Bucking the trend, Comcast has managed to beat its estimated performance for the second quarter. Despite this buoyant news, Peacock subscriber levels remain a little lackluster. Blake & Wang P.A entertainment attorney, Brandon Blake, analyzes the results.
Beating Wall Street Targets
Earnings per share for Comcast now sit at $1.01, with a total revenue of $30B in the kitty. While this is only a small increase from the projected $29.75 billion and 92 cents, it’s one of the few companies to over-deliver in this quarter.
Drilling down into their entertainment companies, NBCUniveral has a revenue rise of 19%, taking them to $9.4B, with an adjusted EBIDTA of 20% at $1.86B.
Peacock Lags
However, their streaming service, Peacock, has stalled in subscriber growth, remaining at 13M. However, the streamer still managed to boost an 8% year-on-year distribution revenue amount. Despite this, their losses gap has widened a little over $100M, finishing at $467M. Revenue accounted for $444M.
Despite the lackluster subscriber growth, Peacock is still well on-target to reach its 30-35M subscribers by 2025 target, with total numbers estimated to be around 27M active accounts currently. Given that some key live Q1 events (notably the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics) were not in this quarter, some stagnation is to be expected.
NBCU’s studio revenue, however, jumped 33%, landing at $3B, comprising both stronger theatrical revenue and some solid content licensing deals. Theatrical revenue climbed from $352M to $550M, while content licensing climbed 19% and distribution revenue 8%. While it was a very small rise, Comcast’s cable unit also managed to inch up 4%, keeping it the title of No 1 US cable operator.
Despite this overall positive result slate, Comcast took some hits on the stock market, sliding down a very moderate 6% as part of the overall decline in media sector stocks.
Film and Television 