PHILADELPHIA—Despite Peacock having its best quarter yet, adding 4 million paid subscribers, Comcast reported that NBCUniversal’s streaming service reported an EBITDA loss of $456 million on revenue of $472 million in Q1 2022.
In an earnings call with investors, Brian Roberts, chairman, CEO and president of Comcast stressed that Q1 2022 was “an exceptional quarter overall for Peacock” in terms of sub growth, which was “well above our expectation.”
“We added 4 million paid subscribers to end the first quarter with over 13 million paid subscribers and 28 million monthly active accounts in the U.S.,” Roberts said. “And we've seen a 25% increase in hours of engagement year-over-year. Given the natural ebbs and flows of our content slate, we do not anticipate seeing this type of growth every quarter. We just expanded our total paid subscribers by over 40%. So we expect more modest subscriber gains until we get to the back half of this year.”
The company also reported that Peacock’s revenue grew “more than 5x year-over-year to $472 million in the quarter.”
Even so, the company is expecting that “Peacock's EBITDA loss will be roughly $2.5 billion for the year,” said Michael Cavanagh, Comcast’s senior executive vice president and CFO.
Jeffrey Shell, CEO, NBCUniversal, also stressed that “we've said from the beginning since we launched Peacock that we're taking a different approach than most of the other people in the streaming business. We don't view Peacock really as a separate distinct business. We think it's an extension of our existing TV business, and we manage it that way.”
