Despite lowering Peacock losses, Comcast drop in second quarter

Comcast, the parent of NBCUniversal, revealed its second quarter financials that show earnings were down despite a significant decrease in losses from streamer Peacock.

The company managed to cut its Peacock losses to $348 million, down from $639 million in the first quarter of 2024 and down $651 million over the same quarter in 2023.

Despite slashing those losses, overall revenue was below Wall Street expectations at $29.7 billion, down 3% over the same quarter in 2023. The company did manage to increase its earnings per share, however, going up 7% to $1.21 on an adjusted basis. Net income was down 7.5% to $3.9 billion, or around $1 per share. It had recorded $4.2 billion in income in the same quarter of 2023, which comes out to $1.02 per share.

Meanwhile, a rate increase pushed Peacock revenue over $1 billion compared to $820 million in 2Q 2023.

Comcast lost 419,000 video subscribers and 120,000 broadband subscribers, while Peacock shed about a million subscribers over the previous period. Video revenue was down 7.9% to $6.7 billion, but the company cut programming costs by 7.3% or $4.2 billion. Its broadband revenue was up 3% to around $6.6 billion despite the loss of subscribers — a movement credited to rate increases.

Another key metric, advertising revenue, remained flat at $933 million.