By Helen Coster and Arjun Panchadar
(Reuters) - Comcast Corp (NASDAQ:CMCSA) reported first-quarter profit on Thursday that beat Wall Street estimates, boosted by strong additions of high-speed internet customers in a quarter that painted another mixed picture for the biggest U.S. cable provider.
The company's shares were up 2.5 percent in premarket trading after falling as much as 3 percent following release of its earnings report.
Overall revenue missed analyst estimates and Comcast lost more video and phone customers than expected. Revenue from its NBCUniversal cable networks, filmed entertainment and theme parks also fell short of expectations. Earnings per share did, however, exceeded expectations.
Like others in the cable television industry, Comcast is grappling with rival offerings from Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc's YouTube TV and subscription video services like Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX).
Earlier this week AT&T Inc (NYSE:T) and Verizon Communications Inc (NYSE:VZ) both reported losing more video customers than analysts expected.
Philadelphia-based Comcast said it lost 121,000 video customers in the quarter, more than the 29,000 it shed last quarter and the 109,000 estimated by analysts, according to research firm FactSet. In response, the company is striving to build new services on top of its broadband network.
Revenue from the high-speed internet business climbed 10 percent to $4.58 billion in the first quarter as the company added 375,000 subscribers on a net basis.
Subscriber additions beat the average analyst estimate of 356,000, according to FactSet, but were down slightly from 379,000 in the same period a year earlier.
Comcast is betting that its redesigned Xfinity X1 cable box, which uses a single menu to find content across live TV, on-demand and streaming services like Netflix, will help retain and attract subscribers.
Revenue at its NBCUniversal business, which includes NBC Entertainment and Universal Pictures, dropped 12.5 percent to $8.31 billion.
NBCUniversal plans to launch an advertising-supported TV streaming service in 2020 that will be free for NBCUniversal's pay-TV customers as well as Sky customers internationally.
Filmed entertainment revenue rose 7.4 percent to $1.77 billion, boosted by movies including "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World" and "Us" while theme park revenue slipped 0.4 percent to $1.28 billion.
Revenue from broadcast television dropped 29.4 percent year-on-year to $2.47 billion. Excluding last year's Olympics and Super Bowl from the prior-year comparison, however, revenue rose.
Comcast, which bought the British pay-TV group Sky last year, said revenue reported from Sky was $4.8 billion.
Excluding items, the company earned 76 cents per share, beating estimates of 68 cents per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Comcast's overall revenue rose 18 percent to $26.86 billion, but fell short of Wall Street expectations of $27.20 billion.
