PHILADELPHIA—Comcast’s Q4 2023 earnings report and the subsequent call with analysts indicate that the service saw significant sub growth in 2023 and improved financial performance, with the streaming service pulling in $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time.
Peacock paid subscribers increased nearly 50% compared to the prior year period to 31 million, including net additions of 3 million in the fourth quarter and its quarterly revenue grew 57% YoY.
Losses remained large, with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) coming in at $825 million for Q4, but that was a notable improvement from a year earlier when the streaming service had $660 million of revenue for Q4 202 and an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $978 million..
The streaming service also helped some of Comcast’s other segments that continue to be hurt by cord cutting and a difficult ad market for traditional TV services.
In a call with analysts, Comcast Corporation CFO Jason Armstrong noted that “media revenue increased 3% driven by strong growth at Peacock, which was up 57% and, similar to wireless, crossed the $1 billion in quarterly revenue mark for the first time. Domestic distribution increased 9% driven by Peacock subscription revenue growth of 88% fueled by the continuation of solid growth in our paid subscriber base. We ended the quarter with 31 million Peacock paid subscribers, up 10 million over the past year, including 3 million net additions in the quarter driven by sports, including the NFL and the Big 10, and movies, notably the day and date movie, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and a variety of originals and other entertainment programming.”
Comcast president Mike Cavanagh also expressed bullish sentiments for the service’s future.
“Peacock continued to be the fastest growing streamer in the U.S., a result of our holistic business model which leverages all of our brands to serve a broad range of viewers by providing them with options to match their evolving habits," he said. "In the short period of time since we launched in 2020, we’ve seen strong momentum, ending the year at 31 million paid subscribers at a $10 ARPU, supported by healthy trends in both engagement and churn, and I’m excited for 2024. We’ve started with the successful Wild Card Game, which will soon be followed by Oppenheimer coming exclusively to Peacock and a full slate of both new and returning originals such as Ted, Peacock’s most watched original title, additional Pay-1 movies, and the Summer Olympics later this year.”
“These next Olympic Games promise to be nothing short of spectacular with the return of fans, this time to Paris, one of the most beautiful cities in the world,” he added. “With the NBC Broadcast Network airing more content than ever before and Peacock as the streaming home for all games, NBC Universal will be the most comprehensive Olympic destination in U.S. media history with Xfinity once again playing a huge role in delivering each game on our entertainment OS platform, which is now also available to charter customers through Xumo.”
Cavanagh also highlighted the success of the exclusive airing of an NFL playoff game on Peacock, which became the most streamed event up to that time, but declined to provide detailed statistics of how many subscribers they retained.
“[I]n terms of adding subs, we would expect to see--we’re not going to comment on it today, but we would expect to see an increase in paid subs,” he said. “We’re focused now on retention of the subs that came in right around the game. What’s important is both the subs that came in during the game and the engagement of the people that were already on the platform, so engagement and retention is really going to be focused on what’s coming next, and we teased a lot of that, including Oppenheimer coming to the platform on February 16. We have the Summer Olympics coming, and now that we’re post strikes, you’ll see a number of Peacock originals and additional movies from the Pay-1 window that we’ve got with Universal.”
