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Comcast beat Wall Street estimates for third-quarter revenue and earnings despite an 8% year-over-year drop in domestic advertising.
The NBCUniversal parent reported revenue of $30.1 billion in the period ending September 30, up 1% from the same quarter of 2022. Earnings per share reached $1.08 on an adjusted basis, up from 96 cents a year ago.
Peacock, the flagship streaming service at NBCU, picked up 4 million paid subscribers during the quarter, reaching 28 million. Its revenue shot up 64% year-over-year to reach $830 million, as losses narrowed.
The streaming service posted an adjusted EBITDA8 loss of $565 million, an improvement over the $614 million in the prior-year period.
NBCU, like its media peers, is under pressure to deliver profits in streaming. At 28 million subscribers, Peacock trails rivals like Max and Disney+ but it shifted strategy after launching in 2020. Initially placing emphasis on its free, ad-supported tier and metrics like monthly active users, Peacock turned its focus to driving paid subscriptions.
Domestic advertising revenue dropped 8% to $1.9 billion. The earnings release contained little explanation for the ad slump, but the topic will likely be a notable one on the company’s earnings call with Wall Street analysts.
The studio division reported a 25% slump in revenue, to $1.69 billion, and EBITDA fell 22% to $429 million despite the release of Oppenheimer, which grossed a spectacular $900 million. Comcast blamed the impact of the dual strikes on film and TV production, as well as difficult comparisons with the 2022 frame, which saw strong results for Minions: The Rise of Gru and Jurassic World: Dominion.
Comcast’s pay-TV business shed 490,000 residential customers compared with a year ago, settling at 14.5 million. While Comcast has long had the No. 1 cable system in the U.S., it is poised to surrender that crown to Charter, whose losses due to cord-cutting have not been quite as severe.
MORE to come …
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