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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Comcast boss on sports, parks, deals, Internet pricing

Michael Angelakis, Comcast's chief financial officer, answered a string of questions from investors at Barclays Capital's telecom conference this morning. Some highlights:

- "Usage-based" Internet pricing: "We're not adopting it. Obviously we're watching it... Our goal is to really capture (market) share and increase (average revenue per unit)... If we ever wanted to go to usage-based billing or consumption-based billing, we could possibly do that. I don't know why we would disrupt a pretty good run we're having right now."

- Reaction to Comcast's report it's "investing $300 million" in NBC Universal programming: "I think that the market overreacted to that particular comment... That investment... is not a heck of a lot different than what was happening last year... That network is a weak fourth player and our goal is to make sure that we can turn that around... We have to fill that 10 o'clock (pm) hole" left when Jay Leno's show was moved to after the news.

- Comcast "losing" the bidding war for Pac-12 conference sports: "Sports are important to the extent that we can make money and build value... The recent Pac-12 issue, did we look at it? Absolutely we looked at it. Were we disciplined? Totally. Did we pencil out... a right number... (to) make money? Absolutely. Did we lose? So be it. We're not that emotional about it... Sports is a conundrum... We're here to make money for our shareholders and if things like Pac-12 come and go then we'll find other areas."

- Future mergers: "We don't really see any future benefits from scale. To go from here we are today and add a couple million customers, I'm not sure that does anything for us.... It has to be a purely financial review... That probably disappoints a lot of bankers..."

- The theme parks Comcast inherited when it bought Universal: "It's actually a reasonably good business... We have been very fortunate where King Kong on the West Coast and Harry Potter in Orlando have been absolute home-runs... We'll make a decision over the next few weeks."
Posted by Joseph N. DiStefano @ 3:58 PM  Permalink | Post a comment
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About Joseph N. DiStefano
Joseph N. DiStefano writes this blog to feed his PhillyDeals column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Joe has been a member of Bloomberg LP’s New York Finance Team, wrote the book “Comcasted,” taught writing at St. Joseph’s University, and studied economics and history at Penn. Reach Joe at 215-854-5194 and JoeD@phillynews.com
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