With Broadband Lagging, Comcast Will Focus Increasingly on Mobile
Comcast "will lean into wireless more than ever,” President Mike Cavanagh said in a call with analysts as the company announced Q4 results Thursday, which included worse-than-expected broadband subscriber losses. In December, Comcast predicted losses just north of 100,000 during the quarter (see 2412090029); they came in at 139,000. “Competitive conditions remain intense, dynamic and varied across our footprint and customer segments, and we see no signs of this changing in the near term," Cavanagh said. Comcast closed at $33.25, down $4.11, Charter at $336.62, down $22.71, with the latter to announce Q4 results Friday.
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Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong said in the near term he expects the company will face competition from fixed wireless access (FWA) and fiber operators continuing to overbuild its territory. 2024, he added, represented "potentially the most competitive environment we [ever] faced in broadband," and longer term, fiber will likely be the primary competitor in most of Comcast's footprint. He said there will likely be two multi-gig symmetrical wires in the vast majority of homes the company serves, and while in the past, fiber was able to market itself as having a big speed advantage over cable, "that's increasingly not the case now." He said fiber and cable will offer multi-gig symmetrical speeds in the future, and cable will differentiate via with offerings such as security and broadband bundled with wireless.
The company will increasingly package mobile with higher-tier broadband offerings, Cavanagh said, adding that Xfinity Mobile customers would get speeds of up to 1 Gbps when connected to one of Comcast's Wi-Fi hot spots.
With the looming spinoff of cable networks and some digital assets, the remaining NBCUniversal business and Peacock combined will focus on streaming and broadcast, as well as Comcast's growing studio and theme park business, Cavanagh said. Its content, intellectual property and park properties will "work in concert with each other as an integrated media company."
Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said 98% of Peacock viewing doesn't include the networks being spun off. "They need their own direct-to-consumer digital initiatives and focus and investment." Added Cavanagh, the spinoff networks "weren't integral to the emphasis we've put on Peacock and a streaming future for NBC broadcast in particular."
Q4 revenue was $31.9 billion, compared with $31.3 billion a year earlier. Comcast ended the quarter with 29.4 million residential broadband subscribers, versus 29.8 million a year earlier, and 12.5 million U.S. video subscribers, down from 14.1 million. It said 2024 ended with 7.8 million U.S. wireless lines, up from 6.6 million.
MoffettNathanson, which has argued that cable's subscriber losses likely peaked in 2024 (see 2501170061), reiterated that view Thursday. "2025 won’t be great, but it is, in our view, almost certain to be 'less bad,'" Craig Moffett wrote investors. He also said that while FWA might fade as a major competitor, SpaceX's Starlink "is just getting started."