It may be the “worst company in America” (according to a cheap shot from Consumerist.com) but Comcast otherwise is having a very good week, reporting Q1 earnings today highlighted by across-the-board growth. Revenue grew to $9.2 billion for the quarter, up 3.8% versus a year ago. Diving deeper into subscriber numbers, the cable operator added 427,000 digital video, 399,000 broadband and 273,000 VoIP subscribers for the quarter — in the process growing total revenue per video customer to $122.98, up 6.3%.
Wrote The Wall Street Journal:
The performance, which included a return to advertising growth at the cable giant after a two-year drought, beat expectations on Wall Street and signaled that the cable industry is weathering a storm of new competition and bouncing back from a deep recession that had raised concerns about consumers cutting back their monthly television, Internet and phone bills.
Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Craig Moffett said Comcast’s first-quarter growth “looks good on virtually every dimension,” noting that even its video subscriber losses were less than expected. “With telCo incursions now slowing, and household formation likely stabilizing, this could potentially be the front edge of a meaningful trend improvement,” said Moffett.
Connected Planet’s take,
Dan O’Shea:
Back when telcos were trading away their landline phone customer to the cable TV companies and getting plenty of video customers in exchange, the telco-cable war appeared to be swinging in telcos’ favor.
But, as Verizon wraps up it big FiOS push into new markets and AT&T’s broadband expansion slows as well, the edge may be swinging back to the cable guys, Comcast in particular. The largest cable TV company in the U.S. may have survived the worst of the economic recession, but also perhaps the worst of what telcos have to offer in terms of TV competition. Comcast is also now the third-largest residential telephone company, and as first quarter numbers indicate, there’s appears to be no stopping its telephony momentum.
What could make the future even brighter for Comcast? How about a DOCSIS 3.0 expansion whose speeds the telcos are hard-pressed to match? AT&T had a strong quarter itself, and Verizon did a decent job, too, but Comcast’s Q1 beats them both for positive trends.
Is Comcast really the worst company in America? Apparently, the 1.1 million or so new video, broadband Internet and telephony customers Comcast signed last quarter think otherwise.
That’s our take on this. Let us know what you think in the comments section below: