Jason Armstrong
Chief Financial Officer at Comcast
Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everybody. I'll start with our consolidated results on Slide 3. Total revenue increased 6.5% to $32.1 billion, benefiting from NBCUniversal's highly successful airing of the Paris Olympics. Excluding the Olympics, our revenue was relatively flat year-over-year. Our six major growth drivers, including residential broadband, wireless, business services connectivity, theme parks, streaming and premium content in our studios, generated nearly $18 billion in revenue, well over half of our total company revenue and grew 9% in the quarter and at a mid-single-digit rate over the past 12 months. Total EBITDA decreased 2% to $9.7 billion, while we generated free cash flow of $3.4 billion during the third quarter, and returned $3.2 billion of capital to shareholders, including $2 billion in share repurchases. Over the last 12 months, we've reduced our share count by 6%, contributing to our adjusted EPS growth in the quarter of 3%. Let's dive deeper into our results for the third quarter, starting on Slide 4 with Connectivity & Platforms.
As usual, I will refer to our year-over-year growth on a constant currency basis. Revenue for total Connectivity & Platforms was consistent year-over-year at $20.3 billion, reflecting strong growth in our connectivity businesses and political advertising, offset by declines in video and voice revenue, as well as non-political advertising in our domestic and international markets. Residential connectivity revenue grew 5%, comprised of 3% growth in domestic broadband, 19% growth in domestic wireless, and 8% growth in international connectivity. Business services connectivity revenue also grew 5%. In domestic broadband, our revenue growth was driven by ARPU growth of 3.6%, another strong result in the context of a continued competitive backdrop. Our team continues to effectively balance rate and volume through customer segmentation. In terms of broadband subscribers, we reported a net loss of 87,000 in the quarter, which included an estimated net impact of 96,000 associated with the end of ACP. Excluding this ACP-related subscriber loss, we would have reported positive 9,000 broadband net additions in the third quarter.
Before I cover ACP in more detail, I want to spend a moment addressing the quarter's underlying results in broadband. Keep in mind that in the third quarter, we typically benefit from seasonal tailwinds due to back-to-school activity, and this year was no different as we performed very well in that category. In addition, we believe we also benefited to some extent from a competitor's work stoppage as well as from leveraging the Olympics by investing in incremental nationwide brand marketing behind our Olympic-related offers. Now, let me cover ACP. As I mentioned, we had 96,000 losses related to ACP in the quarter. That's roughly one-third direct losses we experienced in the quarter and the other two-thirds reflects a reserve we took for the number of subscribers that we predict will churn in the coming months due to a non-pay or delinquency status.
Turning to domestic wireless. Revenue growth was mainly driven by service revenue, fueled by strong growth in customer lines, which were up over 1.2 million or 20% year-over-year, reaching 7.5 million in total, including 319,000 line additions this quarter. Importantly, our wireless customers are also broadband customers, and when bundled together, drive overall customer relationship ARPU growth, churn benefits for broadband and higher profitability. With wireless penetration at 12% of our broadband subscriber base, we have a very long runway for growth. We're pleased with our strategy and we'll continue to test new converged offers to capitalize on the significant opportunities we see ahead of us in wireless, including both increasing the penetration of our domestic residential broadband customer base as well as selling additional lines per account. And just to reiterate what Mike mentioned, we have an incredible hand to play in convergence. We currently have an offering for gig-plus speeds and wireless available ubiquitously to our footprint of 63 million homes and businesses today. And by ubiquitous, I mean we are not making any network trade-offs and every customer gets access to the same offerings. We believe we have a leadership position in convergence and we think we can sustain that. We're on a clear path to offer multi-gig symmetrical speeds, and we'll continue to grow our footprint projecting to add over 1.2 million new homes passed this year. International connectivity revenue growth of 8% was driven by broadband, reflecting strong ARPU growth, and in wireless, healthy service revenue growth was offset by lower device revenue. Business services connectivity revenue growth of 5% reflects steady growth in small business and even faster growth in enterprise. In small business, it continues to be a competitive market, but we are growing revenue with ARPU growth driven by higher adoption of a suite of additional products that expand our relationship with our SMB customers.
At the enterprise level, we are taking share and continue to scale this business. In advertising, growth of 2% reflects stronger political revenue this quarter, partially offset by lower non-political domestic and international advertising revenue. Finally, video and other revenue declined in the quarter. The 7% decline in our video revenue is a function of continued customer losses, coupled with slower domestic ARPU growth versus last year. And the lower other revenue mainly reflects continued customer losses in wireline voice. Connectivity & Platforms' total EBITDA was consistent year-over-year at $8.3 billion, with margins up 50 basis points, reflecting a decline in overall expenses, driven by the continued mix shift to our higher-margin connectivity businesses and ongoing expense management, partially offset by an increase in marketing and promotion expense, driven by our incremental brand marketing investment during the Paris Olympics. Breaking out our Connectivity & Platforms' EBITDA results further, residential EBITDA was consistent with margins improving 40 basis points to 38.6% and business services EBITDA growth was at a mid-single-digit rate, with margins fairly stable at 57.4%. Rounding out Connectivity & Platforms, I'd note that our business continues to evolve as the mix shifts towards our connectivity growth drivers. As such, you've seen us take some cost reduction actions in our fourth quarter for the past several years. We expect to take similar actions again this fourth quarter at about an equal magnitude to last year.
Now, let's turn to Content & Experiences on Slide 5. Revenue increased 19% to $12.6 billion, and EBITDA decreased 9% to $1.8 billion. At theme parks, revenue decreased 5% and EBITDA declined 14% in the quarter compared to last year's all-time record high. The majority of the decline was driven by lower attendance at our domestic parks when compared to last year. As we've highlighted, our view is there was both a pull-forward of demand that we clearly saw in 2022 and 2023, which were record years for the theme parks and beyond our expectations, as well as the new attraction pipeline, which is light this year, but building towards a substantial pipeline next year. We think these factors will likely be in place until the second quarter of next year, which is both when we start to lap the pressure we saw this year and the launch of Epic Universe.
Looking ahead, we couldn't be more excited about Epic Universe and how it will transform Universal Orlando into a week-long destination. And as we gear up for the May 2025 opening, we expect to incur pre-opening costs of about $150 million in total over the fourth quarter this year and the first quarter next year. We remain bullish about the long-term trajectory of parks. In addition to Epic Universe, we have a fantastic slate of new attractions and experiences on the horizon. Donkey Kong Country in Osaka and a Fast and Furious roller coaster in Hollywood, as well as Universal Horror Unleashed in Vegas and our Universal Kids Resort coming to Texas.
Now, let's turn to Media, where revenue increased 37% to $8.2 billion, including the strong results from the Paris Olympics, which generated $1.9 billion in revenue, a record level for any Olympics. Strength in the Olympics was mainly driven by a record $1.4 billion in advertising revenue, with Peacock contributing over $300 million of that. Excluding the Olympics, total advertising revenue was flat year-over-year as the overall market remained stable, while total media revenue increased 5%, driven by an exceptional quarter for Peacock. Revenue growth for Peacock was 82% and still a very robust greater than 40% excluding the Olympics. This was also a strong quarter for Peacock paid subscribers as we added 3 million net new additions driven not only by the Olympics, but also the return of the NFL, including our Peacock exclusive NFL game from Brazil, the return of the Big Ten, and several entertainment hits during the quarter including Love Island, Bel Air and Fight Night.
Looking ahead, we will continue to be focused on strong revenue growth and improving profitability at Peacock in the broader context of expected revenue and profit growth across the entire Media segment. Media EBITDA in the quarter declined 10% to $650 million, but this was largely timing related as a profitable Olympics was offset by higher expenses due to the timing of other sports, including two additional NFL games in the quarter, an additional Sunday Night Football game and Peacock's exclusive game from Brazil. At studios, revenue increased 12% and EBITDA increased 9%, driven by the success of our film slate, including Despicable Me 4 as well as Twisters. Year-to-date, we have three of the top 10 box office titles, including Twisters, Kung Fu Panda 4 and Despicable Me 4, which has already grossed nearly $1 billion and is the first animated franchise in the industry to surpass $5 billion in global box office. Looking to the fourth quarter, Wild Robot debuted in September to terrific reviews and has had nice success at the box office, a great achievement for original animation. And we are particularly excited about Wicked opening in November.
I'll wrap up with free cash flow and capital allocation on Slide 6. As I mentioned earlier, we generated $3.4 billion in free cash flow this quarter and achieved this even with significant organic investment. The $3.6 billion in total capital expenditures this quarter reflects spending to bolster our six key growth areas and, most significantly, our efforts in expanding our connectivity footprint through accelerating homes passed and further strengthening our domestic broadband network, and the continued build-out of our Epic Universe theme park ahead of its opening in May of 2025.
Turning to return to capital, we returned a total of $3.2 billion to shareholders in the quarter, including share repurchases of $2 billion and dividend payments of $1.2 billion. In fact, our share count has been consistently shrinking mid-single-digits on an annual basis for the past several years. We've been straightforward and consistent in our priorities around investing in our six key growth drivers, protecting our strong balance sheet and returning a significant amount of capital to shareholders. This quarter is yet another example of that.
Now, let's turn it back to Marci for Q&A. Marci?
