Comcast's CEO Discusses Q4 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Comcast (CMCSA)

Q4 2011 Earnings Call

February 15, 2012 8:30 am ET

Executives

Marlene S. Dooner - Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

Brian L. Roberts - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President and Director of Comcast Holdings Corporation

Michael J. Angelakis - Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer

Neil Smit - Executive Vice President, Chief Executive Officer of Comcast Cable and President of Comcast Cable

Compare to:
Previous Statements by CMCSA
» Comcast's CEO Discusses Q3 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript
» Comcast's CEO Discusses Q2 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript
» Comcast's CEO Discusses Q1 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Stephen B. Burke - Executive Vice President, Chief Executive Officer of NBCUniversal Holdings & NBCUniversal and President of NBCUniversal Holdings & NBCUniversal

Analysts

Craig Moffett - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., LLC., Research Division

Jason B. Bazinet - Citigroup Inc, Research Division

John C. Hodulik - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division

Jason Armstrong - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Douglas D. Mitchelson - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Benjamin Swinburne - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

James M. Ratcliffe - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Stefan Anninger - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division

Marci Ryvicker - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Comcast Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2011 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference call is being recorded. I would now turn the call over to Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, Ms. Marlene Dooner. Please go ahead, Ms. Dooner.

Marlene S. Dooner

Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone, to our fourth quarter and full year 2011 earnings call. Joining me on the call are Brian Roberts; Michael Angelakis; Steve Burke; and Neil Smit. As we have done in the past, Brian and Michael will make formal remarks, and Steve and Neil will also be available for Q&A.

As always, let me refer you to Slide #2, which contains our Safe Harbor disclaimer, and remind you that this conference call may include forward-looking statements subject to certain risks and uncertainties. In addition, in this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our 8-K for the reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP.

With that, let me turn the call to Brian Roberts for his comments. Brian?

Brian L. Roberts

Thanks, Marlene, and good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to begin 2012 with this first call. Just thinking back a year ago, we were closing the NBCUniversal deal. We were making major management changes, bringing Neil Smit to fully run Comcast Cable, Steve Burke was beginning his first year at NBCUniversal, and it was a really, really important year for 2011 that a lot go well. I'm thrilled to tell you that I think virtually across the board, our 2011 performance, as you can see in this fourth quarter's results and throughout the year, is right where we had hoped to be and in some cases substantially better.

And based on all of that, we're very pleased today to be increasing our dividend by 44% to $0.65 per share on an annual basis, and that our board has approved a new $6.5 billion stock buyback program under which we plan to increase our repurchases of stock by 40% to $3 billion this year. Now the way we come to those conclusions of the optimism and good feelings we have about the company is based on the financial results.

So let me start with Cable, which had an outstanding year, capped by a great fourth quarter of improving customer metrics, combined with healthy financial results. In the fourth quarter, Video customer losses declined to 17,000, our best quarterly Video performance in almost 5 years. And for the full year, we reduced Video customer losses by nearly 40%. We also added 336,000 High-Speed Internet customers in the quarter, a 15% increase and marked the sixth year in a row of adding more than 1 million high-speed data customers.

I really believe these improvements are sustainable because they are the result of our scale and our intensified focus on service and innovation, all of which come together in our wonderful XFINITY brand message of product innovation and a better customer experience. Our major technical initiatives of DOCSIS 3.0, all digital, a content delivery network that works on all platforms is now complete, and we have leveraged these investments to deliver more innovation faster than ever before.

So in 2011, we introduced more new products and features than the prior 2 years combined. And our product roadmap for 2012 is just as exciting, and it includes a broader rollout of the Xcalibur platform, which we're rebranding to X1, including our cloud-based guide to hundreds of thousands of customers this year across multiple markets. We'll be expanding our Home Security business in many, many markets virtually nationwide, an expansion of Wi-Fi to several new markets and a lot of content, which will be On Demand and all devices. And we also recently began to jointly market our services with Verizon Wireless, and we hope to expand the marketing footprint and working on new innovative products this year with Verizon Wireless. And we continue to expand choices and offerings for our customers, and we've taken important steps in our programming agreements and our relationship with the program suppliers, extending terms, expanding rights, going longer and having broader On Demand lineups and more flexibility to deliver this content to more devices in and out of the home than ever before. So all in all, our Cable business is in terrific shape today, our competitive position continues to get stronger, and we are leading with XFINITY in an innovation, and I believe we are in a solid position for the future.

Let me now switch to NBCUniversal, where in 2011, we successfully completed our integration, but we also had such a busy year with many important investment decisions. Some of these investments are already paying off and others will pay off over time. We invested in new shows in both Cable Networks and on our Broadcast networks. We invested in our own stations. We extended the NHL and PGA rights, Purchased 100% of the Orlando theme parks, have some exciting film franchises launching in 2012. We invested to extend the Harry Potter franchise in several of our Theme Parks. We also brought together all of our company's capabilities and successful bids for the Olympics, for the Spanish-language rights for FIFA World Cup soccer, and we extended the all-important Sunday night football franchise with the NFL. In each case, we secured important rights for many years, and we got more content to be used over many new platforms, putting us on a path to make these investments profitable over time and to significantly strengthen the business.

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