Comcast is sure going to miss NBCUniversal’s “Fast and Furious” franchise.
The publicly-traded corporation unveiled strong second-quarter 2017 financials early Thursday morning, reporting 52 cents in earnings per share (EPS) on $21.165 billion in revenue. Considering Wall Street had forecast EPS of 48 cents on $20.86 billion in revenue, per Yahoo Finance, today is a good day for Brian L. Roberts.
The Comcast chairman and CEO called his company’s Q2 results “terrific,” and thanked “Fate of the Furious” specifically for its box office contributions. Comcast’s board of directors celebrated the results by declaring a quarterly dividend of $0.1575 a share on
All told, Comcast Corporation’s revenue rose 9.8 percent from the comparable quarter last year, with earnings jumping 26.8 percent, or +11 cents per share.
How’d it get there? We’ll work big to small. Unsexy as it may be, Cable Communications is still Comcast largest department — and by far. That behemoth increased its revenue by 5.5 percent, thanks mostly to high-speed internet and business services.
On the small-screen, broadcast and cable both saw similar revenue gains just north of 5 percent apiece. They got there in the same way, fighting off a decline in ad sales with better distribution and content licensing revenues.
The Filmed Entertainment segment saw the most dramatic increase from 2016, soaring a massive 59.6 percent in revenue. Home entertainment results from “Fifty Shades Darker” and “Sing” also chipped in there, but it Vin Diesel’s franchise did the heavy lifting.
Finally, NBCU’s theme parks got in on the action with 15.6 percent revenue growth, which could be traced back in large part to Hollywood’s The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Japan’s Minion Park and Orlando’s Volcano Bay.
CMCSA stock closed Wednesday at $39.35, down 40 cents per share. Pre-market, the stock is up a few percentage points in the much-happier direction.
Comcast executives will host a conference call at 7:30 a.m. ET to discuss the quarter in greater detail.