It’s fitting that just before Comcast’s quarterly earnings call began on Thursday morning, the web portal’s waiting room music included the theme from Stephen Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.”
Why? Because three-fourths of the way through that movie, E.T. famously ends up in pretty bad shape.
With most of 2025 in its rearview, Comcast isn’t doing so hot, either. But there’s still hope for a turnaround.
Overall revenue is down 2.7% for the quarter, from $32.1 billion in 2024 to $31.2 billion in 2025. According to NBC’s leadership, this decline can be attributed to an unfavorable comparison with last year’s Paris Olympics revenue.
Domestic advertising revenue saw an even higher decline, for similar reasons. Last year’s Q3 report put domestic advertising revenue at $3.3 billion; this year, it’s just under $2 billion, a whopping year-over-year decrease of 41.3%.
Excluding the Olympics revenue from last year, however, there was actually 2.6% growth compared to 2024’s third quarter. That slight increase is the result of higher revenue coming in from Peacock, which grew at a “mid-teens rate” according to Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong.
It says here you have “network connectivity problems”?
Within residential connectivity platforms, which includes Comcast’s domestic broadband and wireless services, advertising revenue dropped a whopping 12.5% compared to this time last year, from $967 million in 2024 to $864 million now.
Still, Comcast’s leadership team spoke positively about the growth potential of its larger Connectivity & Platforms business, especially in terms of convergence (which here refers less to the combination of linear and streaming TV inventory and more to the bundling of broadband and wireless networks).
As a way to move this side of the business forward, the company announced that it has promoted former COO Steve Croney to CEO of Connectivity & Platforms. Dave Watson, the department’s current CEO, will now serve as Vice Chairman.
Croney was present during the call but didn’t say anything. “We’re going to start him next quarter,” said co-CEO Brian Roberts.
More like “Sunday Night Live”
In keeping with recent trends (and ignoring any Olympics-sized holes in revenue), the rest of NBCUniversal’s advertising business is doing well, thanks in no small part to the usual suspects: Peacock and sports content.
That aforementioned 2.6% of YOY growth was the company’s “best result to date,” said Armstrong, and this season of “Sunday Night Football” is already the highest grossing in the program’s 20-year history.
Although Peacock’s subscriber growth continued to remain flat at 41 million, that’s still a solid achievement considering the recent $3 per month price increase in late July.
Of course, one investor asked about the potential of a merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, which is quickly becoming the new “how worried are you about tariffs?” in terms of common earnings call questions.
While it’s not completely off the table, Cavanagh said their bar for M+A is high. The strategies they have on that side of the business – spinning out Versant, aligning Peacock’s content with that of NBC’s broadcast channels, forging a new contract with “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan – are already paying off without any acquisitions, he said.
After all, the merger of Paramount and Skydance might have been what drove Taylor Sheridan to NBCUniversal in the first place. Why mess with what’s starting to become a good thing?
