At a media conference filled with disruptors, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts adamantly defended that old standby — the pay-TV bundle.
“The bundle is where you get the best value,” Roberts said at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia media conference on Tuesday, having trotted out a host of reasons why his Philadelphia-based company is “in great shape.”
One reason was the acquisition of NBCUniversal in late 2009, which has proved itself a winner by delivering a compound annual growth rate of 13 percent under Comcast ownership.
And for the first half of 2017, NBCU’s 24 percent EBITDA growth — once blended with the 6 percent recorded for Comcast’s industry-leading cable operations — has the entire company chugging ahead at 10 percent.
Utmost on Roberts’ mind, however, was a Comcast EVP’s comment last week that the company stood to lose as many as 150,000 video subscribers this quarter.
The cord-cutting fears it provoked immediately shaved 6.2 percent off the price of Comcast stock and all but consigned the company to Old Media’s dinosaur heap.
“This happens to be a very competitive quarter,” Roberts said in an attempt to place the anticipated subscription loss in context. “Two hurricanes made landfall.”
But that’s no excuse to change a long-term strategy, he added, especially since net subscription losses for the full year are expected to come in at only 50,000.
Besides, by placing NBCU content on the same over-the-top platforms siphoning away cable subscribers, Roberts insisted Comcast still has it covered.
“If a sub goes there, we’re going to get paid,” he said.


