Coverage of the Paris Olympics spurred a 36.5% year-over-year gain in media revenue, propelling NBCUniversal parent Comcast‘s performance in the third quarter.
The company reported total revenue of $32.1 billion and earnings per share of $1.12, beating Wall Street analysts’ consensus forecast. Shares in Comcast, which are not known for dramatic movement, jumped 4% in pre-market trading on the earnings news.
Flagship streaming service Peacock added 3 million subscribers to reach 36 million. Revenue jumped 82% to $1.5 billion and adjusted EBITDA losses narrowed to $436 million from $565 million in the year-ago period.
Even excluding the $1.9 billion in incremental revenue from the Olympics, revenue in the Media division still increased 4.9%.
On the pay-TV side, Comcast shed 365,000 video customers to finish the quarter with 12.8 million. Charter recently surpassed Comcast as the No. 1 U.S. cable operator, though both companies are more keenly pursuing broadband as a core business given ongoing cord-cutting trends.
Connectivity & Platforms, the division housing the company’s broadband and pay-TV businesses, saw total revenue slip less than 1% to $20.3 billion, with adjusted EBITDA rising a fraction of a percentage point to $8.3 billion. The company cited the negative impact of the end of the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program.
The Studios unit had a strong quarter thanks to the release of Despicable Me 4 during the period. Revenue climbed 12% to $2.8 billion, while adjusted EBITDA rose 9% to $468 million.
Theme parks were perhaps the main blemish on Comcast’s quarterly report. Revenue slumped 5% to $2.3 billion and adjusted EBITDA fell 14% to $847 million. A terse paragraph in the earnings release blamed “lower revenue at our domestic theme parks, driven by lower guest attendance.”
More positive news for the parks unit is on the horizon, though. During the quarter, Comcast announced that Universal Epic Universe will open in May 2025. In the earnings release, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts proclaimed the Florida site “the most ambitious and technologically sophisticated theme park ever created.
Summing up, he added, “Overall, it was a very active and successful quarter, and I couldn’t be more pleased with how our team is executing and positioning our company for long-term growth.”