Comcast beat Wall Street expectations for its fourth quarter of 2024 as Peacock continued to narrow its losses and “Wicked” helped the studios business defy gravity with an 85% increase in profit.
But shares of the media conglomerate traded lower on Thursday after the media conglomerate shed 139,000 domestic broadband customers. Comcast Cable president and CEO Dave Watson previously warned in December that the company would lose just over 100,000 broadband subscribers, including around 10,000 from weather-related disruptions from Hurricanes Milton and Helene.
Here are the top-line results:
Net income: $4.78 billion, up 46.6% year over year. On an adjusted basis, net income grew 8.3% year over year to $3.7 billion.
Earnings per share: $1.24 per share, up 54% year over year. On an adjusted basis, EPS came in at 96 cents per share, up 13.9% year over year, compared to 88 cents per share expected by analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research.
Revenue: $31.92 billion, up 2.1% year over year, compared to $31.63 billion expected by Zacks.
Adjusted EBITDA: $8.8 billion, up 9.9% year over year
The latest quarterly results come as Comcast is preparing to spin off its cable network portfolio into a publicly-traded, standalone company. The move is expected to take around a year to complete and will be tax-free to Comcast’s shareholders.
The entity, currently dubbed SpinCo, will house USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, E!, SYFY and Golf Channel and digital assets Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and SportsEngine, reaching 70 million U.S. households and generate $7 billion in annual revenue.
Peacock saw revenue grow 28% to $1.3 billion, compared to $1 billion in the prior year period. But the streaming service remains unprofitable, posting a loss of $372 million for the quarter, down from a loss of $825 million in the prior year period. Total paid subscribers remained unchanged at 36 million.
Overall, the media division posted a 3.5% increase in revenue to $7.2 billion and 175.2% increase in profit to $298 million. The increase in profit was due to higher revenue and consistent operating expenses, while the revenue increase was due to a 5% bump in domestic distribution revenue to $2.89 billion, primarily due to higher revenue at Peacock. Domestic advertising grew 0.4% to $2.6 billion, while international networks revenue grew 4.1% to $1.09 billion.
More to come…
