All right. So I think everybody knows who we are. We have thirty-five minutes for Q and A. And, yeah, let's, you know, there's been no shortage of headlines in the media these past couple weeks. So from your vantage point, could you talk about how NBCUniversal is positioned amid all this industry change and what should investors focus on as the real drivers of the story at Comcast?
Sure. Well, let's start in on the NBCUniversal side since there's so much news in the last couple of days on that score. So I just wanna remind everybody, or make the point, a lot of accomplishments in 2025. Basically, everything we wanted to do, at NBCUniversal, we did and then some. So great team, great effort. I'll get into it piece by piece, which is Parks, Studios, and the media segment, including Peacock. But one of the very important things that happened that spread across the whole place was, preparing for and now being at the precipice of the Versant spin. And so I think that's a decision we made that, I think, is for the benefit of the shareholders. I think for those of you who attended the Versant Investor Day last week, I think you saw a great team on the field, born from my colleagues at Comcast and NBC. They're gonna do a great job, and it sets free those assets in a way with low leverage that I think feel very good about what that's gonna mean for shareholders. And, conversely, for the remaining NBC, particularly the media segment, it means the only linear assets that remain are Broadcast, which is NBC and Telemundo, and the leading reality player in Bravo. And with that the point there is that those are the linear pieces that are integral to the strategy that we have for Peacock, which we can come back to later. So I think it's a big setup when you combine that with how the businesses are each performing that we roll into 2026, with great momentum, great leadership, good solid business strategies. And I just wanna remind at the highest level, the strategy that we're playing is unique to us.
Everybody, when the prognosticators are looking at other people's strategies and then saying, "If you're not gonna be successful at somebody else's strategy, then you're there for a failure." I would, you know, point out that we have strategy for our business, and our business is unique in media. We're one of two players in the global Parks business. We have a leading studio, TV, and film, number two player in the film last several years. We're getting into more deeply. And a mid-media segment, which is the combination of Broadcast and streaming. We look at strategy for each of those pieces and the whole together as that's the hand we're playing, and we think it is a damn good hand. $40 billion in global revenues for that media segment. It leads to the second tier of what is our strategic focus, in streaming within that. To make our media segment work within the context of Parks and Studios, we have a domestic strategy. Obviously, we wanna leverage everything. We're going to 100th anniversary of NBC in 2026. So everything we're about, which we'll get into more deeply, is stuff that is leveraged into Peacock together with Pay One Movies coming out of our studios and the like. That is what we're trying to accomplish in the media segment. So that's the high-level setup for media, and it leaves us positioned going into 2026 and what will apparently be a pretty unstable ecosystem around us with a great set of strategies, a lot of momentum, and with the Versant split happening. So I feel really good about where we're headed. So maybe Warner Bros. now?
Yeah. Obviously, that's the big news of the last few days. Could you talk a little bit about your strategy as it related to Warner Bros.? What, you know.
Sure.
Over the last 15, 20 minutes, we've heard that Paramount, Skydance might not be done here with this process. Just, just talk about how you were thinking of this.
Yeah. All I can speak to is how we came at it. Obviously, the journey that I just described, we were heads down doing our thing. Obviously, we pick our heads up and look around at what's going on around us. Situations develop. This was one where the Warner Bros. team announced, you know, one version of how to chart their future and then flipped it around in a way where without creating a studio and streaming pure play, given what we decided was our future, which would be Xfinity, the cable nets, that was interesting. But when we looked at the circumstances of how it all came to be, and I won't get into the sort of details. You can read all of that yourselves. We didn't expect that we had a high likelihood of prevailing with a deal that made sense to us. So we debated whether to bother or not. Do we want the disruption? Do we want the distraction, etc., etc.? But it's our job, so we thought better to take a look, and do the work and see where it leads. You never know. And so that's what we did. But in the end, our proposal was, you know, made up of the following. It was with a view that we would not interested in stressing the Comcast balance sheet to any stressful level as a result. That meant our proposal was light relative to the other proposals, I gather, on cash, and therefore, you know. But what we did offer was a significant chunk of equity in a combined entertainment company that would've combined NBCUniversal, Parks, Media, and Studios together with the studio and streaming segment of Warner Bros. and provide to the Warner Bros.
shareholders a substantial percentage of that company. And that company would've been a publicly traded controlled subsidiary of Comcast. So that all fit as a proposal that made sense to us, for us, in light of the fact that we like what we're doing. We don't need to do anything else. Had that come to be, I think it would've been an interesting play. It probably would've changed our streaming aspirations to be global streaming aspirations by necessity. But otherwise, respect and understand the decision of the Warner Bros. board. Obviously, we prefer the certainty of high levels of cash or collared stock and not what we were willing to, you know, go to to make it happen. So good news is that we like what we were doing, as I just described, and we roll on with a lot of focus. But I think we're better for having taken a look. I think our team, our management team, went through the exercise of reverse due diligence, and I think showed really well. And we walked away feeling great about, you know, our business and our strategies. So I think the other thing that's obvious in a world of consolidation, and I've lived through it in other industries and these industries too, is we're gonna hit a moment in time now where there's a lot of distraction. And I think being focused as a former rower, eyes in our own boat, and get the job done is gonna be what the next couple of years give us an opportunity to do. So, again, that's the broad on, on Warner Bros. So maybe take a few minutes now going through.
Yeah.
Each pile inside the media side.
Yeah. Perfect. Why don't we start with streaming? 'Cause you brought it up and, you know, you referred to Peacock as sort of a more of a domestic focus versus a global stream. Do you need to be global, or can you, you know, talk about how Peacock is positioned, especially given some of your recent content and sports wins?
Well, so when you think about the play of the hand you've got, when NBC is a tremendous asset. I mean, walk in and out of 30 Rock, and you just feel the legacy of the place. Our power in creating scripted content, you know, both through the movie studios and on the TV side, whether it's on our platforms or others. So all original content now on Peacock comes from our studios. Likewise, some great content lands from our studios on other platforms. But entertainment is super strong feeding Peacock, Pay One Movie window, and the like. Reality, you've got, again, Bravo. So Love Island is only a few months in the past, and Love Island next, whatever's coming next. The team is hard at work. I think we've got great assets there. We've got the film library from the studios too. Then you come to the big opportunity in sports, which, given the legacy of NBC Sports and the need of leagues, you know, have to keep their reach through broadcast yet reach a new audience as the linear system changes, puts Peacock in an excellent position to serve our partners, whether it's Olympics. We've got NFL with Super Bowl coming up in next February. And we're back with the NBA, which is off to a great start. And we have the All-Star Game in February. So February and really next year, we're gonna have 40% of the big live events coming through, whether it's a combination of sports and non-sports. How about this one? The Thanksgiving Day parade, last week or two weeks ago, 35 million viewers, the highest of all time. So you think again about partnering, and figuring out ways to drive engagement around live events is an important part of what
we do. And so that is all the DNA and then news now with the separation of MSNBC into Versant, news most-reached news organization between Nightly News, NBC News Now Digital, and Meet the Press. So when you get to Peacock, all that feeds in. Sports has been a great driver of acquisition for us and engagement. Our back library of entertainment, our reality, it all comes together with Pay One driving we now 41 million high RPU subs. So one of the things that's interesting about Peacock is we were very slow to get in the game of doing wholesale to drive subs. So now that we're later in the game, one of the opportunities we've had, and you've seen us in some of our recent deals with Amazon, with Apple, with YouTube, starting to allow our streaming service to be packaged in ways that capture the value that we've created through such a strong, you know, sports portfolio. And so I think the business has made great strides. Peacock is a standalone, and I don't really, we report it standalone to give some transparency, but we manage it as one P&L. But Peacock improved in the last twelve trailing 12 months by $900 million of EBITDA. We're at 41 million subs. We just took a three dollars price increase over the summer. That's, you know, stuck nicely. You know, with the NBA expense coming in, and as we reported before, that's gonna be straight lined over the next 11 years, even though cash costs will be lower in the first half of that. But we didn't follow cash. We follow more of a straight line. All that means that nonetheless, next year, we expect 2026 versus 2025, Peacock to continue to succeed meaningfully improve its EBITDA losses on a trajectory to, you know, a positive future for it and the combined media segment. So without the linear pieces that have gone to Versant, I expect that the media segment within NBCUniversal has the opportunity and expectation that it'll grow revenues after we lap NBA and grow profits from that point forward.
You're talking about improving profitability at Peacock and for the whole media segment in general?
Correct.
Next year with NBA?
Even with the NBA. And when you have it for Peacock next year.
Okay.
All of NBC is the first full year, first half of next year, and it will be loaded up with significant NBA costs when you put it all together.
So does it?
Obviously, something that we got, you know, 11 as we take the full cost, the trajectory to monetize, we'll, you know, average it in.
But it doesn't sound like, from this conversation, that you believe that the streaming business or Peacock is subscale or the studio. I mean, you don't feel like.
No. In the context of what we're trying to do, which again, if your sports are market by market, right? So when you think about, you know, what we're doing here is really about a domestic strategy. And I think feeding our studio content into our domestic strategy, again, which fits alongside the broader strategy, does not. There's plenty of buyers for our studio content in other markets. And if we were to follow the strategy that I described in other markets, we'd, you know, be getting into the business of, you know, producing sports. I think aspiring to be global right now in our, you know, is not. Put it this way, I don't think the leakage in the ability to monetize the content created in our studios is a you know that leakage versus building a streaming service where you'd be ramping investment for a long time is not something that gives us any pause about executing our Peacock strategy in the U.S.
Similarly on the studio side with Universal, you know, obviously, at this point, it looks like Netflix and Warner Bros. coming together. If not, you know, Warner Bros. and Paramount coming together, you're gonna see some consolidation. Does the landscape get better for Universal as a studio, both for film and TV in the environment that comes next?
I think generally speaking, consolidation, you know, hopefully leads to market healing as players start to figure out how they really wanna make money over the long term. Obviously, the dynamic that we face in media is to some degree tech players that may be making money in different ways that is some that you put a little asterisk on it. But generally speaking, consolidation as different players start to settle into long-term strategies that are to drive value, that tends to be a good thing if you yourself have a strategy that is, you know, sound and that you can go execute against. So I think for us, I kinda welcome the consolidation.
Right. And then lastly, on Peacock and sort of the media business, you know, you signed a big deal with Taylor Sheridan. NBA, obviously, another big deal. I mean, it sounds like against that, you expect profitability to improve next year. But is this the beginning of sort of additional spending to that we should expect for on the Peacock side just to scale up the business?
Yep. And again, it's Peacock profitability improves in 2026 versus 2025. And then in 2027 and beyond, I feel great about the trajectory for the media segment along with the other pieces of the business. I think on studios, we've got great leadership. We've been the number two film studio on average over the last several years, you know, coming off another tremendous slate this year with Wicked, for Good in theaters now, How to Train Your Dragon, Jurassic reboot. Next year, we've got the next Minions. We've got Super Mario. We've got The Odyssey with Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg's next, you know, film. So we've got excellent relationships with some of the top creators, whether it's Meledandri, Nolan, Spielberg, Blum, Jordan Peele, and now, to your point, Taylor Sheridan. Film deal starts sooner than it's several years out before the TV deal starts. But I think it makes the point that our studio is able to be an attractive place for creators to bring their work. And that's a large part of what being great in that business and being perceived as adding value. And a lot goes along with that. But I think our team in studios is excellent. So I think all we need to do is invest behind that team. You know, I mean, we always look for more IP for them to use. We've done that through partnerships with Nintendo, hence we got Super Mario. And there's ways to continue to do that. So we would've gotten some had we done Warner Bros., but I think that's not the plan. A always was to invest behind the team we have. And the same at Parks. You know, Parks, we opened Epic. It's doing great. It will ramp in 2026. We are a global business. We've got the you know LA, Orlando, Beijing, and Osaka. And so as we look ahead to that business, same thing. It's invest behind the team we have. So you sit down with them, and on the roadmap is the U.K. Park that we secured land and are going through government approval. So that'll open in 2030, 2031, you know working on you know smaller formats, you know the Halloween horror in different spots at a smaller scale. And we'll open our first Universal Kids in Frisco, Texas next year. And in the longer term, you know things like cruises that Disney does are opportunities that we have to take our skill in that space. And you can broaden that out beyond. So I think being in the, you know, experiences businesses as we changed, you know, from Parks to its Universal Destinations and Experiences is a great team and a great position in the market. So again, all those three pieces of our media of our NBCUniversal working together, we not me alone, my senior team, it's a charged-up group of folks. And so we're gonna get after it.
That's great. I think that's a great, great summary of the NBCU. So let's switch over to connectivity if we could. You got new leadership in that business. What's the main focus of the new team over the next 12 months? And can you talk about, you know, some of the the changes we should expect to see?
Sure. Well, Steve Crone, COO is now, in January, takes over as the CEO of the business. Been with us a long time in a variety of jobs. And basically, a year ago, with Dave, Brian, and I put Steve in chief operating officer role, proved himself out. And here we are making a change. It's obviously a moment of great, you know, competition. And so that speaks to what we're looking for is, you know, sense of urgency. And Steve certainly has that, a lot of energy and a great motivator of the team. And coming from the business, some people say, "Is that good or is that bad?" I would say good in a moment where making changes to the way we operate. We did a big collapse of the field organization to move faster. We wanna operate with urgency, and we want to recognize that it's a different business now than it was once upon a time. So there can't be any sacred cows. We gotta have a challenger mentality. And Steve brings all that to the job. So it's not an easy time. Let's be clear of that. But I think leadership and the team he's putting together is great. And so, he's got all our support.
Got it. Can you give us a overview on what you're seeing now in terms of the competitive environment? Have things worsened, stayed the same, or you know, what are you seeing in the field?
It ebbs and flows, but I think it continues to be intensely competitive. And I think it'll stay that. I mean, our expectation is that it's gonna remain that way for a while. In the fourth quarter, you've seen more aggressive promotions, more on the fiber side of things, the, you know, holiday promotions, Black Friday, getting, you know, hitting the market. And so that's a little near the latest dynamic of what's going on. I think fixed wireless is steady. It's lasted longer, been more durable than we had initially expected. But at this stage, we're, you know, realists that it's gonna continue to be competitive, a strong competitor, for the near and midterm for sure. And satellite is, you know, the specter of what satellite aspires to is out there. And we're not going to be dismissive of it. You know, we're not seeing, you know, it as we sit here now, and it's gonna, you know, like fixed wireless, it's gonna have its, you know, capacity constraints, and market constraints, but it's, you know, we got a lot of competition.
Yep. And in conjunction with that, you guys announced on the call that you would not be taking a price increase in the first half of 2026. How will that impact trends in the first half of the year? And you know, what, how do you see the year unfolding?
Sure. Well, so I think we started in the middle of this year and we'll continue with our new go-to-market where we simplified the whole structure of the go-to-market strategy with, you know, tiers of speed, and beyond that, relatively all-inclusive. And alongside that, that sort of tiered pricing, one-year and five-year price locks and everyday pricing, so a fundamentally different go-to-market strategy, getting away from the promo model, start at one level and then have big price spikes. And that's where competition, you know, attacked us and successfully. And we've seen that as just a consumer, you know, even though it's the way many in the business were doing it once upon a time, for the challenges in the space, it's been something that we had to acknowledge and get after. And Steve was a big part of that. So that combined with, we'll roll through. And by this time a year from now, we'll have a large majority of our customer base on sort of this new pricing structure. You've already seen that have an impact on slower, you know, impact on our RPU growth and EBITDA. And I think those pressures will continue, say, through the first half of next year. The holding off on a broadband price increase will have to be part of that effect. But I think it will position the base of customers that we take into 2027 as much more on a sort of stable, market-based pricing plans that have less friction, less consumer annoyance to them. And with the other piece of it, which was starting in the middle of this year, adding a free wireless line to any new or existing customer that had not yet taken the chance to experience mobile. Well, once we start lapping that and charge for that line, as you saw with Charter, there'll be, you know, some relief on the pressures on connectivity, our RPU.
Got it. Speaking of wireless, so can you talk a little bit about the strategy? Is it helping on the retention side or in terms of new acquisition? And if you could comment on the profitability you're seeing in that business.
Sure. We much like Peacock, we talked about the profitability of the wireless business when it was negative for, you know, many, many, many quarters, a couple of years. So the business of wireless has become profitable and remains profitable, you know, to us. The utility of the mobile business is really to be looked at in the context of the full connectivity relationship. And so where we see it the most at this stage is retention. Churn is much lower for, you know, customers who have taken mobile from us and attached it to broadband. You know, you got world-class broadband. And then given the MVNO, we've got excellent wireless together with the best devices out there. And you're saving substantially on your mobile bill. With the mobile market being two and a half times the size of the broadband market, that's actually a good trade for consumers. And for us, it being a capital-light strategy all kinda works together. And so we feel pretty good about, you know, what we're doing. In terms of the competition we face and are we competing, you know, in a thoughtful manner, I would say absolutely yes. I mean, the challenge that we obviously have with being a connectivity, the good news is that if converged consumer behavior is the holy grail looking forward, that and, you know, many of the leading wireless guys that can only offer it in certain parts of their footprint are espousing that. We're the only player today that can offer you across our entire footprint gig speeds, plus speeds on broadband and, you know, the same, leading, wireless. So we, from that perspective, need to drive this business. We've got 14% of our broadband base takes wireless. But there's a little bit of an awareness issue. And there's a little bit of an issue on whether we have high consideration at the higher end of the market. So the two things that are going on as we approach the market are get people to try.
So hence, that's really the reason for giving a free wireless line to our existing customers, get them to experience it once they're comfortable that it is as we profess it is, which is the Verizon network with, you know, performing the way it would perform if you had Verizon service together with our phone, you know, an Apple phone or whatever phone you want. That is our, our bet that driving experience leads to retention and conversion. And what we also see is that existing Xfinity Mobile customers are adding more lines. So it is our experience that when we get a relationship built with a payer in a given household, as time passes, they're adding more. So that says great things to us about the prospect of where we can go from here. And then in terms of attacking the higher end of the market, family plans, 'cause we started, you know, buy a gig, get extra phone. Now we've with our unlimited, pro, premium plan, you know, we go right at everything, at the high end, including some forms of, you know, device subsidies, all-inclusive data, and a lot of 4-K, you know, sports video. It's a good, it matches up well against the best plans out there from the competition. So that we need to drive as well. And what we're seeing as we do our go-to-market on the broadband side and are attaching mobile, the attachment of unlimited premium plus is going pretty well. So.
Is that a big initiative for 2026? I mean, should we, as sort of a lot of people out here are wireless investors. I mean, the.
Yeah. Here on out, I don't think it's any surprise. I mean, wireless is a in a responsible way, we wanna we feel we have a right to, you know, play and win in broadband and wireless convergence. You know, we've got an excellent MVNO. We've got a capital-light strategy. We have the best Wi-Fi network. Hence, our offload from Xfinity Mobile to broadband through Wi-Fi is higher than what it is for the wireless providers on average. So there's some recapture of kinda quote lost owner's economics. We get it that way and in lighter capital cost. So I think we've got a pretty durable proposition. And so it's rinse, lather, repeat.
Right. Maybe segue real quick to the business market. First of all, you guys signed an MVNO with T-Mobile to attack the business market in wireless. Is that how big of an opportunity is that? Maybe as a standalone business and how do you expect it to impact the business segment?
Wireless, I mean, the business services itself has grown to a $10 billion plus revenue business. It's 25% of our connectivity revenues from nothing, you know, a little over a decade ago. Very high overall margins, high incremental margins. We started in the small business segment where we had high penetration, getting a little bit of competition in that space from fixed wireless. But as we've added capabilities from fiber to network management, and the like, we've really focused on deepening relationships in the small business end, but also pursuing a mid and enterprise, you know, size, market opportunity where we've been doing really well. We had a couple of acquisitions that have given us tuck-in acquisitions that have given us capability sets necessary or helpful anyway to advancing our enterprise and mid-market strategy. Having the T-Mobile MVNO for business gives the ability to offer more lines than what we had in the other MVNO. So they were happy to do it. It's nice to have another, you know, partner and deepen a relationship and build a relationship with T-Mobile alongside our good relationship with Verizon.
I was gonna say just lastly on the connectivity side, just the relationship with Verizon, there's a lot of people that think that, it renews here in January. Just how's that relationship? And are they serving your needs?
It's a good relationship. I've connected with the new top of the house. I think we, you know, are, you know, both interested in making things work well for both of us. And I think that's the attitude that we're moving forward with.
Great. And in the couple of minutes we have here, just sort of some higher-level questions, could you talk about your confidence in getting back to revenue and EBITDA growth in the second half, maybe on a consolidated basis?
Yeah. So we, you know, I think the kind of pivots that we'll have, you know, as we get to the second half of next year is obviously on the NBC side. We lap season one of the NBA, and so that will, on the profit side, get to the point I was making earlier that driving revenue growth from there should be a key driver to bottom-line growth. And that's our intention, both top and bottom line.
That contract feels better, right? There'd be more and more revenues in the s against a straight line from expenses.
Correct. Correct. Yep. And, you know, we'll probably talk about it, but next year, remember, you know, it'll be many hundreds of millions of dollars. Our cash writedown, our cash sent to the NBA will be lower than what we're hitting, what's hitting the P&L, just FYI, on the free cash flow side. Parks, you know, on a trajectory of growth. Studios, a great slate. But, you know, the studio, P&L bounces around a little bit but creates long-term value. And then on the connectivity side, I mean, the major dynamic is gonna be, obviously, we have to respond to whatever competitive dynamics, you know, continue to be out there. And so promising anything, you know, we will get to a large, like I said, significant majority of our customers by the time we are exiting 2026 will be on our new go-to-market plans. Basically, once you get to the third quarter of next year, we will hit the anniversary of having lit up the free mobile line, which is then for, you know, we'll try to do the best we can converting those to paying. Remember, they're still converting to a serious discount relative to market rates. So we feel pretty good about that opportunity and our kind of getting ready to do that. So those will be the dynamics as we, you know, definitely as we're looking into 2027. But, you know, we'll start to see the emergence of that in the latter part of next year.
Great. Now and then a couple quick questions on capital allocation. Maybe first on the cable side. The network upgrades are almost done. Have we seen peak CapEx and what's the company's appetite for more fiber upgrades?
So something like, the network's 95% fiber. We can do as much fiber as we want, you know, as time passes. But what the point is that we're on our roadmap, within the capital envelope of roughly what we currently are doing or talking about doing to get to multi-gig symmetrical through DOCSIS 4.0 over the next several years. But we will feed, you know, going back to capital allocation, the strategy is always to feed the businesses and the leadership teams that we have in the segments, the six growth segments that we've talked about, and you know, build businesses ourselves, which is what you've seen us do. That's a little bit NBA. That's a little bit Taylor Sheridan. That's definitely Epic Universe. That's building our network. That's building a wireless business. That's building business services. All things that happen because we prioritize putting capital and resources behind businesses that we think have long-term growth and great leadership. It's probably the most effective thing to do for shareholders, so check the box that that's a high priority and continues to be. We wanna keep a strong balance sheet. It's been important to us, and that's our intention to continue with, and a little bit of the, you know, story of the Warner Bros. side of it is that that was a constraint on what we were willing to do, and that's okay, and then third is return of capital, which we've done a tremendous job returning capital over the last several years. Part of that's the dividend, 17 years of increasing the dividend, and just a note on that, as we roll into 2026, we'll start the year and five days in, we'll separate. But you know, Comcast shareholders looking into 2026, we'll get the Comcast dividend, you know, as it is, together with the new Versant announced at their investor day a 20% dividend payout ratio target. The combined effect of that is roughly nearly a 5% dividend increase combined for the Comcast shareholder today. That'll make it 18 years.
Perfect. That was a great wrap-up.
Great.
Thanks, Mike.
Thanks for spending the time, everybody. Appreciate all the support.
Fantastic. Thank you.