April 23 (Reuters) - Comcast topped Wall Street expectations for the first quarter on Thursday, as a blockbuster sports lineup boosted subscriber growth and engagement, while its core broadband business
lost fewer customers than anticipated.
Shares of the company jumped nearly 8% in premarket trading.
A packed live sports calendar, capped by the Winter Olympics, Super Bowl and the return of National Basketball League games, drove stronger advertising sales and user growth at the company's Peacock streaming service.
Comcast has overhauled its broadband pricing, packaging and customer experience to tackle competition, particularly from fixed wireless providers, helping it limit subscriber losses.
The company lost 65,000 broadband customers in the first quarter, less than the estimated loss of 175,500 users, according to analysts polled by FactSet.
Comcast has also increasingly leaned on its wireless business to drive growth and deepen customer relationships.
It added 435,000 wireless customers, recording its best quarter ever and surpassing the estimate of 361,600 additions.
During the January to March period, Peacock added 2 million paid subscribers to reach 46 million overall, but losses in the segment widened to $432 million.
The media segment also reported a loss of $426 million as Comcast stepped up spending around NBA programming.
The company had previously flagged that the first quarter would be peak volume period with about 50% of NBA games played, which would also result in peak dilution of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
Its theme park business posted a 24% increase in revenue, led by higher attendance at its Epic Universe park in Orlando, launched last May.
Total revenue came in at $31.46 billion, up 10.9% excluding contributions from cable assets that were spun off into Versant Media in the first quarter. Analysts on average estimated $30.43 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Adjusted per-share profit of 79 cents also beat the estimate of 73 cents.
(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)
