Comcast Shares Slide On Q3 Home Internet Dip. How Is NBCU?

When it comes to being a multipronged communications giant, keeping profits across every segment has its challenges. For Comcast Corp., which owns NBCUniversal, the Peacock OTT losses are subsiding. Theme park business is bustling. But its Xfinity home internet service is showing signs of a slowdown.

That news sent Comcast shares down sharply in Thursday’s trading.

With less than 20 minutes remaining in the day’s trading session, CMCSA was off by 8.2% to $39.28. The losses in its broadband internet division, and a glum outlook, fueled the decline in share price.

How important is Xfinity broadband growth? The share price dip came even as Comcast easily beat earnings per share estimates, with profit of $1.08 per share on an adjusted basis. Analysts’ forecasted $0.95 for Comcast’s Q3 EPS.

Revenue climbed to $30.12 billion from $29.85 billion as adjusted EBITDA rose to $9.96 billion from $9.48 billion.

With Peacock perhaps the darling of its NBCU unit, Q3 proved to be a strong one for the OTT platform. Comcast reported that its Peacock Paid Subscribers rolls grew by nearly 80% to 28 Million, and this includes net additions of 4 million in the third quarter. Peacock revenue improved by 64% to $830 million.

But, when drilling down the Media revenue within the “Content & Experiences” division of Comcast, Q3 revenue was statistically flat, moving to $6.029 billion from $6.005 billion. Adjusted EBITDA was up 6.5%, however, to $723 million from $679 million.

Breaking down those numbers a tad further, it becomes clear that domestic advertising revenue is challenged.

Meanwhile, the lone place where NBC and Telemundo were mentioned in the Q3 earnings report was in the footnote describing Comcast’s holdings as a company.