Comcast's reputation and cable TV business may continue to fall down, but according to reports, its actually doing wel revenue-wise.
According to Fortune, the cable business does not seem like a great industry to be in right now due to more and more consumers are opting to avail streaming services like Netflix, but Comcast recently posted better than expected revenue of $18.7 billion in its most recent quarter. It's actually more than 11 percent over than the same period of the previous year
In a related report by 12 News, the success is being attributed to the animated movie "Minions" and "Jurassic World." However, although its cable operation saw another decline in the number of subscribers, the drop is actually one of the smallest numbers experienced by the company for quite some time.
The reports said that it just lost 48,000 subscribers in the most recent quarter — just a little over half of what it lost in the same period last year and its best third-quarter performance in almost a decade.
Unfortunately, Comcast's stock did not exactly rocket higher on the news as it was slightly down for most of the day, specifically about 1 percent lower. Investors of the company may likely to continue worrying about the impact of cable subscription cutting, despite the better than expected earnings of the company.
Apart from the movies, Comcast's better-than-expected revenue may also be due to an increase in high-speed internet and business services. Overall, cable communications revenue rose to 6.3 percent to $7.15 billion.
Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said in a printed statement, "At cable communications, overall customer relationships increased 156,000, a 90 percent improvement compared to last year, video subscriber results were the best for a third quarter in 9 years, high-speed Internet subscriber results were the best for a third quarter in 6 years, and churn across all product categories continues to improve."
In related news by The Verge, Comcast is also considering an idea of launching a wireless service and it plans to start network tests as early as next year.
On a call with investor recently, Roberts confirmed that the company has activated an agreement with Verizon that allows it to piggyback on the carrier's wireless network.
However, Comcast has to wait at least six months before it can use the network and after that, it plans to "trial and test some things" Roberts said.
Moreover, if it indeed follows through and launches a wireless phone service, there is a great likelihood that it would rely heavily on Wi-Fi connected to Comcast's already existing network.
