Comcast topped analyst expectations with its first-quarter earnings report Thursday, despite the cable and media giant’s residential broadband business’s slowing growth and mounting Peacock losses.
Shares of the company rose more than 4% in premarket trading. The stock is up more than 4% so far this year through Wednesday’s close.
Here’s how Comcast performed, compared with estimates from analysts surveyed by Refinitiv:
- Earnings per share: 92 cents adjusted vs. 82 cents expected
- Revenue: $29.69 billion vs. $29.3 billion expected
For the quarter ended March 31, Comcast reported earnings of $3.83 billion, or 91 cents per share, compared with $3.55 billion, or 78 cents per share, a year earlier. Adjusting for one-time items, Comcast posted earnings per share of 92 cents for the most recent period.
Revenue dropped 4% to $29.69 billion from $31.01 billion in the prior-year period, with the company noting that last year it had broadcast both the Super Bowl and Beijing Olympics during the first quarter.
The Philadelphia company said its first-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization grew 3% to $9.42 billion during the first quarter.
Comcast said it returned $3.2 billion to shareholders in the quarter through a mix of $1.2 billion in dividend payments and $2 billion in share repurchases.
Comcast had 21,000 fewer residential broadband customers year-over-year at the end of the three-month period, adding just 3,000 during the quarter. It received a slight boost from its business customers. Company executives had warned earlier this year that Comcast was likely to lose broadband subscribers in the first quarter.
Still, it was a sign that Comcast, like its peers, continues to face slowing growth in the broadband business. Executives have said that, while the loss rate of customers is very low, growth has stagnated – especially since the early days of the Covid pandemic – as they face heightened competition from telecom and wireless…
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