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Comcast (CMCSA) Q3 Earnings Beat, Broadband User Base Rises

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Comcast (CMCSA - Free Report) reported third-quarter 2021 adjusted earnings of 87 cents per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 16% and increasing 33.8% year over year.

Consolidated revenues increased 18.7% year over year to $30.30 billion and beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 1.7%.

Cable Communication Revenue Details

Revenues increased 7.4% from the year-ago quarter to $16.1 billion, driven by increases in broadband, advertising, wireless, business services, video, other and advertising revenues. Total Customer Relationships increased 255K to 34 million.

Broadband revenues grew 11.6% year over year to $5.80 billion, primarily driven by increased residential broadband customers and average rate. Total broadband customer net additions were 300K.
 

 

Business Services revenues were up 8.7% to $2.23 billion, driven by higher average rates.

Wireless revenues surged 50.7% to $603 million, driven by an increase in the number of customer lines and device sales. Comcast added 285K wireless lines in the reported quarter.

Advertising revenues increased 4.6% year over year to $705 million. Excluding political advertising revenues, advertising revenues increased 19%.

Video revenues increased 1.4% to $5.50 billion, reflecting an increase in average rates. Meanwhile, voice revenues were $851 million, down 2.9% year over year due to a decline in the number of residential voice customers.

Total video customer net losses were 408K while total voice customer net losses were 158K.

Other revenues increased 12.4% from the year-ago quarter to $427 million, reflecting increases in revenues from security and automation services, and from the licensing of technology platforms.

NBCUniversal Revenues Increase Y/Y

Revenues increased 57% year over year to $10 billion.

Media revenues increased 47.5% from the year-ago quarter to $6.77 billion, reflecting higher advertising and distribution revenues.

Excluding $1.8 billion of revenues generated by the broadcast of the Tokyo Olympics, Media revenues increased 9.2% year-over-year. Advertising revenue increased 73%, benefiting from the broadcast of the Tokyo Olympics, higher pricing and additional Peacock sales, partially offset by the unfavorable timing of other sporting events and a decline in ratings.

Distribution revenue increased 36.2%, driven by the broadcast of the Tokyo Olympics, contractual rate increases in the current period and increases at Peacock.

Studios revenues increased 26.8% from the year-ago quarter to $2.41 billion, primarily reflecting higher theatrical revenues.

Theme Parks revenues surged to $1.45 billion from the year-ago quarter’s figure of $385 million, reflecting improved operating conditions.

Sky Revenues Details

Sky’s revenues increased 4.1% year over year to $5 billion. At constant currency (cc), revenues decreased 0.7%.

Direct-to-consumer revenues were up 4.7% (down 0.1% at cc) from the year-ago quarter to $4.13 billion.

Content revenues decreased 22.8% (down 26.4% at cc) to $300 million.

Advertising revenues climbed 21.4% (up 15.6% at cc) from the year-ago quarter to $561 million.

Total customer relationships decreased 233K to 23 million in the reported quarter.

Operating Details

Consolidated programming & production costs increased 21.4% from the year-ago quarter to $10.4 billion.

Consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased 18.1% from the year-ago quarter to $9 billion.

Segment-wise, Cable Communications’ adjusted EBITDA rose 10.3% from the year-ago quarter to $7.1 billion. Cable Communications’ results include adjusted EBITDA of $51 million from the wireless business against a loss of $50 million in the year-ago quarter.

NBCUniversal’s adjusted EBITDA increased 48.2% from the year-ago quarter to $1.3 billion, despite significant decline in Studios (down 47.3%).

Sky’s adjusted EBITDA jumped 88.8% year over year (up 76.2% at cc) to $971 million. Notably, Sky’s operating costs and expenses decreased 6.1% (down 10.2% at cc) to $4.01 billion.

Consolidated operating income increased 33.7% year over year to $5.45 billion.

Cash Flow & Liquidity

As of Sep 30, 2021, cash and cash equivalents were $11.81 billion, down from $12.41 billion as of Jun 30, 2021.

Moreover, as of Sep 30, 2021, consolidated total debt was $97.22 billion compared with $98.5 billion as of Jun 30, 2021.

In third-quarter 2021, Comcast generated $6.10 billion in cash from operations, down from $7.60 billion reported in the previous quarter. Free cash flow was $3.23 billion in the reported quarter, down from $4.79 billion in the previous quarter.

During the third quarter of 2021, Comcast paid $1.2 billion in dividend and repurchased 25.9 million of its common shares for $1.5 billion. As of Sep 30, 2021, Comcast had $8 billion available under its share-repurchase authorization.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

Currently, Comcast carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader consumer discretionary sector include Accel Entertainment (ACEL - Free Report) Clarus (CLAR - Free Report) , and Funko (FNKO - Free Report) . While both Funko and Clarus sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) Accel carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Accel Entertainment, Funko and Clarus are scheduled to report their quarterly earnings on Nov 3, 4 and 8, respectively.

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