Comcast Corporation

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Comcast's third quarter 2019 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Please note that this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Finance, Mr. Jason Armstrong. Please go ahead, Mr. Armstrong.

Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone. Joining me on this morning's call are Brian Roberts, Mike Cavanaugh, Steve Burke, Dave Watson, and Jeremy Derrick. Brian and Mike will make formal remarks, and Steve, Dave, and Jeremy will also be available for Q&A. As always, let me now refer you to slide number two, which contains our safe harbor disclaimer, and remind you that this conference call may include forward-looking statements subject to certain risks and uncertainties. In addition, in this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. please refer to our 8K and trending schedules for the reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP. With that, let me turn the call over to Brian Roberts for his comments. Brian? Thank you, Jason, and good morning, everyone.

We delivered strong operational and financial results in the third quarter, with each of our businesses contributing to our company's growth. Together, we surpassed 55 million customer relationships, grew pro forma EBITDA by 7%, delivered 16% growth in adjusted EPS, generated significant free cash flow, and paid nearly $1 billion in dividends while further strengthening our balance sheet. Our results in the quarter and over many years are evidence that our strategy is working. From my perspective, four things stood out as we wrapped up the quarter. Our incredible strength in broadband, the enduring popularity of our premium content, our strong global footing just one year after the Sky acquisition, and how the combination of these things puts us in a unique position to compete, including in the streaming market. Starting with broadband, it goes without saying the utility and demand for high-speed and reliable Internet access are ever increasing. We see this in our customers' behavior. Monthly data usage more than doubled in the last three years. and our power users are connecting nearly 20 devices in their homes daily. That's great. It enables us to further differentiate ourselves from the competition. Hence, more customers continue to choose Xfinity. The cable team has done a tremendous job redefining broadband by expanding the basis of competition beyond speed to also include coverage and control. With these three pillars, speed, coverage, and control, our X-Fi experience is resonating with customers. And with Flex, we just added a fourth pillar, streaming, designed to meet the growing needs of customers who only consume video over the top. Flex enables these streamers to quickly and easily search, access, and enjoy content across their favorite apps on the TV using our award-winning voice remote. It's a wonderful product, and now we are providing it to our broadband-only customers for free. And at Sky, we plan to follow a similar playbook by using XFi to differentiate the experience for our broadband subscribers in Europe, starting with next year's launch in Italy. So our strengths and ongoing innovations are translating into record-breaking results. Cable added 379,000 broadband customers the most for a third quarter in 10 years. This drove our best total customer net additions on record for any quarter, contributing to a 3.4% year-over-year increase in customer relationships. And we're also increasing the value of our relationships. EBITDA per customer relationship grew 3.2%. And what is even more impressive, our net cash flow per customer relationship grew 13%. Moving beyond broadband, our content continues to resonate with consumers. NBCUniversal has the largest TV viewership share of any major media company in the U.S., and one of the leading film businesses in the world. In Europe, Sky is the number one sports and entertainment brand, and these strengths continued in the third quarter. NBC placed number one in prime time among adults 18 to 49, for the sixth consecutive 52-week season. Telemundo was number one in Spanish language weekday prime for the third consecutive season. Overall household viewership of Sky branded channels increased 10% in the quarter, led by sports. And Sky's highly acclaimed Chernobyl received 10 Emmys, which bodes well for our newly created Sky Studios. On top of all this, the teams at NBC, Universal, and Sky are jointly producing and delivering content. For example, we've greenlit our first co-productions, shared over 1,000 hours of sports content, and are creating a global news channel. In fact, it's hard to believe that we have owned Sky for only a year. Our company is strategically stronger today than we were a year ago. Sky brings 24 million customer relationships in Europe, including the 482,000 net additions in the last 12 months, plus additional premium content and exclusive sports, all anchored by a leading European brand and an outstanding team. In what are tough macroeconomic conditions, Sky is doing a great job. Finally, our recent announcements on Peacock and Flex are are terrific examples of how our combined company is working together and well-positioned to compete. With our leading scale in distribution and premium content, along with our focus on innovation, we can continue to produce superior products like these for our customers and deliver strong financial results for our shareholders. So all in all, we had a great quarter led by Broadband. And it also demonstrates what a fantastic set of businesses and leaders we have that positions us well for the future. Mike, over to you.