• by Wayne Friedman , January 25, 2024

Although NBCUniversal's domestic advertising revenues declined overall, it continues to see positive results with its streaming Peacock platform -- with advertising revenue up 28% in the fourth quarter.

For the year, Peacock took in $1.4 billion in advertising, which helped to trim 2023 advertising losses from the year before.

As a whole, NBCUniversal posted a 17% advertising decline to $8.6 billion for all of 2023.

Taking out major sports events --the FIFA World Cup, the 2022 Super Bowl and the Beijing Olympics -- trimmed that decline to 3.8%.

“Peacock and other connected TV/ streaming TV ad platforms do not generally expand the market for TV advertising -- because they mostly generate advertising revenue from the same advertisers who buy traditional TV,” says Brian Wieser, media analyst for the Madison & Wall's Substack column. “The results suggest to me that NBCU likely grew share during the quarter, led by Peacock.”

In the fourth quarter, NBCUniversal overall posted a 7% decline in the fourth quarter to land at $2.6 billion in ad revenue. Taking out FIFA for the year-ago quarter leaves a 2.7% gain.

Peacock's quarterly revenue grew 57% to $1.0 billion up from the $660 million in the year-ago period. It also grew its subscribers up 50% to 31 million -- three million subscribers in the quarter.

Peacock was able to trim its quarterly losses slightly in the period to $825 million in terms of adjusted cash flow (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) -- compared to $978 million in the year-ago period.

For the year, NBCU spent $16.9 billion on TV/movie/content production, with Peacock accounting for $4.4 billion.

By comparison to other media companies, Netflix also continues to spend around $17 billion on production and content.

Overall, NBCU media revenue -- including distribution fees -- was up 3.1% to $6.98 billion, while domestic distribution revenue was 9% higher to $2.7 billion.

Studio revenue was 4.3% higher to $3.1 billion due to higher theatrical revenue from “Five Nights at Freddy's,” “Trolls Band Together,” “The Exorcist: Believer” and “Migration.” 

Theme parks were 12% higher to $2.3 billion, driven by results at Super Nintendo World in Hollywood, California. Overall content/experiences revenue grew 5.7% to $11.5 billion.