What Drives Success for Comcast’s Universal Studios

In the first part of this series, we looked at how Comcast’s (CMCSA) fiscal 2Q17 results were strongly driven by the company’s filmed entertainment and theme parks businesses. In this part of the series, we’ll look at the key factors that are driving Comcast’s filmed entertainment business.

Comcast’s filmed entertainment business is following a franchise-focused strategy and this strategy is reaping rich dividends for the company. The company’s movie, The Fate of the Furious, from the Fast and the Furious franchise, has proven to be a big success, with the movie becoming the sixth movie in history to earn in excess of $1 billion at the international box office. The Fate of the Furious has become the third-biggest grossing-movie for the company’s Universal Studios.

Currently, Comcast owns eight franchises. The company’s acquisition of DreamWorks Animation has only helped it extend this strategy. The company believes that this franchise-focused strategy will help it to monetize the franchises effectively across its consumer products, theme parks, and television businesses, similar to The Walt Disney Company (DIS).

Other key factors that are also spelling success for the company’s film business include the company’s focus on a strategic slate of movies and making a specific number of movies each year for each genre.

The company is also marketing its movies through a global marketing team in the United States (SPY) and is distributing its movies in China (FXI) through a separate movie distribution team.

Comcast’s filmed entertainment segment had revenue of $2.1 billion, a growth of 60% YoY (year-over-year). The company’s adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) grew by $229 million YoY to $285 million.