Comcast 3Q Revenue Surges on ‘Minions’ As Profit Slumps

During Tuesday’s investor conference call, CEO Brian Roberts pointed to the hiring since May of roughly 5,500 customer service workers at three different call centers.

A separate Wall Street analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak on the topic, said Comcast appeared to be intent on developing a wireless service similar to what London-based Liberty Global is doing in Europe. Revenues rose 11.3% to $2 billion, thanks to higher content licensing revenue, higher retrains fees and a 2.8% increase in ad revenue. Operating cash flow at NBCU increased 17% to $1.7 billion. “And while that’s still bad, it’s notably better than the 81,000 subscribers Comcast lost during the same quarter a year ago”.

Because Comcast advertises its bundles of services by emphasizing a double-play of Internet and TV, the number of phone customers was basically flat, with the company adding 17,000 new voice subscribers.

NBCUniversal again posted strong results in a period that saw Wall Street dump media stocks due to fears about their long-term growth prospects.

By December 2013, Comcast had rolled out the Nashville system to Atlanta and a handful of smaller markets, many in the South. It also offered a slow Internet plan of 3 megabits per second that gave you a $5 credit if you used 5GB or less each month, and charged you $1 for each gigabyte of data over 5 GB. Revenue grew 11.2% to $18.67 billion. Third-quarter 2015 has been the best quarter for Comcast’s Internet segment in six years, according to the company. They have risen 7 percent since the beginning of the year. Higher sports programming costs hurt operating cash flow. “Theme parks have quickly moved from being a hidden gem to a visible juggernaut”.

The theme park division generated $896 million in revenue. “We’ll update people as that progresses”. “We had record attendance”, Roberts said, adding that the company announced during the quarter that it would acquire 51% of Universal Studios Japan.

Quarterly operating costs and expenses totaled $12,485 million, up 12.6% year over year. The companies were part of a 2012 deal to sell AWS spectrum licenses to Verizon for $3.6 billion; the transaction included the option for the cable companies to resell Verizon’s wireless services under an MVNO model. The unit, which reported lower ratings for several channels, saw a 4% decline in operating cash flow to $835 million. And as people increasingly watch TV online instead of through cable TV, the company has tried to adjust by developing a subscription Web-streaming service called Stream, and introducing a free online video service, Watchable, featuring videos from youth-oriented networks such as Vice Media and AwesomenessTV.