Comcast Corp - Class A (CMCSA) — Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, Operator, and welcome everyone. Joining us on today’s call are Brian Roberts, Mike Cavanagh, Jason Armstrong, and Dave Watson. I will now refer you to Slide 2 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 8-K 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, Marci, and good morning everyone. We’re less than a month into the new year and 2024 is already off to a great start. Two weeks ago, our entire company came together to make history, shattering records with the first exclusively streamed NFL Wildcard Game on Peacock. Nearly 23 million viewers watched the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Miami Dolphins, consuming 30% of all internet traffic in the U.S. and setting a new record in total U.S. internet traffic for any night. Our investment in the network and our technology platforms built over decades enabled us to shine, delivering a seamless experience on the internet and Peacock, demonstrating that our company is in an excellent position to win in this era of high bandwidth consumption. Also, Universal Pictures’ Oppenheimer picked up five Golden Globe awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Original Score. With 2024 off to a terrific start, let’s look back at 2023, where we produced consistently strong financial results and continued to execute against our long term strategy. We’ve positioned our company to benefit from a significant number of scaled and diversified growth opportunities that are margin accretive, namely residential broadband, mobile, business services, theme parks, studios, and Peacock. In aggregate, our revenue in these businesses grew 8% in 2023 and comprised 55% of our total revenue for the year. Our healthy cash flow generation and strong balance sheet have enabled the organic investment that fuels these businesses and at the same time fund substantial capital return, including significant share repurchases. All of this has translated into excellent financial performance. For the third consecutive year, we generated the highest revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS in our company’s history. Now let’s go deeper on some of the important achievements during the year. I’m really proud of the progress we’ve made in our connectivity businesses. We maintained a strong trajectory in Xfinity Mobile, increasing our subscriber lines by 24% and total domestic wireless revenue by nearly 20%. We also performed well in our business services segment, which grew full year revenue and EBITDA by nearly 5% with margins approaching 60%, and we exceeded our goal of adding over 1 million new homes and businesses passed and expect to do at or above this level in 2024. Our domestic broadband business remains strong. We kept our very large and healthy base of subscribers flat while growing residential ARPU 3.9%, the high end of our historical range, driving solid EBITDA growth in connectivity and platforms and expanding margins to around 40% on an underlying basis. We achieved all of this despite an intensely competitive environment, and as I look back on 2023, I am confident that our strategy combined with excellent execution sets us up extremely well to navigate the road ahead. While the competitive environment is likely to remain at these levels for a period of time, broadband is still a very large, healthy, and profitable market, and the consumption trends that we’re seeing are encouraging for the future. Customers are connecting more devices in their homes and are using them for applications that require more capacity, faster speeds, and lower latency. Our fiber-deep and capital efficient network is more than ready to meet this demand with 100,000 miles of fiber and a clear path to offering multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds ubiquitously across our entire footprint with DOCSIS 4.0. I’d like to spend a minute briefly addressing the government’s affordable connectivity program. First, it’s important to note that we’ve built on our decade-long history in digital equity to effectively participate in ACP and have successfully leveraged the national verifier program in the process. While we hope that the White House and Congress renew this funding and keep these important resources available to the many people and households who have relied upon this program to stay digitally connected, we have already begun to communicate with ACP participants and will provide a range of options, including our highly successful internet essentials program, in the event that funding is discontinued. Shifting to content and experiences, we have positioned ourselves to drive long-term profitable growth. Over the span of decades, we’ve built a remarkable portfolio of iconic content and strong franchises in both film and television, including live sports, news, and entertainment. Our market-leading businesses have tremendous reach and continue to perform and execute collaboratively, playing to our strengths by leveraging our IP and our incredible partners. Let’s start with our studio group, where we hit a major milestone ranking as the number one studio in film by worldwide box office with hits such as Super Mario Bros., Oppenheimer, Fast 10, and Five Nights at Freddy’s. We are proud to work alongside our creative partners like Christopher Nolan, Chris Meledandri, and Jason Blum, who are innovative industry leaders to develop content that continues to delight audiences. And I’m really excited about another fantastic film slate in 2024 with the latest installment of Kung Fu Panda in March, along with Despicable Me and Twisters in July, and Wicked slated for November, which will also benefit Peacock as these films and many others enter the Pay-1 window. At the same time, our media segment continues to deliver, reaching over 100 million households every quarter with leading sports, news, and entertainment. We have the number one most-watched news organization in the U.S. and Sunday Night Football is pacing to be the most-watched prime time show for an unprecedented 13th consecutive year. Peacock continued to be the fastest-growing streamer in the U.S., a result of our holistic business model which leverages all of our brands to serve a broad range of viewers by providing them with options to match their evolving habits. In the short period of time since we launched in 2020, we’ve seen strong momentum, ending the year at 31 million paid subscribers at a $10 ARPU, supported by healthy trends in both engagement and churn, and I’m excited for 2024. We started with the successful Wild Card Game, which will soon be followed by Oppenheimer coming exclusively to Peacock and a full slate of both new and returning originals such as Ted, Peacock’s most-watched original title, additional Pay-1 movies, and the Summer Olympics later this year. These next Olympic Games promise to be nothing short of spectacular with the return of fans, this time to Paris, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. With the NBC Broadcast Network airing more content than ever before and Peacock as the streaming home for all games, NBC Universal will be the most comprehensive Olympic destination in U.S. media history with Xfinity once again playing a huge role in delivering each game on our entertainment OS platform, which is now also available to charter customers through Xumo. At parks, we achieved record-high revenue and EBITDA in 2023 and have exciting new attractions and experiences in the years ahead. We’ll open Donkey Kong, another Nintendo-themed land next year in Osaka, which will expand Super Nintendo World by another 70%. We expect continuation of the strong trends in Hollywood also driven by Super Nintendo World, and we’ll see the completion of Epic Universe, our fourth gate in Orlando, prior to its grand opening in 2025. In summary, we are very pleased with all that we have achieved in 2023. We have incredible teams in each of our businesses and have executed against our plan exceptionally well, delivering very strong EBITDA, EPS, and free cash flow. Going forward, our highest priority is to continue our strong operational performance enabled by the investments we are making in our six key growth areas, fueling their growth and further improving the profile of our business mix. The strength and stability of our company, including our balance sheet, enables us to make these investments while also providing our shareholders with substantial capital returns. Since we started buying back stock in late May of 2021, we have repurchased approximately 15% of our total shares outstanding, and with today’s announcement we have now increased our annualized dividend by 150% since I joined the company in 2015. Putting it all together, our strategy is working and we see many years ahead that this formula will continue to deliver for our company and shareholders. Jason, over to you.

Thanks, Mike, and good morning everyone. I’ll begin on Slides 4 and 5 with our consolidated results. Total revenue increased 2% to $31.3 billion for the fourth quarter and was consistent at $121.6 billion for the full year. On a reported basis, EBITDA was consistent at $8 billion for the fourth quarter and up 3% to $37.6 billion for the full year. Our EBITDA results include severance and other in this quarter, as well as in last year’s fourth quarter. Excluding these items totaling $527 million this quarter and $638 million in last year’s quarter, adjusted EBITDA decreased 1% in the fourth quarter and remained at 3% growth for the full year. Adjusted EPS was up 2% to $0.84 a share for the fourth quarter and increased 9% to $3.98 for the full year. We generated $1.7 billion of free cash flow for the quarter and $13 billion for the full year, which translates into $3.13 in free cash flow per share, which was up 10% year-over-year, and we returned over 100% of this to shareholders, with $4.7 billion of capital returned to shareholders in the quarter and $15.8 billion for the full year. Our strong level of free cash flow includes the significant investments we’re making to support and grow our business in six broad and diversified growth categories, including residential broadband, wireless, and business services connectivity, along with theme parks, streaming, and premium content at our studios. Taken together, these growth areas generated more than half of our total company revenue and grew at a high single-digit rate during the quarter and for the full year. Now let’s turn to our business results, starting on Slide 6 with connectivity and platforms. As a reminder, our largest foreign exchange exposure is to the British pound, which was up nearly 6% year-over-year. As usual, in order to highlight the underlying performance of the connectivity and platforms business, I will refer to year-over-year growth on a constant currency basis. Revenue for total connectivity and platforms was flat at $20.4 billion. Unpacking that, revenue in our core connectivity business - domestic broadband, domestic wireless, international connectivity, and business services connectivity, increased 7% to $11 billion, while video, advertising, and other revenue declined 8% to $9 billion. Our strategy is to invest to drive growth in our core connectivity businesses while at the same time carefully managing businesses that are important, but face secular headwinds. On balance, this is a favorable mix shift for the profitability of our overall connectivity and platform segment, as reflected in our results. EBITDA for total connectivity and platforms increased 3% with EBITDA margins improving 130 basis points year-over-year. This includes severance and other of $422 million in the quarter and $456 million of charges in last year’s fourth quarter. Excluding these items in both periods, EBITDA increased 2% to $8 billion and EBITDA margins improved by 110 basis points. Margins for our domestic legacy cable business improved 70 basis points to 46.2%. In terms of how our underlying performance in connectivity and platforms breaks out between residential and business, on the same basis excluding severance and other from both periods, residential EBITDA grew 2% with margins improving 120 basis points, and business services EBITDA increased 5% with margins nearly unchanged at an impressive 57%. Now let’s get further into the details, starting with our connectivity growth drivers. Residential connectivity revenue grew 7% driven by 4% growth in domestic broadband, 15% growth in domestic wireless, and 19% growth in international connectivity, while business services connectivity revenue grew 6%. Domestic broadband was once again driven by very strong ARPU growth of 3.9% for the quarter and for the year, landing at the high end of our historical 3% to 4% range while our base of 32 million broadband subscribers remained stable over the past year, including the 34,000 subscriber loss this quarter. We remain focused on competing aggressively but in a financially balanced way, as evidenced by this quarter and past years’ results. With the broadband marketplace remaining extremely competitive, we will continue to manage this balance and expect ARPU growth will remain strong within our historical range and continue to be the driver of our residential broadband revenue growth in 2024. While we do not expect subscriber trends to improve in the coming quarters, we do expect them to improve over time. At the macro level, customers are consuming more, connecting more devices in their homes, and are using them for applications that collectively require either faster speeds, lower latency, and higher reliability over time. These secular trends are all moving in our favor, and we believe our marginal cost to add capacity to our network is unrivalled. This is why we are investing in our fiber-fed network to further increase capacity and offer multi-gig symmetrical speeds ubiquitously across our footprint and ensure that we stay way ahead of consumer demand with the best broadband offering and experience. We have deployed mid-splits to about 35% of our footprint and expect that to reach around 50% by the end of 2024. On the back of this, we launched our first DOCSIS 4.0 market during the fourth quarter and will continue to launch additional markets this year. We are focused on what we can control - that means segmenting our customer base by offering our customers the right price, including value options at different speed tiers and driving ARPU ahead in an environment where broadband subscriber growth remains challenged, and we’re doing this in the context of aggressive network upgrades and expansion, putting us in a great position to eventually return to subscriber growth. Speaking of network expansion, we exceeded our goal of passing 1 million new homes and businesses in 2023, landing at nearly 1.1 million, and we plan to replicate this in 2024 with this level, or potentially even greater footprint expansion. Switching to wireless, we hit a great milestone, eclipsing $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time this quarter. With the year-over-year increase due to higher service revenue driven by continued strong momentum in customer lines, which were up 1.3 million or 24% year-over-year to 6.5 million in total. This includes 310,000 lines we just added in the quarter. We’ve had a healthy run rate generating around 300,000 net additional lines per quarter for the last two years, and we’re consistently in the market testing new offers and will continue to do that throughout the coming year, with the goal that some of these offers will translate into accelerated line additions as the year progresses. With only 11% penetration of our domestic residential broadband customer accounts, we still have a big opportunity and a long runway ahead for growth in wireless. International connectivity revenue increased 19% driven by steady mid-teens growth in broadband along with strong growth in wireless, which had healthy growth in both device sales and service revenue. Finally, business services connectivity revenue increased 6% driven by consistent growth in our small business category as we grew ARPU through rate and higher penetration of additional products like Security Edge, and from strong growth in midmarket and enterprise. The revenue growth in our connectivity businesses was offset by declines in video, advertising, and other revenue. The video revenue decline was driven by continued customer losses. The lower other revenue reflects similar dynamics in wire line voice, and advertising was impacted by a tough comparison to last year, which benefited from higher political revenue in our domestic markets. As I mentioned earlier, excluding severance and other, connectivity and platforms’ total EBITDA increased 2% with adjusted margin of 110 basis points. To unpack this improvement, the main driver is the mix shift to our high margin connectivity businesses, a transition you’ve seen for the last few years and that we expect to continue. In addition to the mix shift, we are benefiting from ongoing cost discipline. For every quarter this year, including the fourth quarter, five out of six categories of expenses we report have decreased. The only category that grew is direct product costs, which are success-based and directly associated with the significant growth in our connectivity businesses. In addition, we continue to get more efficient with better tools and technology. Compared to 2017, we reduced our domestic truck rolls by nearly 50% and customer interactions are down nearly 40%, even while we increased our domestic relationships by nearly 5 million over this same time period. The investment we are making in our network, including virtualization and using technology to enhance the customer experience, not only makes us more competitive, it makes us more cost-efficient. Together, the mix shift, the cost discipline, and the technology advances we’ve made in customer service are all structural, and we expect them to continue, positioning us to drive higher profitability and further margin expansion in 2024 and for the foreseeable future. Now let’s turn to content and experiences on Slide 7. Revenue increased 6% to $11.5 billion and EBITDA increased 2% to $923 million. Excluding severance at $101 million this quarter and $186 million in last year’s fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA decreased 6%, reflecting a decrease in media partially offset by strong growth at studios and record results at parks. Now let’s take a closer look at content and experiences, starting with media. Media revenue increased 3% driven by strong growth at Peacock, which was up 57% and, similar to wireless, crossed the $1 billion in quarterly revenue mark for the first time. Domestic distribution increased 9% driven by Peacock subscription revenue growth of 88% fueled by the continuation of solid growth in our paid subscriber base. We ended the quarter with 31 million Peacock paid subscribers, up 10 million over the past year, including 3 million net additions in the quarter driven by sports, including the NFL and the Big 10, and movies, notably the day and date movie, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and a variety of originals and other entertainment programming. International networks revenue, which is mainly distribution revenue for Sky Sports, increased 17% primarily due to the increase in sports content this year as well as the positive impact of foreign currency translation. Finally, domestic advertising declined 7% due to a tough comparison to last year, which included a significant incremental contribution in advertising from Telemundo’s broadcast of the FIFA World Cup. Excluding the World Cup, advertising increased nearly 3% driven by strong Peacock advertising and from our strong sports line-up. Peacock advertising increased 50%, again excluding the World Cup, and hit an all-time high. Media EBITDA decreased 50% mainly due to higher sports costs, reflecting a full quarter of a contractual rate increase in our NFL programming, the addition of Big 10 to our sports programming line-up this year, and higher Premier League costs compared to last year when games were paused for four weeks to accommodate the timing of the World Cup. At Peacock, EBITDA losses continued to moderate in the fourth quarter with nice year-over-year improvement resulting in full year losses for Peacock of $2.7 billion, which was slightly better than the expectation we had previously communicated. 2023 marked the peak in annual losses at Peacock, and for 2024 we expect to show meaningful improvement in losses versus 2023. Turning to studios, revenue increased 4% driven by theatrical revenue growth of 59% due to our performance at the box office this quarter with Five Nights at Freddy’s, Trolls Band Together, The Exorcist, and Migration. In fact, Five Nights at Freddy’s was the highest grossing horror film of 2023 and also set a record on Peacock as the most watched title of all time in the first five days of its release. In addition to the films this quarter, we benefited from prior period titles moving through profitable licensing windows, driving EBITDA growth of 83% to $308 million. At theme parks, revenue increased 12% and EBITDA also increased 12% to $872 million for the quarter. These strong results were again driven by growth at our international parks, especially as Osaka continues to benefit from strong demand from Super Nintendo World driving higher attendance and per-cap spending relative to both last year and pre-pandemic levels. In Hollywood, we also continued to benefit from the positive consumer reaction to Super Nintendo World, which opened earlier in 2023, driving strong attendance and growth in per-caps and resulting in Hollywood’s best fourth quarter EBITDA in its history. In Orlando, our results were also strong with attendance in line with 2019 pre-pandemic levels and revenue substantially ahead. Now I’ll wrap up with free cash flow and capital allocation on Slide 8. As I mentioned previously, we generated $1.7 billion in free cash flow this quarter and $13 billion for the year, and we achieved this while absorbing meaningful capital investments to expand our footprint and further strengthen our domestic broadband network, scale our streaming business, and support the continued build of our Epic Universe park ahead of its 2025 opening. As a result, total capital spending increased 13% for the year driven by higher capex. At connectivity and platforms, capex increased 1.5% for the full year, with capex intensity coming in at 10.1% primarily driven by investments to further strengthen and extend our network. In 2024, we expect capex intensity to be in the same range as we continue to transition our U.S. network to DOCSIS 4.0 and accelerate our growth in homes passed. I’ll just note that while our capex intensity at connectivity and platforms has been around 10% for the past few years, this is not a specific internal target for us, rather it’s an output. Our teams are going as fast as possible; however, if for example we have an opportunity to accelerate further our growth in homes passed at accretive economics, then we’d welcome that opportunity. But right now, the envelope has been right around 10% and we’re very happy with the pace that we are on and the progress we’re making. Content and experiences capex increased by $1.2 billion for the full year, driven by parks with Epic accounting for the majority of the increase in spend. In 2024, we expect parks capex to remain elevated and then decrease in 2025 when we open Epic. Working capital was $2 billion for the year, which was better than we expected, improving a billion over last year’s level. Our 2023 results included benefits from the pause in production during the work stoppages associated with the writers' and actors' strikes during the year. Turning to return of capital on our balance sheet, for the full year we returned a total of $15.8 billion to shareholders - this includes share repurchases of $11 billion, including $3.5 billion in the fourth quarter. In addition, dividend payments totaled $4.8 billion. As we announced this morning, we are raising our dividend by $0.08 a share to $1.24 per share - that’s our 16th consecutive annual increase. We ended the year with net leverage of 2.3 times, in line with our target leverage of around 2.4 times, and we expect to remain at this target level in 2024. Wrapping up, we had a very solid quarter and a great year, and we’re focused on continuing to execute our long term growth strategy supported by our balanced and disciplined approach to capital allocation. I’m proud of the steady and consistent framework which guides our decision-making. We’re going to invest aggressively for organic growth across our six key areas. We’ll protect our balance sheet and cash flow position and return capital to shareholders. Now I’ll turn it over to Brian for a few remarks before we turn to Q&A.

Thanks, Jason, and good morning everyone. I’d like to just emphasize a couple of points. As I think about the year, it’s hard not to be really proud of what we’ve accomplished. 2023 was the best financial year in our 60-year history, and we already have nice momentum in 2024. As Mike and Jason just outlined, we have a unique company that is incredibly well positioned. We always try to think about and invest for the long term, particularly across the six key growth drivers. What’s also important is that in 2023 alone, we returned $16 billion in capital to our shareholders. As you just heard, it’s the 16th straight year that we just raised our dividend - that’s consistency. When you put this all together, we have a great team - that’s always most important to me, and we’re making the right adjustments to our businesses to position us to win, grow, and continue to return capital to shareholders. While there may be speculation on what we could do next, I’d like you to hear it directly from me: I love the company we have, so the bar continues to be even higher for us to do anything other than the plan you heard today. I want to thank all our employees for a great 2023 as they continue to execute at the highest level. With that, let me hand it over to Marci to take all your questions.

Thanks, Brian. Operator, let’s open the call for Q&A please.

Thanks, good morning. Brian, thanks for those clear comments. I wanted to ask you guys about broadband and separately about Peacock. I guess Jason, you talked about and Mike talked about sort of the consumer trends that you think play to your strengths, but you guys are doing a lot at the network level, including in ’24 you talked about your converged offers that you’re testing maybe getting more aggressive. I know you’re not going to put a timeline on it, but can you talk a little bit about the opportunity to re-accelerate broadband customer trends, because the product you are bringing to the marketplace is seemingly getting better even this year, and I realize you’re talking long term, but I just wanted to hear more from you on the things you’re doing and the business and product today, and how that may or may not translate into better trends on the customer front over the course of the next 12 to 24 months. Then on Peacock, I guess maybe for Mike, how much more investment does this business need? I think you guys had talked a while ago about getting to $5 billion of programming investment. If you look at the fourth quarter anyway, you’re basically there now, you’ve got good revenue momentum. I’m trying to think about the path to getting this business to breakeven, so I’d love to hear what you think the business needs in terms of incremental investment from here. Thanks a lot.

Hey Ben, this is Dave. I'll begin with broadband and then pass it to Mike and Jason. Regarding broadband, as Mike and Jason mentioned, the situation remains largely unchanged; there is still macro activity, moves are declining, but as you pointed out, it’s highly competitive, particularly in the lower-income segment. Consequently, the primary driver, customer activity, is seeing lower connections while churn stays near record lows. Despite this, we have managed to find a solid balance between customer growth and ARPU. We maintained a relatively flat subscriber base and achieved a 3.9% increase in ARPU for both the quarter and the year, and we are also experiencing growth in C&P while expanding margins. We’ve encountered similar competitive cycles in the past, and during these times, we see new competitive footprints and some unique discounting strategies. Fiber is a notable example of this that we have experienced in previous years and still continue to see. Although there is pressure on net adds during the initial phase of such cycles, we have adjusted our approach and are competing effectively against fiber. This cycle is primarily characterized by fixed wireless and a strong focus on the lower-income segment. With new footprints added, there’s some pressure on ARPU, but we continue to adapt. The key for us throughout this cycle is to develop better products, enhancing everything from the network to the Wi-Fi experience. Our network investments are consistent, and we’ve laid out our plans—currently, we are 23% upgraded and expect to reach around 50% by year-end 2024. We’ve begun deploying 4.0 and are working toward symmetrical service offerings because we believe strongly in the market direction. The market will see an increase in the number of devices connected to the network and an uptick in usage and engagement, so we aim to be competitive as these changes occur. We will approach each segment strategically and compete vigorously; however, we do not anticipate subscriber trends to improve in the upcoming quarters, but we expect to see growth over time. We will compete aggressively and be in a favorable position when the macro environment changes, as we recognize the opportunity for more win-backs with fixed wireless. We want to be ready for that as well. Throughout this process, we will protect our strong base of 32 million broadband customers by managing rates and volume effectively.

Hey, it’s Mike, Ben. Thanks for the question about Peacock. I want to elaborate a bit on the topic and discuss the direction of our programming. We’re extremely proud of what we achieved with Peacock in 2023. Ending the year with 31 million paying subscribers, which is a 50% increase year-over-year, is a significant milestone for us, especially considering we’re only three years into this. This places us at about 60% of the subscriber levels of more established streaming services, excluding Netflix. We’re maintaining a robust average revenue per user at $10 per subscriber. While we’re not yet at our ultimate goal, the team has done an incredible job despite doubts about reaching this point. Moving forward, it’s essential to continue executing the strategy that has brought us here, which is expected to enhance Peacock’s profitability following the peak losses we saw in 2023. Our strategy focuses on managing Peacock alongside our linear TV operations. We aim to leverage our valuable content resources, including NBC’s news, sports, and entertainment, as well as Bravo and other cable assets, plus Universal's offerings during the Pay-1 window. By combining all these factors, we plan to expand our scale, attract more subscribers, improve engagement with existing subscribers, and reduce churn, which we’re quite pleased with. In terms of your question about programming spend growth leveling off, that will be a crucial factor in improving Peacock's standalone losses as we anticipate substantial revenue growth from our higher subscriber count. However, I am more focused on the long-term success of our overall media business, which encompasses both linear and streaming services. I believe we are on an excellent path, and I’m very happy with our progress.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Ben. Operator, next question, please.

Hi, thank you. I wonder if you could do an early post-mortem on the Chiefs-Dolphins playoff game, what kind of subscription growth it drove at Peacock and what kind of early churn impact you’ve had on that. I know there was some chatter that you guys tried to play down about whether that amount of traffic load on the internet would have some impact on fixed wireless, but I’m wondering if you just have any observations about how other platforms handled the kind of volume that that game drove in terms of traffic.

Sure, it’s Mike. I'll begin, and Dave can add if he wishes. As mentioned earlier, we are extremely satisfied with our performance during the Wild Card Game. It was the largest live streaming event in U.S. history, which is a significant achievement and demonstrates the capabilities of Dave's broadband business and our technology platforms that support Peacock, Sky, Xfinity, and now Xumo. We have created a substantial advantage and are continuously seeking ways to improve. We are pleased to see the positive impact on our broadband usage, independent of other distribution methods. We are thrilled that the event ran smoothly with so many concurrent streams. Regarding subscriber growth, we will refrain from commenting today, but we do anticipate an increase in paid subscribers. Currently, our focus is on retaining the subscribers who joined around the time of the game. It is essential to engage those new subscribers, as well as those already on the platform. Our efforts will be directed toward engagement and retention, especially with upcoming content, including Oppenheimer on February 16 and the Summer Olympics. Now that the strikes are over, we expect to release several Peacock originals and additional movies from our Pay-1 window with Universal. Ultimately, as we expand, keeping users engaged with the content on our platform is critical, not just in relation to the Wild Card Game. Our ongoing goal is to attract new users while re-engaging those already subscribed. I’m pleased to share that we’ve recorded unprecedented hours viewed following the Wild Card Game, including the launch of our new comedy series, Ted, which has become our most-watched original series in its first seven days on the platform. This indicates the value of high engagement coinciding with that launch. Additionally, the second season of Traitors premiered shortly after and has also become our largest original reality season launch in its first four days. This encapsulates my perspective on the situation. Brian, do you have anything to add?

I just want to say that we thank the NFL for having the confidence in picking our total company to carry this out. The entire industry cooperated and participated, and it was a very proud moment for, I think, the U.S. internet industry. It worked flawlessly, and I think it’s just another proof point of all the investments that have been made. Thank you again, we’ll see how the results all turn out, but we’re really, really pleased.

Thanks, Craig. Operator, next question, please.

Thank you. Mike, I have a two-parter. As Brian just said, you have a unique mix of assets, so can you talk a little bit about your longer-term video strategy from all sides of the company, from both cable and NBC-U, meaning do you have any plans to take Peacock global, your recent Paramount affiliate renewal deal kind of seems like status quo? Then as a separate question, you kind of touched a little bit on Epic. It’s only one year away. Can you give us some color on size and scope and how differentiated the offering will be? Thank you.

Thank you, Jessica. Regarding Peacock, let's break down our video strategy. We have long emphasized our desire for our current media assets to thrive as consumer behavior shifts towards streaming. Our primary strength lies in video distribution, particularly in the U.S., and we are very focused on achieving domestic scale. Our international efforts are a different topic for the future, but right now, our concentration is on building partnerships and joint ventures, such as Sky Showtime and content for Sky platforms. We also have a partnership with MultiChoice in Africa. We're looking for economically rational ways to enhance Peacock's domestic growth while maintaining strong economics that many believe come with global scale. Our primary goal is to succeed in the domestic market first and reach our objectives. On the domestic front, we continue to be a significant player in video distribution, offering our own NBC content and collaborating effectively with partners to engage our broadband customer base. We have made substantial progress in working with companies that wish to access our customer reach and in aggregating and acquiring new content through platforms like Xumo and X1. We are well-positioned to contribute to these efforts.

And Jessica, this is Dave. I just would add, when you think about the overall video approach, it’s linear, streaming, on-demand, still DVR. It’s all of them that I think we are in a unique position to be able to tie together. Back to the Wild Card Game, it’s an example of great broadband being able to handle it, and at the same time what’s really important in video is the experience matters. The experience getting connected to the overall network performance is so critical, finding what you want easily and simply and being able to engage.

One thing I would add - it’s Brian - on Epic, just to touch on that part of the question. It’s completely original. It may be the most exciting project I’ve seen since we bought NBC-Universal getting built. I think it’s the first new entire theme park in decades in the U.S., and we’re so excited, we’re taking the board of directors to see the construction in the next couple of weeks, which is something we haven’t ever done before. So, I think you’ll all want to be there. Sometime, I think ’23 and ’24 are the peak CapEx years for the construction. We expect to open in ’25, and I give Mark Woodbury and the entire team at Universal incredible kudos to coordinate something of this scale and magnitude that’s being built.

Thanks, Jessica. Operator, next question please.

Great, thanks. Two questions, if I could. First on the ACP commentary, I think you guys had to contact ACP subscribers this year. Any way you could quantify the size of the base, or maybe the financial impact, and should we see anything this quarter? Or is it really something, if it doesn’t get renewed, that we could really expect for, say, second quarter? Then over on the media side, it looks like you guys saw some real ad strength, so just any commentary on what you’re seeing in the ad market? It looks like if you sort of look at core advertising, it was actually up this year, and I’m wondering if that’s just strength in NFL and maybe Big 10, or just what some of the underlying factors are there would be great.

Hey John, it’s Dave. Let me start with ACP. To specifically answer your question, we have 1.4 million customers that have benefited from this program which we obtained through the national verifier program, so feel good about the credentials of these customers. Most of these customers in this customer base were already our customers prior to the ACP program. We’ve been very consistent on this. We want the program to continue, but I think we’re very well positioned to support these customers if it does not. We have a good business and model in place and a history with knowing how to segment our customer base and have products and packages at a variety of price points to serve our customers well, including well over for a decade and that would include internet essentials. We’ll evaluate this as it plays out. It may be a risk, but one we feel is very manageable for us, given how we work with this program and how we manage our customer base in general.

John, it’s Mike. On the advertising side, I’d say that the ad market, we have seen it remain stable, and we’re definitely pleased with our performance in the fourth quarter. When you exclude 2022 World Cup and normalize for that, we did grow ad revenue even with the difficult comparison to last year’s political quarter. We are seeing a few encouraging signs, like stabilization across most categories, CPG and retail too that improved in particular. We’re not seeing any pressure, any real pressure on cancellations from last year’s up-fronts, which is good, and scatter premiums are pretty healthy, double-digit increases is what we’ve seen recently. But I would say that it’s too early to say that there’s a sustainable rebound going on. Too much remains uncertain on the macro side and we’re heading into a period, for us at least, that has less sports programming in the early part of the year. But regardless of the full year ahead, whether the environment macro-wise gets better from here or it doesn’t, we feel like we’re well positioned with our must-see tent poles, which include obviously the Olympics coming up, the elections, and then going back to your earlier point of now being much more scaled at Peacock, we’re seeing nice progress on the capacity and inventory that we have there. So those are the dynamics I think we’re seeing in advertising.

Thanks, John. Operator, next question, please.

Thanks. Two for Jason. You mentioned that if you saw opportunities to expand your footprint with good economics, you’d do it in a heartbeat. Are you referring to the opportunity in BEAD, and is that something that you expect could potentially hit later this year, or is that more of a 2025 impact? Then on repurchases, we saw the reauthorization of $15 billion. You’re going at a pace of $3.5 billion a quarter at the moment. Should we expect that to continue through 2024?

Thank you, Jonathan. I'll address your questions in reverse order and may collaborate with Dave on the footprint aspect. Regarding buybacks, you're correct that we've reauthorized $15 billion this morning. This was not intended to provide guidance but represents a healthy reauthorization. I believe our existing approach to delivering substantial capital returns remains effective, and we're comfortably within our leverage range of approximately 2.4 times. We're consistently generating strong free cash flow, and since mid-2021, we've repurchased 15% of our stock, which is a positive indicator. We anticipate continuing capital returns and are optimistic about the trajectory into 2024. On the footprint front, we've made it clear that, particularly in Dave's area, our capital intensity has been around 10% for the last few years, and we expect that to continue in 2024. However, this should not limit our business growth. If we have the opportunity to expedite our progress, we will. In recent years, we passed 850,000 homes in 2022 and increased that to 1.1 million in 2023, with guidance for 1.1 million or slightly more next year, indicating potential for further acceleration. Most of the 2024 guidance is self-funded, but we have seen some success with the ARPA program. If we're successful with BEAD, which we expect, that impact will largely be in 2025 and beyond.

This is Dave. I would only add that when you do these programs, and we have started and we are aggressively pursuing opportunities, as Jason said, at this stage mostly self-funded, but we are working with local governments on programs like ARPA and others. We are going for opportunities where it makes sense. The great part, and a little bit what Brian mentioned right from the get-go, there’s just been terrific execution as we scaled operationally, getting ready for this, so the 1.1 million that we did this past year, looking to do that or more into ’24, we are on it and this is a real opportunity for us. Having said that, the nature of these projects, it takes a while to build them up and then driving penetration, and I would look for more of the benefit in ’25. BEAD, we plan to participate where it is consistent with our business goals, but the process, quite frankly, with BEAD is still in flux.

Thanks, Jonathan. Operator, next question, please.

Thanks. Maybe first, I was wondering if you could expand on your Xfinity Mobile plans for 2024. One of your peers has been more promotional. I think that’s something you’ve kept an eye on, and we saw you get a bit more promotional last year with the iPhone deal. You also talked about broadband ARPU being the biggest driver of broadband revenue, and I know that can suffer on a GAAP basis if you do lean into mobile, so I’d love to just hear more about how you’re thinking about the broadband and mobile strategies coming together. Then Jason, just the severance that you took in the quarter, the lion’s share fell at connectivity and platforms. How should we think about the benefits to opex in 2024? You said five out of the six buckets decreased last year, so maybe you can give us a bit of a view of what non-programming opex looks like for connectivity and platforms this year. Thank you.

Steven, this is Dave. Let me start with wireless. I think we’ve been consistent on this one, too - the wireless is one of the key long term growth drivers for us, and pointed out in the six that the team has talked about. It is absolutely a great companion to broadband. It has good standalone economics and a great runway ahead for penetration mobile to the broadband base. You know, it’s performing well - our domestic revenue was up over 15, we have over 6 million lines, including the 310,000 that we added in the quarter, and we’re only at 11% penetration, as Jason said, to the broadband base, so a lot of runway ahead. It is absolutely a key part of all our go-to-market activity, whether it’s acquisition, case management, upgrade activity to the base, as you noted, Steven. We have been very focused on upgrade activity and retention, so our results have been consistent right around 300,000 new lines per quarter - pretty healthy run rate for a considerable period of time. Having said that, I think we can improve on these results. We are consistently in the market trying new offers, both in terms of broadband and mobile together, and we segment the opportunity, so we do have unique opportunities that we evaluate. We continue to be hopeful that some of these offers will accelerate our line additions over time and as the year progresses. We have a great road map in terms of innovation and offers between Wi-Fi and mobile, and we want to leverage both and continue to build a better product and service. Our mobile service, our core service offering delivers better value day in and day out. We really like, though, our capital-light approach with the MVNO, and I think we’re in a great position to win in convergence, so I think we have a leg up on the competition with this capital-light strategy that doesn’t have to involve customer and/or network trade-offs. We’ll continue to be opportunistic in evaluating progress, but I think there’s upside.

Steven, let me quickly address that. Part of your question seemed to imply a connection between wireless governance and broadband ARPU growth, but they are not linked. Our priority is to do what’s best for the business. If we discover ways to enhance our wireless efforts, we will pursue those opportunities without being constrained by their impact on broadband ARPU. We have experienced broadband ARPU growth of 3.9% both in the fourth quarter and for the entire year, which is at the high end of our historical range of 3% to 4%. We project that growth will remain in that range for the upcoming year, indicating consistent and strong ARPU growth. Regarding severance, we are concentrating on investing capital and resources into six key growth areas while carefully managing other businesses that are essential to us but are facing long-term challenges. You saw this in the fourth quarter with our severance actions, which we implemented to prepare for ongoing transitions in these businesses into 2024 and beyond. You were right to point out that the larger severance charges were associated with connectivity and platforms. In fact, five out of six expense categories saw a year-over-year decline in 2023. These actions, aimed at transitioning our business and managing expenses, are significant factors in our ongoing margin expansion in the C&P business, which we expect to continue. Additionally, over the past six years, we have reduced our truck rolls by 50% compared to 2017, and our transactional volumes or interactions have decreased by 40%, presenting substantial ongoing expense opportunities.

Thanks Steve. Operator, we have time for one last question.

Hi, thank you for the question. Just wanted to see if you could provide additional color on perhaps the content and experiences segment capex expectations as we look beyond Epic. I think Jason, you did say in ’25, capital intensity in content and experiences should tick down as the Epic build finishes, but as we think about your plans for regional parks in the U.S., headlines about a U.K. park construction perhaps over the next several years as well, any color on how we should be thinking about is there a parks capex holiday before a reacceleration? Then just a housekeeping question on Peacock - obviously very strong net adds inside of 2023. Mike, you did say that you do expect sub growth beyond that to kind of continue, but could you perhaps quantify what the benefit of the conversion from Comcast bundle subs from free to paid was within the year and as we’re kind of thinking about organic or underlying growth that will benefit from the NFL playoff game, Oppenheimer, and some of the other stuff you listed? Thank you.

Sure, on parks, as Jason mentioned, we are going to maintain a high level around Epic with the two expansion parks, Hollywood Horror Nights and the Universal Kids in Frisco, Texas currently in progress. We will stay at this elevated level in 2024, and once we complete Epic in 2025, we will start to ease off. I wouldn't necessarily describe the easing off as a holiday, but similar to our discussions about adding additional passes in cable. If we see positive returns from these projects, we would be enthusiastic about continuing to invest in the parks and experiences business in the years ahead. Although I can't predict when that will be, we currently have good visibility on our pipeline, and Jason's description of the trajectory seems appropriate. Regarding Peacock, I believe we successfully converted our Comcast free subscribers to paid subscribers, and they are now transitioning after a few months at a lower price to the full price. Overall, I think the company performed well in executing this strategy.

Thanks, Sebastiano. That concludes our call. We appreciate all of you joining us this morning.