Comcast Meets Profit Target, Beats on Revenues

Comcast reported quarterly earnings Friday that beat analyst estimates for revenue and met expectations for bottom-line profit.

Comcast Meets Profit Target, Beats on Revenues
Getty Images

After the earnings announcement, the company's shares ose nearly 2 ercent in pre-market trading. (Click here to get real-time quotes for Comcast.)

The company posted third-quarter earnings excluding items of 46 cents per share, up from 33 cents a share in the year-earlier period.

Revenue increased to $16.54 billion from $14.34 billion a year ago.

Analysts had expected the company to report earnings excluding items of 46 cents a share on $16.05 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.

Revenue was boosted thanks to the success of the London Olympics games, a gain in Internet subscribers as well as $1.2 billion from the NBC Universal unit. (Read More: Jamie Dimon: CEOs Already Cutting Back Due to 'Fiscal Cliff')

The Olympics helped push NBC revenue more than 30 percent.

The strong ratings performance over the summer means Comcast will at least break even on its $1.18 billion deal for Olympics broadcast rights, while analysts had initially expected it to lose money from the agreement.

Revenue in Comcast's cable unit rose 7 percent to $9.97 billion. The company lost 117,000 video customers, which beat StreetAccount estimates of a loss of 133,000. Its 287,000 new Internet customers also beat expectations.

Average revenue per video customer rose about 9 percent to $150.73 as more subscribers bought pricier products, such as high-definition digital recorder devices.

Disclosure: Comcast is the majority owner of NBC Universal, the parent company of CNBC and CNBC.com.

Reuters contributed to this report.