The Comcast building in New York.
Scott Mlyn | CNBC
Comcast will report its third quarterly earnings of 2022 before the bell, and investors will have an eye on the state of the broadband business.
Here’s what Wall Street expects Comcast to report on Thursday morning, according to analysts surveyed by Refinitiv:
- Earnings per share: 90 cents
- Revenue: $29.65 billion
During the previous quarter the cable, internet and entertainment company reported for the first time ever that it didn’t add any new broadband subscribers, compounding Wall Street’s concerns that cable companies like Comcast and Charter Communications are experiencing a shift in their key business due to increased competition.
Comcast’s stock hit a 52-week low of $28.39 on Oct. 13. The stock has been trading this week at about $31, down around 40% from its 52-week high.
Earlier this month, Morgan Stanley said in an analyst note it was lowering its expectations for broadband customer additions for cable companies as stocks are trading at their lowest multiples in over a decade.
Besides broadband, Comcast’s cable unit also includes its pay-TV and mobile phone businesses. As consumers continue to cut the cord in favor of streaming services, Comcast and its peers have continued to lose pay-TV customers each quarter. However, cable companies’ mobile businesses have been growing at a fast clip in recent quarters.
Meanwhile, investors will also look to Comcast’s NBCUniversal business – comprised of its TV networks, streaming and Universal movie studios and theme parks – for signs of a slowdown in the advertising market due to increasing inflation.
In addition, any updates about Peacock, NBCUniversal’s answer to the streaming wars, will be of interest to Wall Street as Netflix, the top streaming company, experienced a slowdown in subscriber growth earlier this year and is soon rolling out its ad-supported tier
Peacock, which has had an ad-supported premium tier since its inception in 2020, has 15 million paying subscribers and 30 million active accounts, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell said during an interview on CNBC earlier this month. The fledgling streaming service has gotten its biggest boosts from content such as sports and movie offerings, the company has said.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC.