Comcast has reported double-digit growth in Q1 results, driven by its takeover of Sky. Revenues were up 17.9 per cent to $26.86 billion (€24.1bn), and adjusted EBITDA increased 18.1 per cent to $8.55 billion.

Comcast said it had a strong start to the year, helped by the best EBITDA result at its core cable business in the US in a decade. Including Sky, customer grew by 3.6 per cent year-over-year, including 400,000 net additions in the first quarter, to reach over 54 million relationships in total. On a prof forma basis, revenues were still down 3.3 percent, mainly due to lower NBCUniversal results after the Olympics and Super Bowl in Q1 2018 and negative currency effects on Sky revenues.

At the US cable business, quarterly revenues rose 4.2 per cent to $14.28 billion, driven by continued growth in business services and broadband customers, price increases, licensing of the X1 platform and expansion in security and automation services. Adjusted EBITDA rose 9.8 per cent to $5.73 billion.

At Sky, pro forma revenues fell 5 per cent to $4.8 billion, but the figure was up 1.9 percent on a constant currency basis. Adjusted EBITDA fell 17 per cent to $663 million and was down 11.3 percent excluding forex effects. This was due to a 4.4 per cent increase in operating costs driven by new contracts for Serie A and Champions League soccer rights in Italy and Germany. Sky added a net 112,000 customers in Q1, better than the 38,000 a year ago, for a total of 23.712 million at the end of June.

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