Peacock stems Q1 losses to $215m

NBCUniversal streamer Peacock has reduced its Q1 losses by 66% from $649m (£487.6m) a year ago to $215m (£161.5m) in 2025, but execs at parent Comcast have warned that a potential US recession means “challenges may be approaching”.

Yellowstone streamer Peacock saw overall revenue rise 16% to $1.2bn (£901.5m) in Q1, while subscribers to the streamer rose from 36 million at the end of 2024 to 41 million by the end of March.

Part of that growth was down to a deal with Charter Communications that provided subscribers free access to the ad-supported version of Peacock.

Content licensing was up 3.5% to $2.2bn (£1.7bn), which helped to propel revenues at NBCU’s studios division up 3% to $2.8bn (£2.1bn), although theatrical revenue was down. EBITDA rose from $244m in Q1 2024 to $298m this year.

Across Comcast’s media division – which houses NBCU, its international networks and Peacock – revenue ticked up 1% to $6.4bn. Sports helped drive international networks revenue, which was up 14% to $1.2bn, but domestic advertising dropped almost 7% to $1.9bn.

Cord-cutting continued apace, with customer losses standing at 427,000 for the quarter, although that was down on the 487,000 customers that left in Q1 2024.

Comcast is in the process of splitting off its cable business, with channels including USA Network and CNBC to be spun off into a new entity, leaving Peacock and NBC as part of NBCU.

Mike Cavanagh, president of Comcast, told an analyst call following the results that Peacock is “on a continuing trend of driving towards improved monetisation, bigger scale and therefore declining losses over time”.

However, he noted that a potential US recession could hit growth. “While we don’t see any noteworthy evidence of economic challenges for the year thus far, the odds have increased that challenges may be approaching - but we are well positioned to handle whatever lies ahead.”