Marci Ryvicker: Thanks Jonathan. Operator, next question please.
Operator: Certainly. Our next question is coming from Steven Cahall from Wells Fargo. Your line is now live.
Steven Cahall: Thanks. Maybe first, I was wondering if you could expand on your Xfinity Mobile plans for 2024. One of your peers has been more promotional. I think that’s something you’ve kept an eye on, and we saw you get a bit more promotional last year with the iPhone deal. You also talked about broadband ARPU being the biggest driver of broadband revenue, and I know that can suffer on a GAAP basis if you do lean into mobile, so I’d love to just hear more about how you’re thinking about the broadband and mobile strategies coming together. Then Jason, just the severance that you took in the quarter, the lion’s share fell at connectivity and platforms. How should we think about the benefits to opex in 2024? You said five out of the six buckets decreased last year, so maybe you can give us a bit of a view of what non-programming opex looks like for connectivity and platforms this year. Thank you.
Dave Watson: Steven, this is Dave. Let me start with wireless. I think we’ve been consistent on this one, too – the wireless is one of the key long term growth drivers for us, and pointed out in the six that the team has talked about. It is absolutely a great companion to broadband. It has good standalone economics and a great runway ahead for penetration mobile to the broadband base. You know, it’s performing well – our domestic revenue was up over 15, we have over 6 million lines, including the 310,000 that we added in the quarter, and we’re only at 11% penetration, as Jason said, to the broadband base, so a lot of runway ahead. It is absolutely a key part of all our go-to-market activity, whether it’s acquisition, case management, upgrade activity to the base, as you noted, Steven.
We have been very focused on upgrade activity and retention, so our results have been consistent right around 300,000 new lines per quarter – pretty healthy run rate for a considerable period of time. Having said that, I think we can improve on these results. We are consistently in the market trying new offers, both in terms of broadband and mobile together, and we segment the opportunity, so we do have unique opportunities that we evaluate. We continue to be hopeful that some of these offers will accelerate our line additions over time and as the year progresses. We have a great road map in terms of innovation and offers between Wi-Fi and mobile, and we want to leverage both and continue to build a better product and service. Our mobile service, our core service offering delivers better value day in and day out.
We really like, though, our capital-light approach with the MVNO, and I think we’re in a great position to win in convergence, so I think we have a leg up on the competition with this capital-light strategy that doesn’t have to involve customer and/or network trade-offs. We’ll continue to be opportunistic in evaluating progress, but I think there’s upside.
Jason Armstrong: Steven, let me just round that out quickly, because part of the question seemed like, are we governing wireless at all as it relates to broadband ARPU growth and GAAP realization of broadband ARPU growth. The two are not connected. We will do what’s right for the business, first and foremost. To the extent we’re finding ways to accelerate wireless, I think we’ll have opportunity to do that and not be held back by what it means for broadband ARPU, although we do see, and just to reiterate, broadband ARPU growth in both the fourth quarter and for the full year, 3.9%, high end of our historical range of 3% to 4%, and we guided to the coming year to still be in that range of 3% to 4%, so consistent and strong ARPU growth.
On the severance question, as we step back, we’re focused on investing capital and resources in our key growth areas, so we’ve identified six key growth areas where investments in opex are being directed while managing carefully businesses that are important to us, but face secular headwinds. I think you saw that in the fourth quarter with severance actions – we took these actions to get ahead and position ourselves for continued transitions in these businesses in 2024 and beyond. I would point out–you know, you mentioned connectivity and platforms specifically – that’s where the bigger severance charges were. You’re right – five out of six categories of expense were down year-over-year in 2023. These types of actions in transitioning our business and managing the expense base are a big part of that, and if you look at margin expansion, which we’ve seen for a long period of time in the C&P business and gave an outlook that we expect to continue that, this is all part of that, taking action to sort of get ahead of these transitions.
I will point of what we also said in the prepared remarks, if you look back in the last six years, we’ve taken 50% of our truck rolls out of the system, so truck rolls versus 2017 are down 50%, so cut in half, and transactional volumes, if you will, or interactions are down 40%, so pretty significant expense opportunities relative to that, that we see continuing as well.
Marci Ryvicker: Thanks Steve. Operator, we have time for one last question.
Operator: Thank you. Our final question today is from Sebastiano Petti from JP Morgan. Your line is now live.
Sebastiano Petti: Hi, thank you for the question. Just wanted to see if you could provide additional color on perhaps the content and experiences segment capex expectations as we look beyond Epic. I think Jason, you did say in ’25, capital intensity in content and experiences should tick down as the Epic build finishes, but as we think about your plans for regional parks in the U.S., headlines about a U.K. park construction perhaps over the next several years as well, any color on how we should be thinking about is there a parks capex holiday before a reacceleration? Then just a housekeeping question on Peacock – obviously very strong net adds inside of 2023. Mike, you did say that you do expect sub growth beyond that to kind of continue, but could you perhaps quantify what the benefit of the conversion from Comcast bundle subs from free to paid was within the year and as we’re kind of thinking about organic or underlying growth that will benefit from the NFL playoff game, Oppenheimer, and some of the other stuff you listed?
Thank you.
Mike Cavanagh: Sure, hey Sebastiano. On parks, it’s as Jason said – we are going to remain at the elevated level around Epic with the two expansion parks, Hollywood Horror Nights and the Universal Kids in Frisco, Texas underway at this stage, so we’ll remain elevated in 2024 and then as we come to completion of Epic in 2025, rolling into 2025, we’ll ease off from there. I think the easing off is–I wouldn’t necessarily call it a holiday, so much as much like we talked about adding additional passings in cable, if we see these projects pencil out for good return, we’d be excited in the years that follow, I can’t predict when, to continue to give the parks and experiences business whatever capital it requires. But right now with the visibility we have for what’s in the pipeline, what Jason described as the trajectory is the right trajectory.
Then on Peacock, I think we did a good job converting our Comcast free subs to paid subs, and they are now rolling into–after a few months at a lower price, are rolling into the full price, so I think we did a great job across the company on executing that.
Marci Ryvicker: Thanks Sebastiano. That concludes our call. We appreciate all of you joining us this morning.
Operator: Thank you. That concludes the question and answer session and today’s conference call. A replay of the call will be available starting at 11:30 am eastern time today on Comcast’s Investor Relations website. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.
