CEO brushes off Comcast concerns

NBCUniversal (NBCU) parent Comcast is in rude health despite a recent stock price drop, according to its CEO.

Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation

Comcast’s market cap recently fell around US$16 billion (€13 billion) after a predicted loss of up 150,000 video customers in Q3 was revealed. The share price has since recovered somewhat, but concerns linger.

This is still well up on the yearlong low of US$30.33 in November 2016 and in part was related to Hurricane Irma battering Florida and Texas, but shareholders fears linger.

At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in the US, Comcast chief exec Brian Roberts attempted to those concerns over subs losses by outlining a number of reasons the cable giant was in good shape.

He claimed revenue and cash flow were up at the Comcast Cable business, that a la carte OTT services had all signed up NBCUniversal networks, that NBCU itself was in rude health, and that the deal for DreamWorks Animation had brought more creativity to the group.

Roberts also claimed Comcast’s 2011 deal for NBCU, which cost around US$26 billion in total, had proven good business.

“We have resources that allowed us to buy NBCUniversal when times got tough,” he said. “We bought NBC for about $26 billion. Today AT&T is paying over US$100 billion [for Time Warner], and the cash flow with NBCUniversal and Time Warner are pretty comparable.”