Comcast Broadband Growth Stalls, Peacock Subs Stable

• Comcast reported earnings for the second quarter before the bell on Thursday
• The company’s broadband subscribers were flat at 32.2 million for the quarter.
• Revenue rose 5.1% from a year earlier to $30.02 billion, boosted by theme parks and studios.
• Peacock paid subscribers remained flat at 13 million after adding 4 million last quarter.

Comcast Corp failed to gain broadband subscribers during the latest quarter, a sudden downshift after many years of solid subscriber growth in that business reports The Wall Street Journal.

The Philadelphia-based company, owner of Xfinity-branded broadband and cable services, the NBCUniversal media empire and the U.K.’s Sky TV business, posted higher revenue in the second quarter than it did a year ago, boosted by its movie-studio and theme-park businesses, which have rebounded sharply from their pandemic lows.

Comcast had 32.16 million subscribers at the end of the second quarter, the exact same number it had at the end of the first.

WSJ Graphic

The cornerstone of Comcast’s operations, the broadband business has been a longstanding driver of growth. During the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, the company added more than a million broadband subscribers every year, often setting records. But like its peers, Comcast warned late last year that broadband subscriber growth was waning.

Overall, the company said net profit declined 9.2% to $3.4 billion.

Comcast said the number of paying subscribers to its Peacock streaming service remained stable at around 13 million. During the first quarter of this year, Peacock’s paying subscriber base had jumped by more than 40%, largely due to top sporting events such as the Super Bowl and Beijing Winter Olympics, as well as new original content, including “Bel-Air.”

The company’s Universal Studios theme-park business reported $1.8 billion in revenue, a 65% increase from the previous year. Its movie studios-unit posted a 33% increase in revenue to nearly $3 billion, which was driven by the successful theatrical release of “Jurassic World: Dominion.”

Overall, NBCUniversal—the Comcast division that comprises theme parks, the movie studio, Peacock and TV stations including NBC—had revenue of $9.45 billion, up 19% from a year earlier

Comcast’s cable unit—which includes the Xfinity-branded broadband, cable-TV, and mobile businesses—saw revenue increase 3.7% to $16.6 billion, and continued to make up the bulk of Comcast’s overall revenue.

Despite the broadband-subscriber slowdown, company executives said there have been few broadband customers leaving Comcast. In past quarters, the company has attributed the slowdown to fewer people changing homes.

Cable-TV customers continued to cut the cord, with Comcast losing 521,000 video subscribers. The Xfinity Mobile cellphone segment continued to be a bright spot for Comcast, with the addition of 317,000 customers. There are now more than 4.6 million Xfinity Mobile lines.