Wide Lens: Comcast Stresses Big Picture View

What some industry analysts deem old news or unsurprising—namely Comcast’s lowered ’07 guidance—was not similarly accepted on Wall St. Instead, the notion compelled investors to dump the MSO’s stock, sending it down 12.3% on Wed to a 52-week low of $18.18. Although much of the sell-off occurred overnight, upbeat comments made early Wed by Comcast evp/co-CFO Michael Angelakis at the UBS conference did little to stem the negative tide. “Nothing goes straight up for perpetuity, but you’ve got to keep it in context,” he said. “The plan that we have [going forward] is a double-digit revenue, OCF and free cash flow plan.” Unfortunately, cable investors have recently opted to overlook these metrics to focus primarily on video results. Echoing COO Steve Burke‘s comments from last month, Angelakis said competition, particularly from Verizon, has coalesced with the shaky economy to exert pressure on the MSO. “We will lose video share over the next couple of years, [but] we will fight in the streets for customer retention,” said Angelakis. But he said there’s still “a lot of headroom” in the HSD and VoIP markets. And he noted fresh revenue streams from non-video customers and commercial services, which alone generated $100mln in 3Q revenue. “Our business is diversifying and it will diversify over time,” he said. Perhaps to that point, Citi and Bear Stearns maintained price targets on the MSO’s shares of $33 and $28, respectively. “Comcast’s new financial guidance is generally right in line with our current expectations,” wrote Bear Stearns’ Spencer Wang. “We continue to view [Comcast’s] risk/reward as attractive.”