Price hikes, new customers lift Comcast profit

NEW YORK (AP) — Comcast, the nation's largest cable company and owner of NBCUniversal, Wednesday said its net income rose 17% in the latest quarter, powered by continued strong results from its cable operations.

Price increases on cable TV helped boost numbers, as subscribers paid an average of $3.40 more per month compared to the same period last year.

Comcast also continued to recruit new broadband and phone customers at a brisk pace, and broke 10 million phone customers for the first time in the quarter. It's the country's fourth-largest home phone company, behind AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink.

It shares rose 1.8% to $41.30 in premarket trading.

The Philadelphia-based company earned $1.4 billion, or 54 cents per share, in the first quarter. That was up from $1.2 billion, or 45 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago.

Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting earnings of 50 cents per share.

Revenue rose 2.9% to $15.3 billion. Analysts were expecting half a percent more, at $15.4 billion.

Comcast's revenue didn't grow as fast as usual because it broadcast the Super Bowl last year, but didn't this year. Excluding that effect, revenue would have grown 4.7%, it said.

Comcast lost 60,000 cable-TV subscribers, breaking a trend of slowing losses. However, it's still better than smaller cable companies at keeping customers in the face of competition from satellite and phone companies.

At NBCUniversal, revenue fell 2.4% compared to last year's quarter, when NBC aired the Super Bowl. CBS aired it this year. However, NBCUniversal's operating cash flow, a measure of profitability, rose.

As of March, Comcast owns all of NBCUniversal. It bought the 49% it didn't own from General Electric for $16.7 billion. It bought it initial stake in 2011 and was planning to buy the rest over time, but announced in January that it was buying out GE years ahead of schedule.