The last quarter of 2023 was a good one for Comcast, according to their Q4 earnings report. With an unexpected boost to revenue leading to a revised dividend offering for the quarter, we even saw some positive movement for their struggling streaming platform, Peacock, too. Brandon Blake, our local entertainment lawyer from Blake & Wang P.A., breaks the results down.
Subscriber Shift and Positive Results
In hard figures, Comcast saw a net income of almost $3.3B (a 7.8% gain on the prior year), with $31B (a 2.3% boost) in revenue. Free cash flow was pegged at $1.7B, up from $1.3B last year. This gave Comcast stock a pleasant 2.4% boost in pre-market trading. They also announced a $15B stock repurchase program which will be launched shortly. While the company had losses among its broadband and video customers, it added to its wireless customers.
Some Good News for Peacock
There were also significant subscriber gains for Peacock, the Comcast streaming platform. To the tune of 3 million new quarterly subscribers. This leaves the platform with 31M subs in total. A 50% gain on last year, if you are taking notes. Streaming revenue was up 57%, to finally close over $1B. However, the platform still declared an overall loss of $825M, at least down from last year's $978M. As with many streaming platforms last year, some of their investment into live sports streaming proved to be the record-breaking crowd pullers.
This is also the quarter where the $8.6B check from Disney for its last third stake in Hulu reflects. We could see the deal finally close for a little more, as the final valuation for the company is still underway.
All in all, some very positive news for the company indeed. With Comcast at the center of some rising M&A speculation this year, it will be interesting to see how these positive results impact the talk.
