Comcast delivered a mixed bag of results for its third financial quarter (Q3) of the year, with overall revenue topping Wall Street expectations despite continue subscriber losses in its core pay television business.
On Thursday, the company said its Q3 revenue came in at $32.07 billion, fueled by an uptick in advertising dollars against NBC’s presentation of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games and the start of the National Football League’s (NFL) regular season, as well as greater adoption of certain enterprise solutions.
Consumer services revenue dipped 1 percent to $17.866 billion during Q3,the result of higher subscriber losses in its Xfinity TV business that was only partially offset by greater adoption of its Xfinity Internet and Xfinity Mobile services.
The company ended Q3 with 12.834 million Xfinity TV customers, representing a year-over loss of 365,000 TV subscribers. That loss was smaller than the 490,000 customers that Xfinity TV shed during Q3 2023, but still enough to convince some at Comcast that it might be time to part with its cable networks business.
Comcast’s broadband business also shed customers, but at a lower rate, as fixed wireless products and Starlink continue to chip away at its subscribers base. Total residential Xfinity Internet customers came in at 29.5 million during Q3, or 79,000 lower on a year-over basis. Comcast Business Internet proved to be more resilient, with 2.48 million customers logged during Q3, or 8,000 lower than the prior year.
Xfinity Mobile, which Comcast largely bundles with its Internet and TV services, continued to gain business, with total wireless lines reaching 7.519 million during Q3. The number of lines does not necessarily correlate to the total customers, as some accounts have multiple lines of service. Xfinity Mobile operates on Verizon’s 4G LTE and 5G networks.
Media revenue increased 37 percent during Q3 to reach $8.231 billion, fueled in large part by the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. Excluding the Olympics, media revenue increased 5 percent to $6.325 billion, the company said.
More than half of Comcast’s media revenue came from domestic advertising against its NBC broadcast network, cable networks and Peacock, earning the company $3.347 billion during Q3, or 75 percent higher on a year-over basis. Excluding the Olympics, Comcast’s domestic advertising revenue increased just 0.1 percent on a year-over basis.
Domestic distribution revenue, which includes money earned from cable and satellite carriage fees, climbed 26.3 percent to $3.272 million, fueled in large part by a great uptake of Peacock during the Olympic Games and a key National Football League event during its inaugural week that was mostly exclusive to the platform.
The number of customers paying for Peacock increased 29 percent to 36 million, representing a net increase of 3 million subscribers during the quarter, Comcast said. Financial loss attributed to Peacock was $436 million during Q3, less than the $565 million reported during the same quarter last year.
