Comcast reported mixed results for its fourth quarter on Thursday, beating analysts’ expectations on earnings but slightly missing on revenue.
Once again, Comcast’s broadband business showed signs of significant competition facing cable companies. Comcast said it lost 181,000 domestic broadband customers during the period, although it said those losses were offset by an increase in international subscribers.
The company’s mobile offering remained a bright spot, with 364,000 additions during the period and bringing its total to more than 9.3 million mobile customers for Comcast’s new business.
Last year, Comcast announced it was revising its strategy to focus more on growing its mobile business after facing continued pressure in broadband, primarily due to competition from wireless providers like Verizon And T-Mobile.
“The competitive environment for broadband remains intense, similar to previous quarters, but we saw wireless competition intensify toward the end of the fourth quarter,” Jason Armstrong, Comcast’s chief financial officer, said during Thursday’s call with investors. “Against this backdrop, we continue to advance our new go-to-market strategy that we launched earlier this year.”
Here’s how Comcast performed in the period ended Dec. 31 compared to average analyst estimates, according to LSEG:
- Earnings per share: 84 cents adjusted versus 75 cents expected
- Income: $32.31 billion versus $32.35 billion expected
Net income attributable to Comcast fell 54.6% to $2.17 billion, or 60 cents per share, from $4.78 billion, or $1.24 per share a year earlier.
After adjusting for some one-time items — such as the value of intangible assets, expenses associated with investments and tax benefits from the prior year that Comcast said were an “unfavorable comparison” — the company reported adjusted net income of $3.06 billion, or 84 cents per share.
Comcast’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization fell 10% to $7.9 billion.
The company’s overall quarterly revenue rose more than 1% to $32.31 billion.
Revenue at Comcast’s Connectivity and Platforms unit — which includes its Xfinity-branded services across broadband, pay TV and mobile — fell 1% to $20.24 billion.
Notably, revenue from the domestic broadband unit fell 1%, to around $6.32 billion. While that reflected fewer broadband customers, it was partially offset by higher average rates, Comcast said.
In addition to broadband customer losses and mobile service additions, Comcast lost 245,000 pay TV customers during the fourth quarter. The company now has 11.27 million total pay TV customers.
Meanwhile, revenue at the company’s media unit, which includes NBCUniversal, rose 5.5% to $7.62 billion.
This is the last quarter where NBCUniversal’s earnings report includes its entire cable network portfolio, as Comcast spun off most of its pay TV networks, including CNBC and MS Now, to the publicly traded entity. Slope.
National advertising revenues for the media sector increased 1.5% due to the addition of the NBA on NBC, which helped propel overall revenues.
NBC’s streaming service Peacock added 3 million paying customers after three virtually unchanged quarters. It ended the year with 44 million paying subscribers. The streaming service reported losses of $552 million for the fourth quarter, more than the $372 million in losses recorded during the previous year.
These losses were due in part to the impact of the NBA rights deal reached during the quarter.
Peacock reported revenue of $1.6 billion, up from $1.3 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Revenue at Comcast’s Universal movie studio fell 7.4% to $3.03 billion due to a decline in licensing and theatrical revenue from the year-earlier quarter. The releases of “Wicked: For Good” and “Black Phone 2” were lower than last year’s “Wicked” and “The Bad Robot”.
Universal theme park revenue, however, rose 22 percent to about $2.9 billion, thanks to the opening of Epic Universe last year.
Disclosure: Versant Media is the parent company of CNBC. Comcast was the parent company of CNBC until the fourth quarter of 2025.