Okay. If everyone can please take their seats, we'll get going with our next speaker. Again, I'm John Hodulik. I'm the Media and Telecom Analyst here at UBS. And we're very excited to have Dave Watson, the President and CEO of Comcast Cable, with us today. Dave, thanks for being here.
Good to be with you, John.
Great. So we've got 35 minutes for Q&A. I've got a bunch of questions I'm gonna run through. We also have the app. If anyone wants to log in and ask a question, I can look at it here on the iPad, and I can work it into the conversation. So, Dave, if you could just, you know, we always do this at the end of twenty-four, at the end of the year, looking out into 2025, can you talk about what, what are your biggest priorities for the cable business at Comcast as we, as we look out into the new year?
No question, John. Our top priority is growing the connectivity business lines. The good news is, you know, we have three robust, great lines between broadband, connectivity, business services, and mobile. And so broadband, just a couple of points on broadband. Yeah, we have, you know, 63 million homes passed today. Adding to that, we're adding another; we did a million this year in terms of new homes, and we'll add another, you know, I think closer to 1.2 million this upcoming year. So we continue to add to the homes passed. The key is that we are delivering one gig everywhere. And so as others are looking to, you know, add more, understand that competitively, but we're already there in terms of a great one-gig product that we have today.
And so, we're all about gig, and it's a super important part of our business. The other piece of it is not just having a robust homes passed addressable marketplace. It's how you define what a great product is. So for us, most certainly, it's having one gig. It's coverage. It's capacity. It's latency. It's everything that goes into the applications that matter to consumers, whether it's streaming, whether it's gaming. And, you know, so for us, the network is literally built for streaming. It's literally built for those applications. And at one gig, we're ahead of the curve everywhere we're going. And as we're addressing competition, it's been a changing, fluid marketplace. But, you know, we've seen fiber competition for over 20 years now. We've gotten, you know, we understand it.
When fiber launches, you go through a phase where there's a launch period that's difficult, and then you settle, and you level off in terms of market share, and the way we see it, there's level market share after, you know, the market matures with fiber, and then, you know, the ARPU is no different between the fiber markets and non-fiber markets, so we are, we feel very good about the long-range planning around broadband, excited about that, then you go to mobile. Mobile, for us, you know, we are the disruptor and the challenger in the mobile space and a much bigger addressable marketplace. The mobile market is $180 billion compared to the broadband being $70 billion.
So a $181 billion mobile marketplace, you know, as the challenger, that puts us in a unique position to leverage it, to go and combine it with broadband, to have it be a profitable line in and of itself. So we're taking share, and we continue to take share. And we've been doing that for a period of time. So we like our position in terms of mobile and weaving. And when you combine mobile with broadband, that, that product experience is different. You know, for, for some, you know, when you, you hear bundling, sometimes what they are talking about is just discounting. For us, packaging is important, but for us, it's the experience that is as important combining broadband and mobile. I'll give you a feature that we're very excited about. It's Mobile WiFi Boost.
And that is when you take any of your devices and you bring it into our home. If you have our mobile device and you're using it within the home, it opens it up to as fast as the device can go up to a gig. So every application is boosted. So whether it's streaming, whether it's gaming, whatever the applications are that you wanna do, that's mobile. And it happens just automatically. You don't have to have an app. You don't have to. It's just a seamless, easy experience. Those are the kinds of experiences that I think really matter. And then last but not least is business services. You know, $60 billion addressable marketplace for us. We're expanding, you know, beyond our footprint with major accounts, large enterprise accounts.
We're adding more addressable footprint through what we call Ethernet over cable, which is taking our HFC plant and being able to do dedicated internet. Telephone companies have been doing this for a long period of time. For small business, medium business, that's exciting. We're gonna be able to, in 2025, go to an additional 3.5 million business passings with this dedicated internet service, with SLAs. We have lots of new products happening in business services, that along with relationship building, we're just as focused on selling mid-market enterprise revenue opportunities. We're less than 20% penetrated, $60 billion, long way to go. We already got, very close to, you know, equal share on SMB, and we aim to do the same thing in mid-market to enterprise. We're excited about a very large overall connectivity, growth area for us.
Fantastic. That was a great overview, and we'll dive into each of these components. Maybe first starting with competition in residential broadband, how would you characterize competition as we, you know, sort of in the fourth quarter versus what you've been seeing previously?
Sure. Well, our competition, it remains competitively intense. That has not changed. It's been pretty consistent throughout the year. In particular, in the more price-conscious end of the marketplace. That is where we've seen a little bit more, you know, swirl around that segment, and it's remained this way right through the fourth quarter, this competitive intensity. Now, the most important thing, though, is that the churn is on our really important traditional and premium segments, this is where we sell, you know, 500 megabits and above one-gig services that we've had great success with. Those two segments, the churn has remained stable and near record lows. So that is, you know, very good news, and it's continued. Yeah.
When you replay the year, though, and if you look at the first half of the year, we lost, you know, just about 100,000, just under 100,000 per quarter for the first half of the year. You go into the third quarter, and on the shoulders of the Olympic marketing surge, the students returning, the seasonal dynamics trending, you know, fine, and then a competitor strike. Those three things saw improvements in performance in Q3. Q4, to your question, resembles more of the first half of the year, is what we're seeing, and one other thing to add on top of Q4, we had the two hurricanes, so the two hurricanes, you know, we've been assessing it. We talked about this before as we did, you know, the Q3 unique, you know, positive elements.
In Q4, the hurricanes we think will impact to the tune of around 10,000.
Okay.
Broadband losses, and there'll be a slight impact to ARPU. So when you add all these things together, and you look at it going into Q4, the, we could be looking at a broadband subscriber loss in Q4 of just over 100,000. And there'll be, while we'll be in the range, the ARPU range that we've talked about at 3%-4%, we'll be at the lower end of that range.
Got it.
So that's how things. It remains, you know, competitively intense but consistent with earlier parts of the year.
Got it. That's great color. On the ARPU piece, what's driving the ARPU piece? Is it a question of rebates that you're giving? Oh, so it's like a one-time thing?
Well, part of it is, you know, the hurricane rebates. You know, we're very going all in and trying to be as positive and aggressive and getting out, you know, any help that was required. So that's certainly a piece of it. So some of it is just the swirl of lower-end activity that just, you know, you're related to the timing of the ACP and marketplace, you know, dynamics there. But so our strategy, the really important part, has not changed. Build out great products, build out the network, focus on premium, you know, then, and there are multiple drivers long-term around ARPU, not just rate increases, but, you know, a lot of things that we have that we continue to focus on. That will not change.
Right. Maybe a couple of things for you, you know. You mentioned the competition from fixed wireless. How do you and obviously you know, you start out saying, you know, gigabit speeds everywhere. I mean, obviously, massive difference versus what fixed wireless can provide. How do you drive that point home and sort of leverage those capabilities to prevent fixed wireless from taking too much share? I mean, I guess, and with that, I don't wanna cut you off, but you talked about the Mobile WiFi Boost. Is that a new part of the equation? And is that a new product that you're just rolling out, or is it?
It's relatively new, and the operational ease of accessing the product, using the product that we've just improved on. And just it's automatic. When you go home and you open up the Apple device or the Android device, you can use it. So the core to the question on fixed wireless and really all competitors is we segment the marketplace, and we start with a traditional premium. That's our focus, but we will compete fiercely for every segment. And while fixed wireless has had some success, I think more on the more price-conscious end of the marketplace, we will compete there too. We have good products for that. NOW Internet, we just introduced, that we have. We have other products, Internet Essentials that we have that are available.
But I think it's important as we look at the, you know, great broadband stands for great speed, coverage, capacity. Reliability is an enormous issue. So when you have big moments, whether it's an NFL, you know, Wild Card game or an NFL big moment in December, that you have, you want the best. We are built for streaming. And so how we really design capacity and coverage and combine the network with great gateway devices that amplify coverage and are just really super reliable. Our Wi-Fi is different. Not all Wi-Fi is created equal. We have a different capability with Wi-Fi and a better network performance, identifying issues and improving reliability. So we can beat in terms of speed against fixed wireless. We're ahead of the curve and match any competitor, whether it's fiber.
And so every segment, I think we have a really good position in terms of broadband. But I think the important long-term answer is the improved reliability, coverage, capacity, latency, everything that we have to offer that will never stop. We'll continue to, you know, with the DOCSIS 4.0 rollout. That will continue to just get better. So it'll be a hard one over time, I think, for the lower-end competitors to catch up to.
Gotcha. You mentioned the prepaid NOW product. How is that helping in terms of the low-end? And what's been the sort of customer receptivity to that offer?
You know, it's really early, and we did launch it as a separate product, separate brand, and so the game plan is to just make it, you know, more prominent for that segment. We will surgically do that as we talk about it, but we will go after those products a little bit more prominently, and the key to NOW Internet is just making it super easy. I think one thing that fixed wireless has done well is they've made it easy. And it's a very pretty simple product. And NOW Internet does the same. It, you know, without a contract, it's just super easy to get, super easy to install and activate. It is digitally driven, so it's one of those simple, easy products, I think, made for segment that appreciates those features.
Gotcha, and then turn to ARPU. You had some commentary about 4Q ARPU, maybe at the lower end of the 3%-4% range. It's been very steady. Actually, you started the year, I think, above the high end of that 3%-4% range. Just talk about the mix of drivers, you know, that is keeping it in that 3%-4% range. And do you expect those sort of underlying drivers to continue, you know, beyond 2024?
Yeah. We have been very consistent.
Yeah.
In terms of this performance. And the good news is there are multiple drivers behind it. If you had just one single driver, you know, wonder about that. But we have multiple really important, significant drivers. You know, we take a very cautious view of rate increases, so we're very steady on that, not to get ahead of ourselves in terms of consumer rate increases and broadband. I think the biggie is tier mix and the fact that we're so focused on segmentation. And we went through a period, have been going through a period where there's just a little bit more activity around the more price-conscious segments, and that'll naturally, you know, cause a little bit more tier shift towards those segments. So that will level off over time.
And as we continue to bolster, you know, the network and do more with, you know, multi-gig symmetrical, then that will just add to, you know, the focus that we've always had on the higher-end tier mix. But in addition to, we have other products we call xFi Complete and a new product called Pro, where we combine the gateway, security, lots of things that we put on an easy bolt-on tier, or in some cases, we package it with one gig. And all of this that we partner with mobile, and these higher-end tiers come with a free mobile line. So mobile is used to enhance the higher-end tiers, just helps tier mix. So, and the way we manage the business, John, we look at acquisition, we look at base management, upgrade opportunities, and we look at retention.
More and more, I think everyone's doing this. I, I think every operator with scale is beginning to truly leverage AI in a unique way that helps you identify the customers through the buying process and every single sales channel, then base opportunities, which I think, you know, we have between Mobile, between all the other products that I mentioned, there's opportunities for speed upgrades. Base management gets easier with AI, and most certainly, retention is accelerated with AI. All those things factor into our confidence of that, that 3%-4% ARPU range.
Got it. And getting back to the capabilities of the network, you're largely done with the mid-splits to the cable plan in your major markets at this point. What capabilities will that provide? I mean, I think does that would get you to the one gigabit, or were you there, I think, previously, and maybe this go gets you beyond that in those markets?
Yeah. The way it's pretty simple. The way we look at it is that mid-split was the spectrum change that just, you know, made sure we can then provide a little bit more spectrum towards upstream. And so, but we were doing one gig before. And so we have one gig everywhere. Been at it. Everyone's gonna chase us, but we have it ubiquitously. So mid-split, you know, in connection with cloud capability, with AI capability, that's the foundational layer. When you're building a home, you build the foundation first, and that's mid-split. It puts us in position. We're 50% done right NOW, and vast majority will be done, you know, very soon thereafter into the next couple of years. And what follows is DOCSIS 4, and that leverages everything on the foundational layer.
So once you're done, really, essentially what you're finishing, what we've made such an accelerated move on already, or, you know, really the hard part of the core and all the nodes. And NOW the DOCSIS 4.0 takes it through amps all the way to the home. And the way we've managed things, it's success-based on devices. So we have a new great gateway that will do, you know, one gig symmetrical, and we'll be rolling that out, and then you're there. So we're gonna, you'll see a path in the next few years where, on top of that foundational layer that we're really moving fast on to complete multi-gig symmetrical. So it's the most effective and efficient and fastest way at scale of any of our competitors. And so our job is to never stand still, keep improving it.
But we have the reason, and we can do it all within the CapEx, you know, ranges that we've been talking about because we did put a lot of it in the cloud. And, oh, by the way, we're doing tons of fiber, deep fiber as we're building it out. That was all part of the architecture. So we have very deep fiber that has, you know, helped the nodes, node sizes, and all those things combined puts us in a really good long-term position.
At the same time, you're making these upgrades to the network. You're also expanding the network.
Yes.
Talk about, you know, how you see that playing out. I guess, I think you said was it, was the 1.2 million, I think it was for 2024.
For '25.
For 2025. We're coming up for 2025. I think, yeah.
You know, this, we're looking at, you know, around one million-ish, you know, plus million this year.
For 2024. Gotcha. How have the returns been on that business? Like, you know, can you talk about sort of, I don't know, sort of customer receptivity, maybe penetration, or just how is the return on that capital being spent?
Part of the decision-making process on our side is to be very measured, very disciplined in how we select markets in the first place. The vast majority of the markets that we've selected have not been subsidized. These are markets where we've extended our plant. We've already been there. It's a reasonable decision to go to dense areas where we haven't served yet and to go in there. We evaluate everything: competition, the density levels, you know, the markets. But when we go, we go. We go with everything we got. We go with mobile. We go with business services. We go with fiber. And it's been very well received. When we come in and complete it, then we're seeing, you know, good, healthy penetration levels within the first year into the second year.
Every design that we've had, every forecast that we've had, we've been really pleased with in terms of penetration and yield. And so we'll be opportunistic going forward, as we look at, you know, future subsidy programs. But we feel, you know, the range that we've been talking about, that 1.25 is doable. And even with, you know, some of the, you know, changing nature, perhaps, of some of the BEAD programs has been already a lot of state dollars that have been, you know, handed out. We'll participate where it makes sense. And if the rules are favorable, we'll be there. If they're not, then we won't. But it's a very disciplined, measured calculation on returns. And that's how we've looked at it. So we liked our progress and the penetration levels.
We go at it pretty hard when we launch.
Gotcha. Now you've mentioned wireless a number of times. What is the wireless sort of service that you're selling? What, how has that, what has that done for your business? Is it helping you on the terms of new connects, or you obviously churn is very low, but I think it was very low before you had wireless. Just, you know, can you talk about how it differentiates your existing products?
Wireless checks a lot of boxes, you know, for us, and that it is profitable in and of itself. I think a teammate, Jason Armstrong, mentioned a while ago that it's three years running that it's been profitable. So we've had really consistent performance around the wireless business. But the major design of wireless, why we're so excited is just how large this addressable marketplace is, $181 billion. And you know, it happened at the you know, backup bid. At the same time, you know, the country lost you know, the fourth carrier, and the cable industry stepped right in. So we are the challenger. We are the disruptor in terms of core service pricing. We're very competitive on that. I think you know, we have used wireless as a vehicle to partner with broadband and help the value proposition there.
But beyond that, it really, for us, has been a helpful device to open up consideration. Cable, you know, again, you know, to going into retail stores, that it was not necessarily, again, that people would wake up in the morning and say, "I'm going into the, you know, cable store," that for wireless, they are. And wireless is a consideration. So whether it's demand generation, whether it's channels, and optimizing digital buy flow, all those things, wireless is a great way to stimulate consideration. So that's a piece of it. And it's a wonderful upgrade opportunity for the base. We sell wireless with broadband. It does help churn. It does help the base and revenue. And it's a great long-term opportunity for us, you know, with the 7.5 million lines and growing.
It's a great partner within the business services portfolio, really just getting going with that, mostly for small business. And we're excited about that too. So, you know, we are the disruptor. We're the challenger, a very large, you know, opportunity and for years to come.
One question we get a lot is the potential need down the road to own your own sort of licensed spectrum network. And actually, you guys, I think you have an agreement to potentially sell some of your 600 megahertz spectrum to T-Mobile, which sort of goes against that if you know act on that. But just any sort of higher-level thoughts on maybe the MVNO agreement. I have a feeling what you're gonna say about your partnership with Verizon, or versus, building out your own network and accumulating spectrum and building out infrastructure.
We have liked, really liked our position for a very long time. The Capital Light model, when you have, you know, the kind of deal that we have, and yes, it's a win-win. Yes. It is a win-win. And, but it is in this case in that we, we're in the business flow NOW. We have years of success. I think people in the earliest stages were wondering, I get that, way back then, will cable have success? Will Charter and Comcast have success doing what they're doing? We have. We're NOW in the flow. So I think that the Verizon team would say we like their business, and it's important to be in their revenue stream. And that really important to be in their revenue stream. So we like that position.
But most importantly, we think that that's a long-term good strategy to have really good economics to be able to use that. The way we go to market is focusing on core service. We're opportunistic on the device side. We have a good trade-in program, but we don't go crazy over the devices, but we do have offers that supplement the core service pricing. But we do it in a way because we're well-positioned with this core, you know, MVNO that we do have. Now we have nice opportunities to maybe even opportunistically improve economics through the CBRS offload if we wanted to, but don't have to. It's nothing but an opportunity for us. It and we continue to test and look at that, but we like our position right NOW.
You know, as you already said, it's already profitable.
And with the base between yourselves and Charter, you would think that over time, you actually have more price. You can command some pricing power in your MVNO agreement because you're big right NOW, and you're getting bigger. And, you're right. It's a very important contract for Verizon, and it's one that the rest of these MNOs would like to have.
I think we're an attractive partner, and you can take away a lot of the upfront expenses of acquiring and then holding on to those customers. And you do a good job if you're a long-term participant in the industry. It's one thing if you're, you know, a distributor where you're in and out. We're in the business. We're in to stay. We love our long-term prospects, and I think our partner likes that too.
Okay. Makes sense. I was gonna turn to video. I'm not gonna spend too much time on video. I do wanna some comments. You guys just signed a renewal with Warner Bros. Any comment you could share with our audience on how you view that deal?
Sure. You know, we are.
I think it was an early deal, right? Was it redone earlier, or was it expiring?
Just announced today. We renewed. It was a handful of different agreements. And, you know, what's different and unique about this, other than the fact that it's a unique relationship that we have with Warner Bros., that's very widespread between the U.S. and Europe with Sky, is that we renewed on multiple fronts. We renewed in the U.S. around, you know, Turner, Discovery, Scripps. We renewed with them in Europe with Sky. And that is good news that we're able to do that. And it's good news, because I think speaking of checking boxes, I think it checked a lot of boxes for both of us.
It is another, I think, really important win-win in that, it's good for both parties, and especially when you have, you know, the scale that both of us have and being able to resolve things to the benefit. From our standpoint, I think it's a huge win in that we got the economics that we're looking for, on the renewal terms, really good economics, I think industry-leading, that we have, and we have flexibility. There are two things that we're looking for in the marketplace at this point in general. We're looking for great economics that helps us serve every segment that we go after, and being able to leverage video in a way that partners well for broadband and, again, built for streaming.
So we wanna have packaging and streaming flexibility so we can take linear and streaming applications and partner it for each segment as we need to. So that flexibility is awfully important, but getting core economics right makes a lot of sense. We were able to do both of those things in this case. So with a good partner in Warner Bros. Discovery, we're pleased. And in Europe and Sky, you know, it's unique there. We were able to, you know, accomplish, you know, a very important renewal as we maintained really great HBO content for the Sky Atlantic, Sky Cinema channels, and ingesting that content on those channels was important, and then making sure we opened up content for the Sky NOW tier where previously it was not available.
So now we have it available, the Max app available now on that platform. And it, you know, for us, and we were, you know, the great content that, you know, Warner Bros. Discovery, you know, Scripps has, and then, you know, all over, I think they appreciated the platform that we have and that we're a good partner to deliver customers, maintain customers, but it's a, we're a great partner when it comes to an industry-leading platform, being able to, you know, find their content easily assembled in ways that make sense for the customers. And in Sky, it's available in multiple ways, ingested on linear, on demand, through apps. It's a great way. And then from a transition perspective, you know, they will, you know, also offer it directly.
So it's a great, you know, a win-win, truly, for two partners that had global scale.
Right. And you talked about, you know, the linear and at the same time the flexibility around their D2C services. I don't know. As part of this contract, is HBO Max or, I guess, Max included? I mean, one of the things, obviously, Charter's made some noise over the last, you know, year or so in terms of including all these. Is that something you guys could see Comcast doing in including these D2C brands and these media companies as part of your sort of base expanded basic?
I think for the right segment, what Charter's doing is very smart, and we have the flexibility to do that, so with this deal, we can. I think we have the industry-leading economics and packaging flexibility. Our strategy is a little different in that we segment the marketplace, and for certain packages, we will include, you know, apps, and you know, now and in the future where it makes sense, but from our standpoint, it won't necessarily be every tier of video where we'll do that, so we'll have certain, you know, we have NOW TV that has a lighter, you know, amount of linear and FAST channels that we have. There may be some apps that will be included, and there'll be different offers that we have.
As we reimagine video for the streaming world and to partner it for broadband, you're gonna need unique value propositions to compete. And so, from our standpoint, we'd rather do something new and unique in terms of segmentation versus doing one size fits all. But for certain, the high-end segment, it could make a lot of sense. And the important point is for this particular deal, we have all the flexibility that we need.
Maybe touching on, we got a couple more minutes here. I got a couple more topics I wanna touch on. First is the business segment. You talked about it as a contributor to growth of the company, and this new product with Ethernet over cable and the new passings. Just how's your visibility to continued growth of that business? And do the network upgrade that you laid out, does that help you penetrate that market and sort of, you know, help you guys compete against the other providers out there?
You know, again, starting at the top line with the $60 billion addressable marketplace, and, you know, we're less than 20% of that at this point. It's all and our goal is never to settle for, for not having anything less than half. And as we've accomplished that, you know, we're damn close to it with SMB. So to do that, and you've seen us, you know, go after opportunities to improve our portfolio in terms of addressability as we did with Masergy. And Now we can go global, and practically just anywhere with taking care of customers wherever they are. In addition to, you know, with Masergy, what we got are applications that help us drive revenue deeper. So we used to be with business services in mid and enterprise markets. We were either a nice number two for connectivity.
The head of IT would be, you know, it's a pretty safe bet to get my backup, you know, from cable or just to make sure systems, you know, were there. Now we're talking about everything. So we're talking about SD-WAN to UCaaS to connecting data centers to, you know, everything. We're the primary in giving control, you know, shared with the consumer with very large clients that needed to be perfect, and on that we're stepping up to that plate and have been winning very large accounts, enterprise accounts, that are going. So we like our roadmap for that. And again, the Ethernet over cable's a really nice thing that we can do within our footprint, you know, good for mid-market.
but we're gonna continue to add to the product portfolio because our strategy will be dual in that there's a healthy connectivity opportunity and just relationships, but every single relationship, there's a revenue opportunity to grow as we become the primary service provider.
Makes sense. So, and lastly, just to wrap up, you, we talked about all these lines of growth, the company's pursuing. Let's talk a little bit about margins. You've seen real margin improvement, really consistent margin improvement over a number of years in the connectivity and platforms business. Just given what you're seeing NOW, given the mix shift for sort of less rev, less video, more broadband, more wireless, what's your visibility into continued margin improvement as you look out over the next couple of years?
Well, you hit it on the head, John. The first thing right out of the, you know, the top, is the mix shift. As you have a little bit more of a drag on things in video, you move more towards connectivity, business services, broadband. You get, you get the benefit of margin lift as you do that. We've been seeing that. That has been happening. There's more to come on that. But it doesn't stop there. Very financially disciplined around fixed cost, always have been, take a, you know, a hard look at that constantly. We're not one to wake up and say, "Let's, you know, it's every day." We look at opportunities to improve, you know, the, the fixed cost structure.
The biggie for us remains just taking out lots and lots of volume and truck rolls and call center activity as we improve digital capability as we have now fully entered AI. For us, AI, it is real. It is gonna be, I think, a terrific addition to margin improvement. You know, just when you talked about the network side of things, the ability for us to identify problems that prevent if there's an issue close to with AI tools that we've deployed for network performance, we identify things and about 60% of alerts are self-healed because of AI. And as we've built out the network, we have built out AI throughout our entire network. And then you get into customer service and repair, being able to do, you know, unique things like instant delivery of products, take an SIK to a whole nother level.
AI, I think is gonna help us be able to take out unnecessary transactions but amplify good transactions so we can do a better job in base management, upgrading revenue, and being able to take out some of the noise in the system that continues to be unnecessary. So from a margin standpoint, I think there's a long road ahead for us to continue to improve.
That sounds great, Dave, and that's all the time we have today. Dave, thanks for being here. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Thanks, John. Thank you.