Benzinga | Jan 27, 2022 08:10AM EST

Comcast Tops Q4 Consensus; Hikes Share Buyback To $10B; Raises Dividend By 8%

* Comcast Corp (NASDAQ:CMCSA) reported fourth-quarter FY21 revenue growth of 9.5% year-on-year to $30.34 billion, beating the consensus of $29.74 billion.

* Segments: Revenue for Cable Communications rose 4.5% Y/Y to $16.4 billion, driven by increases in broadband, wireless, business services partially offset by decreases in advertising, video, and voice revenue.

* Customer Relationships increased by 169,000 to 34.2 million. Broadband customer net additions were 212,000, and total video customer net losses were 373,000.

* The company's Cable Communications added 312,000 wireless lines.

* Revenue for NBCUniversal increased 25.6% Y/Y to $9.3 billion. Revenue from Media increased 8.4% Y/Y to $5.8 billion, reflecting higher advertising distribution revenue, and Studios increased 36.4% Y/Y to $2.4 billion, primarily reflecting higher content licensing revenue, home entertainment, theatrical revenue.

* Theme Parks' revenue increased by $1.2 billion to $1.9 billion, reflecting improved operating conditions.

* Revenue for Sky decreased 2.4% Y/Y to $5.1 billion. Total Customer Relationships increased by 61,000 to 23 million.

* Adjusted EPS of $0.77 beat the consensus of $0.73.

* Margin: Adjusted EBITDA margin of Cable Communications expanded 130 ps to 43.4%. Sky's adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 640 bps to 9.1%.

* Comcast generated $7.7 billion in operating cash flow during the quarter. It held $8.7 billion in cash and equivalents.

* Comcast paid dividends totaling $1.1 billion and repurchased shares worth $2 billion during Q4.

* Cable Communications' capital expenditures increased 3.7% to $2.2 billion, NBCUniversal's capital expenditures increased 33.2% to $502 million, and Sky's capital expenditures increased 7.1% to $332 million.

* Share Buyback: The board raised the share buyback authorization to $10 billion, effective as of January 1, 2022.

* Dividend: Comcast increased its dividend by 8% Y/Y to $1.08 per share on an annualized basis for 2022. The company's declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.27 per share is payable April 27, 2022, to shareholders of record on April 6, 2022.

* Price Action: CMCSA shares traded lower by 0.23% at $48.35 in the premarket session on the last check Thursday.