% to 27 cents per quarter and that it increased its stock buyback authorization by $10 billion.

The company warned about lower-than-expected broadband customer growth in the fourth quarter at an event last month, according to CNBC.

Here’s how Comcast’s divisions did in the quarter compared with a year earlier:

• Cable Communications contributed $16.41 billion in revenue, up 4.5%
• Media brought in $5.83 billion in revenue, up 8.4%
• Studios contributed $2.42 billion in revenue, up 36.4%
• Theme Parks brought in $1.89 billion in revenue, up 191.3%
• Sky contributed $5.08 billion in revenue, down 2.5%

NBCUniversal’s ad-supported streaming platform, Peacock, ended 2021 with 24.5 million monthly active accounts. As of July, the company said it had 54 million sign-ups to the platform, which entered a crowded field of competitors including Netflix, Disney and Amazon.

 Comcast has yet to disclose other details such as how many customers pay for Peacock’s premium tiers or use the free ad-supported version.