Comcast added nearly 1 million revenue generating units (RGUs) in Q1 — its highest growth rate yet — driving revenue in its Cable business to $5.6 billion. Some highlights for the quarter:
- Video revenue increased 6% to $3.6 billion in Q1, reflecting a 1.3 million or 14% increase in the number of digital customers from the first quarter of 2005. Comcast Cable ended the quarter with 10.1 million digital cable subscribers, a 47% penetration rate of the Company’s 21.5 million basic cable subscribers.
- Growth in video revenue and digital cable subscribers also reflects increasing consumer demand for new digital features including ON DEMAND, digital video recorders (DVR) and HDTV programming. Driven by ON DEMAND movie and event purchases, pay-per-view revenues increased 29% from the first quarter of 2005. Pay-per-view revenue has shown strong growth with the rollout of ON DEMAND, increasing more than 20% on average over the past two years. Further contributing to video revenue growth, 28% of digital customers subscribed to DVR and/or HDTV services as of March 31, 2006 compared to 17% in the prior year.
- Added 437,000 high-speed Internet subscribers during Q1, which high-speed Internet revenues increased 22% to $1.1 billion, reflecting a 1.5 million or 21% increase in subscribers from the prior year and stable average monthly revenue per subscriber of $43.14.
- Comcast ended Q1 with 9.0 million cable modem subscribers or 22% penetration of available homes.
- Voice: 211,000 Comcast Digital Voice (CDV) customers were added during Q1 — than in all of 2005. The service is now marketed to 19 million homes or 45% of Comcast’s footprint. Phone revenue increased 9% to $191 million reflecting a $37 million increase in CDV revenues as a result of the significant increase in CDV subscribers, offset by a $21 million or 12% decline in circuit-switched phone revenues as Comcast transitions to marketing CDV.
- Comcast Cable ended the first quarter of 2006 with 416,000 CDV customers. On a net basis, Comcast Cable reported 141,000 net new phone customer additions in the first quarter of 2006 compared to 4,000 in 2005. By the end of 2006, CDV service will be marketed to 32 million homes or approximately 80% of Comcast’s footprint.
- Revenue generating units (RGU) represent the sum of basic and digital video subscribers, high-speed Internet and phone subscribers. Comcast added a record level of 965,000 RGUs in the first quarter of 2006, a 64% increase from the same period in 2005. Comcast ended the first quarter of 2006 with 42 million RGUs, an increase of 3 million units from the prior year.
- Advertising revenue increased 4% to $309 million in the first quarter of 2006 when compared to 2005, reflecting general weakness in the regional and national advertising marketplace.
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