Comcast lost 81,000 video customers in Q3, “the best result in 7 years”

Comcast reported its third quarter earnings today with positive results—and even the bad news was good.

“Video customer net losses declined to 81,000, the best third quarter result in seven years,” the company’s announcement said.

“I am pleased to report strong revenue, operating cash flow, and free cash flow growth for the third quarter of 2014,” CEO Brian Roberts said. In addition to slowing video losses over the past three months, “cable results highlight the consistent strength of high-speed Internet and business services,” he said.

Comcast had 22,457,000 video (i.e. cable TV) customers in the second quarter of this year. After the drop of 81,000, Comcast now has 22,376,000 video subscribers. One year ago, Comcast lost 127,000 video customers in the third quarter. Comcast lost 25,000 video customers in Q1 of 2014 and 144,000 in Q2 of 2014.

The addition of 315,000 broadband subscribers in the latest quarter more than made up for video losses. Comcast still has more video subscribers than Internet subscribers, but the gap is closing, with 22.38 million video subscriptions vs. 21.59 million broadband subscriptions. Many customers purchase both services.

Including Comcast’s phone service and the various double-play and triple-play packages, the company boosted total customers by 82,000.

“Customer relationships increased by 82,000 to 26.9 million during the third quarter of 2014, more than three-times the customer relationship net additions in the third quarter of 2013,” Comcast said. “At the end of the third quarter, penetration of our triple product customers increased to 36 percent compared to 34 percent in the third quarter of 2013. High-speed Internet customer net additions improved versus last year and were the strongest for a third quarter in five years. Video customer net losses improved 36 percent year-over-year and were the best result for a third quarter in seven years. Voice net additions slowed, reflecting a focus on double play during the back-to-school season, as well as X1 availability that was more focused on triple play customers last year, making for a difficult comparison.”

This chart sums up Comcast’s changing customer numbers:

Q3 revenue (including NBCUniversal results but excluding the Olympics) was $16.8 billion, up four percent year over year. Comcast has made $51 billion this fiscal year, up 6.9 percent over the first three quarters last year.

Operating income in Q3 was $3.7 billion, up 9.7 percent from $3.4 billion in Q3 last year. Operating income in all of 2014 is $11.1 billion so far, up 12.1 percent from $9.9 billion in the same period last year. The results exclude $1.1 billion revenue generated by the February Olympics.