Brian Roberts, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Comcast Corp.
Patrick T Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Comcast on Thursday reported first-quarter results that beat analysts’ estimates for revenue and earnings, sending shares up more than 2% in premarket trading.
Here are the key numbers:
- Earnings per share: 86 cents adjusted versus 80 cents per share, according to Refinitiv
- Revenue: $31.01 billion versus $30.5 billion according to Refinitiv
- Customers with high-speed Internet: 262,000 vs. 229,000 net additions, according to analysts polled by FactSet
The company’s Europe-based Sky division saw revenue decline 4.5% year over year to $4.8 billion due to currency effects as well as lower content revenues. Analysts polled by FactSet were forecasting Sky’s revenue of $4.92 billion for the quarter.
Comcast’s Universal theme park business continued to recover after prolonged closures due to the coronavirus pandemic. Revenue for the division rose more than 151% year over year to $1.56 billion, beating analysts’ forecasts of $1.44 billion, according to FactSet.
“Our recovery from the pandemic at theme parks has been fantastic and shows no signs of slowing down,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said in a statement.
NBCUniversal reported a roughly 46% increase in revenue in the first quarter, which included $1.5 billion from the Beijing Olympics and the Super Bowl.
Ad revenue grew 59.2% during the quarter, thanks in large part to those two events.
Here’s how Comcast’s businesses performed in the quarter compared to a year ago:
- Cable communications contributed $16.54 billion of revenue, up 4.7%
- Media brought in $6.87 billion in revenue, up 36.3%
- Studios contributed $2.76 billion in revenue, up 15.1%
- Theme parks brought in $1.56 billion in revenue, up 151.9%
- Sky contributed $4.77 billion in revenue, down 4.5%
Excluding revenue from the Beijing Olympics and Super Bowl, Comcast said its media division had $5.38 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 6.9% year over year.
Comcast reported no signups for Peacock, NBCUniversal’s ad-supported streaming platform, but Roberts said in a statement that the unit had “an exceptional quarter.” In January, the company announced that Peacock closed 2021 with 24.5 million monthly active accounts.
The company reported an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $456 million related to Peacock, compared to an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $277 million in the prior-year period.
On Wednesday, Comcast announced a new joint venture with Charter Communications that will make its Xfinity Flex streaming hardware available to both companies’ broadband subscribers.
“This partnership demonstrates the benefits of our focus on innovation and allows us to offer entertainment aggregation and streaming products powered by our global technology platform to millions more customers,” said Roberts.
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Disclosure: Comcast owns CNBC’s parent company, NBCUniversal.