NBCUniversal Profit Rises on ‘Jurassic World,’ ‘Furious 7’

We believe continuation of video subscriber loss and a significant slowdown of high-speed broadband and voice customer addition are the primary reasons for this initial negative sentiment.

But that doesn’t alter the industry’s broader trajectory toward broadband, as the tremendous growth in Internet subscribers seems to indicate.

Fears about a larger Comcast’s dominance of the high-speed Internet market led to the downfall in April of its deal to acquire Time Warner Cable.

You could write this off as just one executive trying to downplay the competitive threats Netflix and other streaming services pose but Comcast’s own actions over the past several months have shown that it just doesn’t get cord cutting.

Investors may breathe a sigh of relief about the numbers at Comcast’s core business, its cable systems.

Comcast attributed its strength to a honest attempt at customer service, bolstered by improved technology that keeps people from having to call its representatives as often, and on its X1 cable boxes.

The company is launching Stream as online TV options that don’t require a cable subscription proliferate, while cable and satellite TV subscribers start to slip. Verizon is working on a mobile TV service that’s expected to launch this summer.

The results at NBCUniversal underscored Comcast’s long-held belief that with stronger management, an entertainment company could prosper even during turbulent times.

A number of new challenges to Comcast’s traditional cable TV bundle have entered the marketplace in recent months, including Dish Network’s Sling TV and Sony’s Vue service, both of which provide alternatives to Comcast.

While its biggest business is broadband and cable distribution, Comcast’s content arm, NBCUniversal, had a standout quarter, with 20% revenue growth.

Comcast Corp.’s second-quarter profit rose 7.3% as the movie “Jurassic World” set box-office records and revenue at the broadband and business services divisions grew, offsetting softness at the company’s TV networks. Advertising revenue edged down 0.9 percent, and voice revenue declined 2.1 percent from past year. Revenue from the Broadcast Television segment remained flat at $1.8 billion, reflecting a slight increase in advertising revenue and higher retransmission consent fees, which were offset by lower content licensing revenue. Parks revenue was up 25.7% to $773 million. Entertainment, and was flat for its broadcast networks, NBC and Telemundo.

For Comcast as a whole, consolidated revenue increased 11.3% to $18.7 billion.