Comcast isn’t hungry for acquisitions. Really.
That’s what the cable giant’s boss Brian Roberts insisted on Wednesday — despite the fact that his company is locked in a fierce fight with Disney over British-based broadcaster Sky.
In July, CEO Roberts lost a battle to acquire 21st Century Fox’s film and TV properties to Disney, which paid $71.3 billion. Now, he’s still in the running for Sky with a $34 billion offer, on Wednesday extending the deadline for Sky to accept it to Oct. 6.
“Yes, we’ve looked at Fox, not because we went looking for it, because it came to market,” Roberts told analysts at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference on Wednesday. “And I think ultimately, the same with Sky.”
Fox, which already owns 39 percent of Sky, shares a common owner with News Corp., the publisher of The Post.
Comcast’s recent pursuits don’t mean “you don’t love your core business,” Roberts added, insisting that Comcast is in a “strategically great place.”
The Philly-based company, which owns NBCUniversal, is expected to post its most profitable year ever in 2018, with across-the-board growth coming from theme parks and TV shows to broadband.
Looking to curb its reliance on cable bundles amid the cord-cutting epidemic, Roberts said Comcast is investing in broadband and mobile, developing new higher speed offerings with controls that allow customers to regulate WiFi use at home.
He gave an example of frustrated parents trying to get their kids to come to the dinner table. With a mere click of a device, they would be able to shut off the WiFi, Roberts said, drawing titters from the crowd.
Comcast is making the shift as cord cutters increasingly watch shows via streaming services such as Netflix, YouTube and Amazon. The CEO noted that Comcast lost 140,000 video customers in the second quarter but gained 260,000 high-speed internet consumers.
“We don’t care whose content you watch, we just want you to watch it through our X1 experience and were going to be a winner,” Roberts said, referring to Comcast’s high-speed broadband service.
