• by Wayne Friedman , April 28, 2022

Comcast’s NBCU’s streaming platform Peacock posted revenue of $472 million in the first quarter -- up 41% from $335 million in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Peacock trimmed its adjusted EBITDA loss (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) to $456 million from $559 million.

Peacock now has 13 million paid subscribers (up from 9 million recorded in the fourth quarter), and 28 million monthly active U.S. users -- up from 24.5 million.

Boosted by the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, NBCUniversal’s first-quarter media revenues grew 36% to $6.9 billion -- with advertising revenue up 60% in the period.

Without these two major sports events, NBCU’s media revenue was up 7% -- with advertising revenue 4% higher and distribution revenue growing 9%.

Comcast Corp.'s mid-day Thursday stock price was down 5.3% to $42.10.

Studio revenue -- content licensing and theatrical revenue -- was up 15% to $2.8 billion.

Theme parks revenue more than doubled -- up 152% to 1.6 billion.

NBCU’s European broadcaster Sky was down 0.5% to $4.8 billion -- with subscriber losses of 106,000. Sky customers' relationships are down 2.2% to now 22.9 million. Advertising grew 8% to $596 million

Overall NBCU revenue was up 47% to $10.3 billion.

Parent company Comcast's revenue grew 14% to $31 billion, with adjusted net income 11% higher to $3.5 billion.

While broadband revenues maintain higher revenue (up 8% to $6.1 billion), video revenues continue to weaken at the company -- slipping 1.5% to $5.5 billion.

Video customers -- from its cable TV operations -- were down 512,000 to now total 17.66 million. But broadband subscribers grew by 262,000 to total 32.16 million.

The day before, Comcast struck a joint venture with Charter Communications to launch a national streaming distribution business -- in part based on Comcast's existing Flex business. The intent is to take on the likes of fast growing operations such as Roku and Amazon Fire Tv.