Comcast reported strong operating cash flow for Q2, reflecting robust growth in new video and high-speed Internet services and a decrease in capital expenditures now that its network rebuild program is essentially complete.
Some highlights:
- Comcast Cable reported revenue of $4.839 billion for Q2, representing a 10.4% increase from the Q2 2003. Video revenue for the quarter increased 6.9%, driven by a 5.7% increase in average monthly revenue per basic subscriber and a 20.5% increase in digital revenue primarily reflecting a 1.1 million increase in the number of digital cable subscribers.
- Basic subscribers of 21.5 million are essentially unchanged from a year ago but down 96,000 or 0.4%, from the prior quarter due to seasonality and modestly lower gross additions. During the second quarter of 2004, Comcast Cable added more than 206,000 digital cable subscribers to finish the quarter with nearly 8.1 million subscribers, or 37.5% of basic subscribers.
- Video revenue growth reflects increasing consumer demand for new digital features, including Comcast ON DEMAND, HDTV programming and DVRs.
- Pay-per-view revenues increased 26.0%, driven by more movie and event purchases through the Comcast ON DEMAND service. Increasing demand for HDTV is also contributing to digital growth – at the end of the second quarter, Comcast had almost 600,000 HDTV set-top boxes in customers’ homes.
- Cable modem revenues increased 39.2% to $763 million in Q2, reflecting continuing growth in subscribers. Comcast Cable ended Q2 with more than 6.0 million subscribers, a 36.8% increase from the same quarter last year. During quarter, Comcast Cable added 327,000 high-speed Internet subscribers resulting in a penetration rate of 16.1% of available homes. Comcast Cable added more than 1.1 million homes to its cable modem footprint in quarter, and this service is now available to 37.3 million, or 92.6%, of homes passed. Average monthly revenue per high-speed Internet subscriber was $43.52 in Q2, in line with Q2 2003 and a $1.07 increase from the $42.45 reported in Q1 2004.
- Advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2004 increased 15.3% to $330 million, reflecting growth of 6.0% in local advertising and strong growth of 25.4% in regional/national advertising as a result of the continuing success of our regional interconnect strategy.
- Cable capital expenditures declined 14.8% to $893 million compared to the $1.047 billion in the second quarter of the prior year.
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