Comcast CMCSA reported fourth-quarter 2021 adjusted earnings of 77 cents per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 5.5% and increasing 37.5% year over year.
Consolidated revenues increased 9.5% year over year to $30.34 billion and beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 2.6%.
Cable Communication Revenues Up Y/Y
Revenues increased 4.5% from the year-ago quarter to $16.41 billion, driven by increases in broadband, wireless, business services and other revenues. Total Customer Relationships increased 169K to 34.2 million.
Broadband revenues grew 8.5% year over year to $5.86 billion, primarily driven by increased residential broadband customers and average rate. Total broadband customer net additions were 212K.
Business Services revenues were up 11.6% to $2.34 billion, driven by higher average rates and increasing number of customers.
Wireless revenues surged 40.4% to $709 million, driven by an increase in the number of customer lines as well as in device sales. Comcast added 312K wireless lines in the reported quarter.
Other revenues increased 7.8% from the year-ago quarter to $454 million, reflecting increases in revenues from security and automation services, and from the licensing of technology platforms.
Advertising revenues decreased 12.5% year over year to $818 million. Excluding political advertising revenues, advertising revenues increased 9.3%.
Comcast Corporation Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise
Comcast Corporation Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise
Video revenues decreased 1.2% to $5.40 billion, reflecting a decrease in the number of residential video customers, partially offset by an increase in average rates.
Meanwhile, voice revenues were $825 million, down 6.3% year over year due to a decline of residential voice customers.
Total video customer net losses were 373K, while total voice customer net losses were 176K.
NBCUniversal Revenues Increase Y/Y
Revenues increased 25.6% year over year to $9.34 billion.
Media revenues increased 8.4% from the year-ago quarter to $5.83 billion, reflecting higher advertising and distribution revenues.
Advertising revenue increased 6%, benefiting from higher pricing and additional Peacock sales. Distribution revenue increased 11.6%, driven by contractual rate increases in the current period and increases at Peacock.
Studios revenues increased 36.4% from the year-ago quarter to $2.42 billion, primarily reflecting content licensing revenues (up 33.7% year over year), home entertainment and other revenues (up 30.4%), and theatrical revenues (up $80 million).
Theme Parks revenues surged 191.2% year over year to $1.89 billion, reflecting improved operating conditions.
Sky Revenues Details
Sky’s revenues decreased 2.4% year over year to $5.08 billion. At constant currency (cc), revenues decreased 2.5%.
Direct-to-consumer revenues were down 0.9% (down 1% at cc) from the year-ago quarter to $4.04 billion.
Content revenues decreased 23.1% (down 23.4% at cc) to $327 million.
Advertising revenues climbed 1.4% (up 1.4% at cc) from the year-ago quarter to $712 million.
Total customer relationships increased by 61K to 23 million in the reported quarter.
Operating Details
Costs and expenses in fourth-quarter 2021 increased 7.3% year over year to $25.52 billion.
Programming & production costs increased 4.7% from the year-ago quarter to $9.88 billion. Advertising, marketing and promotion expenses increased 14.5% year over year to $2.23 billion.
Adjusted EBITDA increased 17% from the year-ago quarter to $8.41 billion.
Segment-wise, Cable Communications’ adjusted EBITDA rose 7.8% from the year-ago quarter to $7.13 billion. Cable Communications’ results include adjusted EBITDA of $32 million from the wireless business against a loss of $60 million in the year-ago quarter.
NBCUniversal’s adjusted EBITDA decreased 6.8% from the year-ago quarter to $1.28 billion.
Sky’s adjusted EBITDA jumped 233.8% year over year (up 187.9% at cc) to $464 million. Sky’s operating costs and expenses decreased 8.9% (down 8.6% at cc) to $4.62 billion.
Consolidated operating income increased 33.7% year over year to $5.45 billion.
Cash Flow & Liquidity
As of Dec 31, 2021, cash and cash equivalents were $8.71 billion, down from $11.81 billion as of Sep 30, 2021.
Moreover, as of Dec 31, 2021, consolidated total debt was $94.85 billion compared with $97.22 billion as of Sep 30, 2021.
In fourth-quarter 2021, Comcast generated $7.69 billion in cash from operations, down from $6.10 billion reported in the previous quarter. Free cash flow was $3.78 billion in the reported quarter, down from $3.23 billion in the previous quarter.
Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider
Currently, Comcast carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
CMCSA shares have outperformed the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector in the past year. While Comcast shares have increased 0.1%, Consumer Discretionary sector declined 19.6%.
Fox FOXA, GoPro GPRO and Nexstar Media NXST are some better-ranked stocks that investors can consider in the broader sector. All the three stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Fox shares have outperformed the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector in the past year. Fox returned 10.7% compared with sector’s decline of 19.6%.
FOXA is set to report second-quarter fiscal 2022 on Feb 9, 2022.
GoPro shares have outperformed the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector in the past year. GPRO shares are down 12.6%.
GoPro is set to report fourth-quarter 2021 results on Feb 3.
Nexstar shares are up 44.8% in the past year.
NXST is set to report fourth-quarter 2021 results on Feb 22.
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