(Bloomberg) -- Comcast Corp. reported second-quarter revenue that missed analysts’ estimates, dragged down by a slower season at its movie studios and theme parks.
Revenue fell 2.7% to $29.7 billion, the company said in a statement, missing the $30 billion average of analysts’ projections. Revenue from studios tumbled 27% while sales at theme parks fell 11%.
On the film side, after having two of last year’s highest-grossing films with The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Fast X, Comcast’s Universal Studios didn’t have a blockbuster to compare with those in the latest quarter.
The company’s parks rebounded strong from the Covid-19 pandemic, but since then customers have been branching out to other forms of entertainment, including international travel and cruises. That shift coincided with Comcast’s timeline for introducing new attractions and a hole in this year’s calendar of ride openings. The Epic Universe theme park, originally scheduled to open this year in Orlando, was pushed back until 2025.
Revenue from the parks division fell to $1.98 billion, missing the $2.21 billion seen by analysts. The film and TV division reported $2.25 billion in sales, compared with estimates of $2.51 billion. Comcast shares were down 2.2% Tuesday afternoon in New York. The results also weighed on shares of Walt Disney Co., which were down 3.1%.
In a call with analysts to discuss results, President Michael Cavanagh gave fresh detail on Comcast’s media rights deal with the National Basketball Association. An offer submitted Monday by Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. that would match Amazon.com Inc.’s $1.8 billion bid won’t affect Comcast’s 11-year agreement with the league.
Cavanagh said Comcast’s package, which kicks in for the 2025-2026 season, will include 100 NBA regular season games across NBC and its Peacock streaming service, noting that this was more than any other media partner with the NBA. In addition to Comcast and Amazon, Disney’s ESPN is also part of the $76 billion deal.
Comcast also has rights to NBA playoff games and six conference finals series over the course of the deal, Cavanagh said, as well as 50 games exclusively for Peacock, which NBC is pushing as a major sports streaming platform ahead of the Olympics. Comcast will also have rights to more than 50 Women’s NBA games.
“We look forward to putting the weight of our entire company behind our partnership with the NBA for decades to come,” Cavanagh said on the call.
In the company’s largest business segment, providing cable, internet and phone services, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization rose 1.6% to $8.48 billion. That was ahead of Wall Street forecasts, driven by cost efficiencies and 322,000 new wireless phone customers.
The Philadelphia-based giant, which operates the Xfinity-brand of internet and cable services, lost 120,000 broadband customers in the period, as competition heats up with telecom companies offering wireless internet alternatives.
Verizon Communications Inc. reported on Monday that it has more than 3.8 million fixed wireless customers, an increase of almost 69% from a year earlier. Fixed wireless delivers high-speed internet over airwaves rather than through cable or fiber lines.
Comcast also lost 419,000 video subscribers as people continued to cancel cable TV for streaming. Its own streaming product, Peacock, has struggled to compete with industry giant Netflix Inc. and others including offerings from the Walt Disney Co.
Peacock reported 33 million subscribers, up 38% from a year ago but missing analysts’ average forecast for 34.7 million. The network narrowed its loss to $348 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Earnings rose to $1.21 a share, excluding some items, beating Wall Street projections of $1.12.per share.
(Updates shares. A previous version of this story corrected the name of the company speaker and the day of the week of the earnings release.)
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