Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said that the number of people signing up for NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service has jumped 50% to 15 million over the past six week.
Roberts, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia Conference Tuesday, said that Peacock has become the No. 2 most popular app among Comcast’s Flex customers behind Netflix. It is also the No.3 most popular app on the X1 platform, behind Netflix and YouTube.
He added that usage is up and the service is getting positive reviews.
When Comcast last reported Peacock numbers, it had signed up 10 million subscribers.
Roberts also said that amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Comcast is seeing a record number of customers signing up for broadband. The company had an all time best of 490,000 quarterly net adds in 2008 and Roberts said this quarter, broadband adds are likely to exceed 500,000, field by Flex, the companies digital tools and applications.
That will help the company EBITDA margins expand and improve EBITDA growth. He said EBITDA increased 5% in the first quarter and 6% in the second quarter, and now expects to do better in the third quarter.
In terms of advertising, Roberts said ad revenues aren’t back to where they were before the pandemic, but he sees “real encouraging signs,” adding its great to have football back.
He said pricing has been improving in the scatter market and he was “we’re real pleased” with the progress of the upfront.
With most of the company’s theme parks reopening, he said the company expects to resume buying back stock.
“We think the worst is behind us,” he said.
