Industry Insider: Media Corporation, Comcast, secures future in Q3 Earnings Call
Comcast
Comcast is one the world’s largest telecommunications conglomerates that house a multitude of subsidiaries such as, NBCUniversal, Xfinity, and DreamWorks, to name a few. On the morning of October 26th, Comcast board members presented the final numbers and deliberations for their third quarter. The presentation’s main speakers were Micheal Cavanagh, President of the Comcast Corporation, and the CFO; Jason Armstrong. Cavanagh dives in immediately to the success of this quarter by praising the seamless interconnectivity of the organization. With a diverse portfolio of significant segments across media consumption there is much ground to cover before the end of the closing of the year.
Cavanagh primarily discusses four main objectives that were executed to their highest impact of success. The first he labels as “residential domestic connectivity”, which is based on the monitoring of their broadband segment. He detailed the strengthening of consumer relations through speed and coverage expansion. This was represented by the 4 percent growth that was reflected in the revenue percentile for this segment alone. The customer experience is Comcast’s greatest priority in this sector due to it holding the most value in brand loyalty and awareness. Cavanagh furthered this explanation by highlighting the switch of Sunday night NFL watchers from traditional TV to streaming. This increased the data usage of comcast internet users by 25 percent due to programming redirection. Peacock has become an irrefutable staple to the corporation which is the reason Cavanagh and company have put an increasing amount of focus over the last few quarters.
Peacock as a whole is also the second highlighted feature on Cavanagh’s list during this presentation. The streaming platform has soared past expectations and landed another 4 million paid subscribers for the third quarter. This resulted in a 60 percent increase in revenue for the app. However, the platform has merged to be a facet of the overall NBCU media segment. This seemingly was done to cushion any destructive impact from the inevitable EBITDA loss, which is anticipated to be much less than the prepared amount of $3 billion. The third initiative that Comcast focused on this quarter would be the results yielded from their international theme parks. They plan to bring the Nintendo experience to Florida and an unknown Halloween Horror experience to Las Vegas sometime soon. The park business is flourishing in numerous capacities that will allow for the growth of more themes to expand the brand.
The last of Cavanagh's bullet point summation was 3 of their major blockbuster feature films; Oppenheimer, Super Mario Bros., Fast 10. With the massive profit of Oppenheimer having grossed over $900 million worldwide during this past quarter. Cavanagh claims that their studios benefit greatly from positioning themselves next to great directorial talent who generate highly acclaimed bodies of work. Comcast is looking to secure a sense of longevity, with the state of the industry there may be some turbulence from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that will roll over for a substantial amount of time once full resolution can be agreed upon.
