Comcast Corporation

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Comcast Third Quarter 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 Executive Vice President, Investor Relations, Ms. Marci Reibacher. Please go ahead, Ms. Reibacher.

Thank you, Operator, and welcome, everyone. Joining us on today's call are Brian Roberts, Mike Cavanaugh, Jason Armstrong, and Dave Watson. I will now refer you to slide two of the presentation accompanying this call, which can also be found on our investor relations website and which contains our safe harbor disclaimer. This conference call may include forward-looking statements subject to certain risks and uncertainties. In addition, during this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please see our 8K and trending schedule issued earlier this morning for the reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.

Thanks, Marcy, and good morning. Before I hand it over to Jason, I'll touch on a few topics that are top of mind for me as we report our third quarter results and head into the home stretch of 2024. First is convergence, second is Epic Universe, and third is media. On convergence, which we define as the combination of ubiquitous high-speed Internet along with wireless phone, By that definition, we are positioned to win, and that is because today we have 63 million homes and businesses already able to receive Gig Plus broadband speed, and we also offer wireless service everywhere we provide broadband. This reach far exceeds the fiber footprints of the largest three telecom companies combined, and our footprint is growing at a rapid pace. In fact, We've extended our network to more than 1.2 million additional homes and businesses over the last 12 months, a 50-plus percent increase over what we were able to do just two years ago. So even accounting for the announced fiber build-out plans of those three wireless companies, we expect to maintain this lead well into the future. Broadband usage is skyrocketing. Our broadband-only customers are heavy data users, averaging 700 gigabytes per month. And we want it that way because our existing network can handle significant increases in bandwidth consumption at a very low marginal cost. In addition, we're on a path over the next few years to being able to deliver multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds, which will be competitive with any technology out there. The other side of our converged offering is Xfinity Mobile, which matches the capabilities of any wireless network in America. We bundle Xfinity Mobile with our best-in-class broadband service everywhere we compete at a price that offers great savings to the consumer. And when combined with broadband, our wireless offering both improves churn and increases overall customer satisfaction. We also look for opportunities to enhance our converged experience, an example being a new feature we are rolling out now called Wi-Fi Boost, which automatically increases Xfinity Mobile customer speeds up to one gig on our Wi-Fi network, which is also the largest in the nation. To close out these comments on convergence, it's important to note that our strategy is proving out in financial performance. Our domestic broadband plus wireless revenue has been growing at 5%, which consistently leads the industry when you look across our competitors. The second topic I want to touch on is Epic Universe. which will be the most groundbreaking park ever introduced in the United States. We recently announced that Epic will open on May 22nd of 2025 and have also started to activate our sales and marketing plans, including the sale of vacation packages that provide the opportunity to visit Epic, which we expect to be in very high demand. This park will offer a level of immersion that is unmatched. transporting guests to expansive worlds featuring more than 50 awe-inspiring attractions, entertainment, dining, and shopping experiences. Once Epic opens, Universal Orlando will be transformed into a weeks-long vacation, offering four theme parks, a CityWalk dining, retail, and entertainment district, and 11 hotels. Epic will build on everything we've excelled at in the present and in the past, and make it even better by infusing iconic storytelling with cutting-edge technology in five fully-themed worlds, each one telling a fantastic story based on world-renowned movies and literature, such as Dark Universe, which capitalizes on our Universal Monster franchise, Isle of Berk, which brings DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon to Life, there is the Wizarding World of Harry Potter Ministry of Magic, as well as Super Nintendo World, And all of these are connected by Celestial Park, a world in and of itself. We could not be more excited for what's ahead of us with Epic and our entire Destination and Experiences business. Finally, let me talk about media, where the truly outstanding and universally praised production of the Paris Olympics demonstrated the power of NBC broadcast and Peacock. We brought new relevance and excitement to the Olympics by flawlessly presenting the biggest and most complex Olympic games in history, dominating television, streaming, news, and social media for 17 straight days. Daily viewership averaged over 30 million across our platforms, an increase of 80% compared to the prior Summer Olympics in 2021, and Peacock streamed 23.5 billion minutes, up 40% from all prior summer and winter Olympics combined. All of this leading to a record high $1.9 billion of incremental Olympics revenue in our media segment this third quarter. We achieved this result by leaning in with the full symphony of Comcast NBCUniversal playing together and a big bet on new ideas and innovation that paid off. We are all very grateful to our NBC sports team, and look forward to them bringing the lessons learned and momentum to our entire sports portfolio, especially as we begin to prepare for the relaunch of our partnership with the NBA, starting with the 2025-2026 season. The regular and postseason NBA games across both NBC and Peacock, in addition to a number of exclusive Peacock games, will bring in broad and diverse audiences, allowing us to also create new entertainment content that will work beyond the basketball season with exciting opportunities for companion programming and marketing collaborations that tap into the NBA's pop culture appeal. Before I hand it over to Jason, let me talk about our recent execution against an outlook for our capital allocation priorities, which are threefold, to maintain a very strong balance sheet, which we feel great about given the industry-low leverage we maintain, to return significant capital to our shareholders, which we have done consistently since we reinstated our buyback program in May 2021, and have since returned $50 billion of capital equaling 100% of our free cash flow and reducing our share count by 20%. And third, to invest in our growth businesses both organically and inorganically. Organically, we've invested heavily in our growth businesses, including the upgrade of our broadband network to ubiquitous one-gig speeds and counting, the incubation, launch, and success of our wireless and business services units, the investment in Peacock and our studios, and the creation of the Epic Universe theme park, to name just a few. And while we remain most focused on driving our growth businesses... We also look to maximize the significant legacy value in our portfolio of more mature businesses. As you know, we chose not to participate in the M&A process around Paramount in the earlier part of this year, but we would consider partnerships and streaming despite their complexities. And like many of our peers in media, we are experiencing the effects of the transition in our video businesses and have been studying the best path forward for these assets. To that end, We are now exploring whether creating a new, well-capitalized company owned by our shareholders and comprised of our strong portfolio of cable networks would position them to take advantage of opportunities in the changing media landscape and create value for our shareholders. We are not ready to talk about any specifics yet, but we'll be back to you as and when we reach firm conclusions. And to sum it up, we are very proud of the job we've done on the capital allocation front over the past few years, and we are highly motivated to maintain the same level of discipline. With that, it's over to you, Jason.