What Happened?
Shares of telecommunications and media company Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) fell 7.5% in the morning session after CEO Dave Watson told investors the company expects to lose over 100,000 broadband subscribers in the fourth quarter. This figure exceeds analysts' predictions of roughly 64,000. Watson blamed the weaker forecast partly on bad weather, which he said caused about 10,000 of the expected cancellations.
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What The Market Is Telling Us
Comcast’s shares are not very volatile and have only had 2 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful, although it might not be something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The biggest move we wrote about over the last year was 8 months ago when the stock dropped 6.5% on the news that the company reported first-quarter results with revenue slightly ahead and adjusted EBITDA slightly below. The all-important volume metric of domestic broadband subscribers was in line with expectations, though it declined year on year. Domestic Residential Connectivity & Platform Customers lost 55k broadband subscribers vs. expectations of a 46k loss. Domestic Wireless added 289k lines, also below expectations of 306k adds, and Video net loss of 487k was better vs. expectations of a 548k loss. Zooming out, we think this was a mixed quarter. Investors were likely expecting more.
Comcast is down 10.7% since the beginning of the year, and at $38.98 per share, it is trading 16.6% below its 52-week high of $46.73 from January 2024. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Comcast’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $888.13.
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