Peacock Lost $565 Million This Summer

Tony Maglio
·2 min read
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Peacock lost $565 million from June to September — a financial improvement over prior quarters — while adding 4 million subscribers. The NBCUniversal streaming service ended September 2023 with 28 million subs.

The vast majority of Peacock users subscribe to its cheaper, ad-supported tier ($5.99 per month vs. $11.99 ad-free). Like so many major streamers did throughout 2023, Peacock raised rates in July. Peacock posted $830 million in revenue in the third quarter.

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Previously, Peacock lost $651 million from April to June and $704 million from January to March. Parent company Comcast expects it will post $2.8 billion in streaming losses this year; some rough math means Peacock will likely lose about $880 million in the fourth quarter, when pricey sports rights and other content costs are realized.

Comcast bested the quarter’s top- and bottom-line expectations. Wall Street forecast Comcast’s Q3 earnings at 95 cents per share on $29.71 billion in revenue, according to a consensus compiled on Yahoo Finance. Comcast posted adjusted earnings of $1.08 per share on $30.115 billion in revenue.

“Oppenheimer” was the big summer hit for Universal. Despite the Christopher Nolan film’s success (it is technically the highest-grossing biopic of all time), Universal’s theatrical revenue dropped 25 percent in the July-September quarter. The company blamed some of that on the writers and actors strikes, but also pointed to the stronger Q3 2022 combination of “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and “Jurassic World: Dominion.” It’s a twofer situation.

Comcast executives will discuss the quarter in greater detail during a conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET. Chairman and CEO Brian L. Roberts touted “strong financial results” and a “healthy balance sheet” in remarks accompanying the Q3 financials. He singled out Peacock’s “paid subscriber and financial metrics” as having “materially improved.”

The company still owns one-third of streaming service Hulu, though that is soon to change. Comcast is set to sell its stake to Disney, which owns the other two-thirds.

The sides can’t agree on a valuation: Hulu has an old agreed-upon baseline value of $27.5 billion, though Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts believes that is way low today. He hired Morgan Stanley to perform an “independent” valuation; Disney retained JPMorgan Chase for the same purposes.

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