Earnings Labs

Comcast Corporation (CMCSA)

Q4 2018 Earnings Call· Wed, Jan 23, 2019

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Comcast's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2018 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Please note that this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Finance, Mr. Jason Armstrong. Please go ahead, Mr. Armstrong.

Jason Armstrong

Management

Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone. Joining me on this morning's call are Brian Roberts, Mike Cavanagh, Steve Burke, Dave Watson and Jeremy Darroch. Brian and Mike will make formal remarks and Steve, Dave and Jeremy will also be available for Q&A. As always, let me now refer you to slide number 2, which contains our Safe Harbor disclaimer and remind you this conference call may include forward-looking statements, subject to certain risks and uncertainties. In addition, in this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our 8-K and trending schedules for the reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP. With that, let me turn the call over to Brian Roberts for his comments. Brian?

Brian Roberts

Management

Thank you, Jason and good morning, everyone. 2018 was a successful and pivotal year for Comcast capped off by an outstanding fourth quarter where we grew pro forma EBITDA by 11%. For the full year, we generated record free cash flow. We are now truly a global company with our acquisition of Sky. And as you'll hear, we had many other significant achievements route each of our businesses. This success is based on a few guiding principles. Be leaders in the markets in which we compete. Continuously improve everything so we can deliver the best products and experiences and keep building deep highly valuable recurring relationships with our customers. This is what allows us to have tremendous consistency and to think and compete for the long term. Throughout this very busy year, one of the things that stands out for me is that the team did not miss a beat and they bring us to deliver exceptional operational and financial results for the fourth quarter and 2018. So let's turn to a few of the highlights as well as some of the growth opportunities we see in the coming years. In Cable, we made a very successful transition to a connectivity centric model and that drove our fantastic performance in 2018. Strategy is clear, deliver the best products and experiences while improving our focus on keeping the customer at the center of everything we do. In the fourth quarter, customer relationships increased by 258,000 and EBITDA growth of 7.3% was the best for a fourth quarter in eight years. For the full year, we added 1 million net new customer relationships driven by our 13th consecutive year of over 1 million broadband net adds. Our connectivity businesses, residential broadband and business services in total grew revenue nearly 10% in 2018.…

Michael Cavanagh

Management

Thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin on Slides 4 and 5 with our fourth quarter and full year consolidated results. As a reminder, we completed our acquisition of Sky in the fourth quarter. As a result, our reported results include a partial quarter of Sky from October 9th, while pro forma results are resist the Sky transaction that occurred on January 1st, 2017. Revenue increased 26.1% to $27.8 billion on a reported basis and 5.2% on a pro forma basis for the fourth quarter and increased 11.1% to $94.5 billion on a reported basis and 6.4% on a pro forma basis for the full year. Adjusted EBITDA increased 21.6% to $8.2 billion on a reported basis and 11.1% on a pro forma basis for the fourth quarter and increased 7.9% to $30.2 billion on a reported basis and 4.8% on a pro forma basis for the full year. In the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA increased 7.3% at Cable, 12.3% at NBCUniversal and 8.9% at Sky on a pro forma basis or 12.4% on a constant currency basis. Adjusted earnings per share increased 36.2% to $0.64 for the quarter and 25.6% to $2.55 for the year. This growth reflects the benefit of a lower effective tax rate throughout 2018, due to Tax Reform, as well as our strong operational performance. Finally, free cash flow was $2.1 billion in the quarter and $12.6 billion for the full year. These earnings per share and free cash flow results include a partial quarter of Sky results in the fourth quarter. Now let's turn to Cable communications on Slide 6. Starting with a few highlights from Cable's results for the full year, revenue increased 3.9%, EBITDDA increased 6.5% and net cash flow increased 13.3%. Total customer relationships grew by 1 million or 3.4%…

Jason Armstrong

Management

Okay. Thanks Mike. Regina, let's open up the call for Q&A please.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jessica Reif Cohen with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

Jessica Jean Reif Cohen

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead

Thank you. I have two questions. First on direct-to-consumer, the video business has transitioned faster than I think many of the expected and your DTC service seems like an ecosystem friendly way to kind of address that. Can you talk about what the service looks like in 2020 at launch and beyond like where do you see it going, where you bring in, you know what content and/or marketing partners will you bring in? And can you talk a little bit about the financial impact in 2020, because it seems fairly low cost? And on the second question on Sky. This is the first time Sky's included in your call. Can you - Brian and Mike, you both talked about underlying opportunities at Sky, is it what's more than increasing penetration in existing in new markets and what does NBCU and Comcast Cable bring to Sky, like what can you do together that you couldn't do separately?

Steve Burke

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead

Okay. So, I will answer the first question on direct-to-consumer. First of all, we're really excited about our approach, we spent a lot of time on it and we're excited to get going in and stand up a management team and get going on entering the business. I think our excitement comes from the fact that the way that we're entering the business really addresses the real objective we have which is as viewership goes online, how do we monetize that viewership better. One of the good things about what's going on right now in the television business is people are watching professionally produced content at higher levels than ever, we're just not monetizing as well online as we should. And so what we've come up with is we're taking some of the most popular shows on television that we produce and we're going to offer them for free to 80% of the people in the United States who are multi-channel customers for free to Sky customers in Europe and also to people who are not part of the eco system at a fee that would be comparable to other people in the SVOD business. The servers will have a very light ad load of targetable ads. And we know there's a huge demand for digital advertising, interactive digital advertising. In fact, we were constantly trying to find more ad inventory because advertisers want to be in very, very good professionally produced content. So our idea to enter the business is to leverage Sky's technology, it's called NOW TV in Europe and also parts of what we've been doing at NBC and Comcast Cable. We think this approach has a much better chance to get scale quickly. There's nothing better than free for consumers and we have enough product that consumers are currently viewing on other platforms online for free and charge that we think putting it all together in one place very, very good technology and then leveraging our relationship with Comcast Cable and Sky. There are a lot of approaches to get into the market and we think this one is attractive to consumers. We also think financially it's more attractive because you get scale more quickly and we think it's highly likely that will reduce the amount of investment we need to make coming into the business and also accelerate our ability to get to breakeven. So that's what we're doing. We plan to launch in the first half of 2020 and we're spending a lot of time right now developing the technology, getting the management team in place so that we can get going soon enough.

Brian Roberts

Management

I think that's a pretty complete answer and if there's other questions on that we can come back to it. But I think we're uniquely positioned to do all the things Steve just described. I think as we look at the Sky, part of the answer just getting off the bat, it is what Steve just described, the amount of media companies and potential partners that have reached out to me and to us and to Jeremy and his team, since we announced Sky, is surprising and overwhelmingly positive in my opinion. Sky's position is just, it's quite unique So today we focused more on sort of operations which we did on the last earnings call, Jeremy you may want to talk a little bit about the specifics of some of the integration work we're doing in the early days, but at the highest level, it gives the company a reach with a very healthy business that is quite enviable and desired and that's changed the dialogue we're having with our partners and within our own company. And the first evidence of that is the global OTT that Steve just described. Jeremy, you have anything you want to add on that?

Jeremy Darroch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead

Yeah, I mean look I strongly think that Sky's business is going to be able to grow faster and further as part of the broader Comcast organization. I mean bear in mind still 78 million households just in the markets we're in, don't take pay TV. We're found by the underpenetrated markets. I think by combining overall good, means we're going to be better for customers. I think we'll able to innovate faster, we'll be able to develop better content, there's obvious areas like procurement and best practice where we can share learnings, insights on part of roadmaps. And I think all of those things overtime will come through both for customers importantly but also for shareholders. I mean we can just start to see the early wins emerging. So to give you two or three examples, we're going to be deploying xFi into Italy for our broadband launch that particularly important because the number of homes in Italy there are NBCU's all quite know housing stocks of Wi-Fi coverage in the home is a real world customer opportunity for us to improve. We really like the Comcast voice platform. We're going to be incorporating that to the Sky Q and will consolidate that and use the technology there. And as Steve mentioned, we're already sharing our expertise, a lot of the infrastructure we build for the NOW TV service here into the NBCU's OTT service launch. So these are - it's early days, only 15 weeks in, but encouraging I think we are starting to see some really important tangible evidence of working together as part of the broader group.

Jessica Reif Cohen

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Jason Armstrong

Management

Thank you, Jessica. Next question please.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Benjamin Swinburne with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Benjamin Swinburne

Analyst · Benjamin Swinburne with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead

Thank you. Good morning. Sticking with the NBC announcement, Steve when you think about particularly that business outside the United States where there as Jeremy just laid out, there's a lot of non-pay TV households. What led you to the decision to sort of bundle this or link this with the broader NBC bouquet of channels in terms of positioning it for consumers. I know it's going to be available I think for a subscription outside of the bundle, but it seems like it's positioned primarily for bundled customers and outside the U.S. the definition of the bundle gets sort of murky and Sky's been a leader in sort of offering those more skinny tailored bundles. So how do you think about this outside the U.S.? And then on the licensing side, it sounds like where we shouldn't expect the big impact of financials. I think when I add up 2018's licensing revenues at NBC, it is north of 6 billion across all your businesses and that's been a huge growth driver over the years. How do you think about pulling some of your big titles like the office back on platform overtime and why did you sort of land, where you landed on that approach?

Steve Burke

Analyst · Benjamin Swinburne with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead

So, in the United States, 80% of the addressable households are multi-channel subscribers, that's obviously not the case in many places around the world. But between the United States and Sky's footprint in the U.K., we think we should start and try to gain as much scale as possible with an ad supported free to consumer service. There will be countries where we launch. SVOD only, countries that don't have the kind of advertising ecosystem that we have in the United States or in parts of Europe, there will be places where we have different strategies and obviously or the rights we have, the shows we have will vary by country. But if you look at Comcast and Sky alone, Comcast Cable and Sky alone, you're well over 50 million customers. And so the ability have launched to have those 50 million customers, get all those great programming for free, we think not only gets us to scale but is also good for Comcast Cable and Sky. You're going to be offering a lot of good things to people who are subscribing to those services and we'll have those discussions with Charter and DIRECTV and everybody around the world that's a multichannel supplier. In terms of content and taking things that are currently licensed elsewhere and moving them to the platform, I think it's going to be very positive for us financially because in effect, we're going to be a brand new buyer. So we have long sold to everyone, we've sold to SVOD, we've sold to cable channels that we don't own and even broadcast channels that we don't own. What's our feeling is, if you're in the television business, you should work with the best people, have the best shows and sell them wherever it makes the most sense. And we'll have the same philosophy ourselves. We do feel we under monetize significantly on the Internet and we under monetize on free platforms and we also under monetize on SVOD platforms. So as more and more content becomes available, I think a lot is going to be on our platform, but we will continue to sell on other platforms depending on the show, depending on the prices that we can command for those products. And so I think it's fair to assume that when we launch, we'll have a lot of content, we have a significant amount of content to launch that will only increase overtime. But we'll go show-by-show, instance by instance and figure out what makes sense at the time those rights come back to us.

Benjamin Swinburne

Analyst · Benjamin Swinburne with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead

Thank you. That's helpful.

Jason Armstrong

Management

Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of John Hodulik with UBS. Please go ahead.

John Hodulik

Analyst · John Hodulik with UBS. Please go ahead

Great, thanks. Three question on Cable for Dave. You know lot of focus on the broadband business but the video business is holding up better than we expected, both from a subscriber and a revenue standpoint. Maybe you could just comment a little bit about what you're seeing from a competitive standpoint maybe in terms of code cutting trends as well and given the sort of higher than typical price increases we saw late and early this year, can the revenue improvement that we've seen in that line continue into 2019 versus what we saw in 2018? Thanks.

David Watson

Analyst · John Hodulik with UBS. Please go ahead

Thanks, John. Well, video remains very competitive area. And I really don't think it's going to change anytime soon. And our game plan is going to remain the same that we're going after and will attract the most profitable video customer relationships that we can. And we're going to continue to manage the shift as Brian and Mike's talked about and focusing very much on the connectivity business. But improving the connectivity business and competing, video still remains an important part of packaging. So I think the competitive environment remains challenging, we'll watch it closely. And what happens, we always make adjustments and if there are opportunities based on what the competitive landscape is then our packaging will be there to benefit from it. But our main focus is continuing to take X1 leverage that with broadband and we have other opportunities in Mobile to be able to package things. So we're really not changing our approach and it's improved. Overall the financial performance, you look at the overall customer relationships 1 million customer relationships that we've added, obviously fueled and helped by broadband. But when you couple great video with great broadband then I think that it helps us financially. And we'll see what happens in terms of video share but we're so for pleased with this quarter and can't comment too much further into next year.

Brian Roberts

Management

Let me just add that, kudos to the X1 team. I think they launched Amazon really flawlessly at year-end, Amazon Prime video following up on Netflix and YouTube. We've transformed that product every year and made it better. And at the same time, we have a disciplined under Dave's team to look for profitable video as we've made this transition. So it's this alchemy of leading with broadband now, we have way more broadband customers and we do video customers that's a huge shift in the company and we've managed that shift I think to intelligently still invest in our video business but not chase every single subscriber all the time. And I think the balance is why you see great cash flow growth, RGU growth, customer relationship growth, lowest churn, more digital interactions, less cost and free cash flow therefore growing at its best clip in a number of years. So I think it's a real balanced job and led by still a lot of passion around X1 and video.

John Hodulik

Analyst · John Hodulik with UBS. Please go ahead

Okay. Great. Thanks, guys.

Jason Armstrong

Management

Thank you, John. Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Philip Cusick with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Philip Cusick

Analyst · Philip Cusick with JPMorgan. Please go ahead

Hi, guys, thanks. Can you expand on Cable costs and margins, it looks like you did a similar price increase to last year and you've said that programming costs should again be muted. How do you think we should - how should we think about trends in non-programming OpEx for customer, are you focused on bringing those numbers down further like calls and truck rolls or is margins expansion more a function of mix shifting to broadband and business? And if all that's right, is anything else going on that would mean that margin growth at 50 basis points is the high-end versus the 80 bps you did in 2018? Thanks.

Michael Cavanagh

Management

So Phil, it's Mike. I'll start and Dave can pile on. But I think it's all in 50 basis points of margin improvement. It's some of all of the above, but I think as I've said repeatedly that Dave and team are doing the same things on an ongoing basis in terms of staying focused on non-programming expenses which is the customer experience journey which has been of great value to our customers. And so a virtuous cycle that continues to continue to make it a better more digitized experience which brings out cost in the businesses, gets reinvested in other parts of the experience. But all that's going to continue. And I think confident that non-program expenses will be managed well going forward and it's embedded in that 50 basis points of margin improvement. We said the kind of another lower year of programming expense growth as we predicted two, three years back that that would be the trend. And so again it's all in there. And there is there is a mix shift going on as you point out and the more we see a shift to connectivity, which we have in the revenue mix that's long term positive trend for the margins in the Cable business as well. And hopefully we beat our expectations like we did last year, but our expectations are 50 basis points of improvement.

Stephen Burke

Analyst · Philip Cusick with JPMorgan. Please go ahead

If I can follow-up…

Brian Roberts

Management

In addition to the connectivity focus that we have which is helps margin that helps us overall in terms of growth, they are emphasize what Brian said just the focus on packaging and going after the profitable customer relationships that we are broadband and video. And we've remained very optimistic about taking transactions out of the business, we spend a lot of time thinking about the digital experience for customers and just the best way to take out unnecessary telephone calls, truck rolls by just letting customers handle their solutions independently. So I think Mike gave the guidance in terms of expectations and margin, but extremely focused on non-programming expense.

Philip Cusick

Analyst · Philip Cusick with JPMorgan. Please go ahead

Mike, if I can follow-up. Now that Dave owns the wireless side, can we assume that those losses have probably peaked?

Michael Cavanagh

Management

We're you know at a level where we're really pleased with what we see happening in the mobility business and hence the move into the cable business. I think we've said for a while now that we're running now at a level of ads that the losses are going to be commensurate with what the ad trajectory looks like from here. So let myself get pinned down on that one but that is the two will go hand in glove with each other and we like the pace of growth that we've had in the business over the course of 2018, I think hopefully we get something similar in 2019.

Philip Cusick

Analyst · Philip Cusick with JPMorgan. Please go ahead

Thanks, guys.

Jason Armstrong

Management

Thank you, Phil. Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Rich Greenfield with BTIG. Please go ahead.

Rich Greenfield

Analyst · Rich Greenfield with BTIG. Please go ahead

Hi. Wondering about programming, so DISH dropped Univision earlier this year or late middle of last year and really hasn't seen any meaningful negative impact. We've got the RSNs from Fox which after Fox got out of buying them, looks like they're about to be orphaned. Just curious how you think about rightsizing content within the bundle to provide cheaper packages, we've seen a lot of the vMVPs with much lower cost bundles. And as you kind of have added more of these third party apps, you were just talking about Netflix, Amazon, YouTube being on the set top box, just thinking about like is there the potential to really transform programming cost or bundle dynamics over the next couple of years as deals come up?

Brian Roberts

Management

Thanks, Rich. So a couple of things. I think you raise a very good point. Our focus, we've been very disciplined in our approach to programming and how we value content and the use of data to understand this. So what goes into packaging and so that that has been something that we've been doing for several years now. That's not brand new but we're very focused on understanding the content value. The point you make in X1 is game changing in that as we look at it and we aggregate all the different apps and all the content that's available and the ability to connect all these assets through the great voice recognition capability delivered 9 billion voice commands last year. So X1 just gives a strategic flexibility with programming options. And so and we look at it very broadly that way and we provide I think the best of live, the on demand in terms of DVR and then now with all this new content that comes on, I think that just gives us the strategic flexibility. So I think it's a very good point and we look at it that way.

Jason Armstrong

Management

Thank you, Rich. Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from the line of Craig Moffett with MoffettNathanson. Please go ahead.

Craig Moffett

Analyst · MoffettNathanson. Please go ahead

Hi. Good morning. Brian, I got a strategic question for you on the wireless business. Now that you've had your wireless MVNO operating for about a year now and seem to have settled into a sort of solid growth pattern. What have you learned and how do you think about the relationship with Verizon going forward and sort of where would you like that relationship to go? And then as a related issue, how does that inform, you are thinking about the 600 megahertz spectrum that you purchased in the last auction?

Brian Roberts

Management

Well, I don't think we have any new revelations on that last part of the question on the 600 megahertz. But I think we're very pleased with the relationship with Verizon, big companies there's always going to be some issue somewhere between those one moment in time or another. But if you step back and say we've become a meaningful contributor to the wireless net adds in our markets where constantly looking to innovate the product and make sure we have the latest offerings available, sometimes we're successful that, sometimes where we're not perfect. And I think we've hit a good stride as Mike and Dave were just talking about it. So I think the strategy to become a meaningful part of some other folk's networks rather than go out and build our own very comfortable with that broad category of question. There's plenty in the detail that is always being worked on. Dave, you're closer to it. I just want to add one of the point then before that is what we learned. We've learned the wireless can really achieve what we thought, which is to reduce churn for the customers who take all our products. And if you go back to the Uber view that we're now looking for profitable relationships and make those relationships deeper, more digital, better experience and better value, wireless checks a lot of those boxes particularly on value, the way we are structured, simple offer, there is only two options, customers get it. Most of the people take by the gig and that is how our relationship with Verizon works. So it sets up economically to be some particle. And I think we're on a trajectory that we believe we can get to as we said standalone economics that support the business and we're on our way.

David Watson

Analyst · MoffettNathanson. Please go ahead

Yeah, I would add that we participate as Brian said in the mobile business and pleased with the progress that we're making. We also participate in wireless. We generate a lot of data traffic over Wi-Fi in the home, over 80% of the data traffic on smart phones is delivered through Wi-Fi. So I think we're beneficial to each other's networks in that way. We're pleased in that the reason - one of the main reasons as Brian mentioned, we looked at broadband retention. it's early days but it's working and the contribution of that when mobile consideration is people go to retail and look at other sales channels that we have and they are asking about mobile than they consider other lines of business. So all of these things are encouraging and I'm pleased with our progress.

Craig Moffett

Analyst · MoffettNathanson. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Jason Armstrong

Management

Thank you, Craig. Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Doug Mitchelson with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Doug Mitchelson

Analyst · Doug Mitchelson with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Thank you so much. Good morning. One for Steve, one for Dave. Steve, it seems like the media trends, advertising and pay TV subs are a bit better than investors might have expected. And last quarter, you mentioned that virtually MVPDs have plateaued and suggesting core kicked in commentary this quarter, pay TV sub and trends are improving suggest the offer. I just want to get my bearings on what you saw for video subscriber trends in 2018 on your fully distributed channels, since you have the broadest distribution of any media company and what you expect in 2019? And I'll just throw the question for Dave in there as well. Just any update on trends for high speed Internet subscriber growth in 2019 and the pricing environment as well. I do note in 2018, a lot of the high speed Internet customers came from single play which was different from 2017 and prior. And any thoughts as to whether that boosted growth in 2018 or whether you feel that was a pretty normal steady state type growth rate would be helpful? Thanks.

Steve Burke

Analyst · Doug Mitchelson with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

So, I think we've always felt that the television ecosystem was healthier than maybe some people thought. We really had an extraordinary television year this year we grew EBITDA by 15% which was way in excess of what we thought we would grow EBITDA and there were a whole bunch of factors in there. In terms of subscribers, we were - we had better year in terms of subscribers than we had budgeted and were entered 2019 better than we had forecast. It's very hard to predict the virtual MVPDs. If you look quarterly. The virtual MVPD growth somebody who might be the fastest growing and the first quarter might be the slowest and the second quarter as they change strategies and people figure out the market. But virtual MVPD growth was faster than we thought in 2018. At some point, we do believe it's going to slow down but we've did not - certainly did not see that in 2018. 2018 and the early part of 2019 are also very strong years for advertising. We had the strongest up front we've ever had. The network, primetime you know our ad sales were up double digits. The scatter market is extremely strong right now. So the television business you know we obviously have pressure on ratings as people migrated to digital and that's why one of the reasons why we're launching the direct-to-consumer product, but it's a very, very healthy business and we think it's going to be healthy for years to come.

David Watson

Analyst · Doug Mitchelson with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Hey, Doug, Dave. So you know thinking about broadband, you know we feel about broadband in 2019 as we have in 2018 that it's our growth engine. And you know there as Brian mentioned, there's a consistency that we have had in broadband you know the 13th year in a row consecutively delivering over 1 million net additions. And so behind that going into 2019, feel the market continues to grow, you look you look at things like homes, employment, you look at macro conditions. But just as important as anything you look at the overall market penetration of 80%, there is room for growth there, you look at our penetration you know 47%, there is absolutely room for growth there. So you know in our view is that customers' expectations you know continue to go up in terms of how they're interacting with broadband, how they're leveraging it. So you know our focus is Brian as said is deliver the very best broadband product in the marketplace and xFi is that brand, the best of speed, coverage and control. And so in 2019, we're going to continue to do that. And along with that your point on single product and packaging, we've made some adjustments along the way. I think that it's more - our game plan is consistent, will be consistent, we do offer a great options for both. And if somebody wants to start off with the high speed only, that's great, but we also have wonderful packaging options that will talk to them about. So as important as anything as you look at the balancing share growth and rate, so you look at that I feel confident as well, in 2018 you know we along with great share, we grew the resi ARPU by more than 4% year-over-year for 2018. And if you look at then combining the overall continuity business, Bryan and Mike has mention that you look at business services, you know a big part of that is broadband and resi broadband you know it's growing nearly 10%, 24 billion. So we like our momentum, we like our game plan, I think it's very consistent and we're just going to focus on execution.

Douglas Mitchelson

Analyst · Doug Mitchelson with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Thanks so much.

Jason Armstrong

Management

Great, Thank you, Doug. Regina, let's take one more question please.

Operator

Operator

Your final question will come from the line of Marci Ryvicker with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Marci Ryvicker

Analyst · Wolfe Research. Please go ahead

Thank you. I have one for Steve and then one for Mike. Steve, as you launch the OTT business, I know you're not going to have a tremendous amount of incremental investment then. But as you do, where is that going to flow through the financial, is that going to be in the separate segments, is that going to be in the studios, I guess just trying to figure out what we're looking for? And then second for Mike. You talked about healthy EBITDA growth for Sky for 2019. When you say healthy do you mean the same 2% adjusted for 2018 or are you talking more mid-single-digits, I'm just trying to understand what your messaging? Thanks.

Stephen Burke

Analyst · Wolfe Research. Please go ahead

So we currently have a several very profitable and successful television studios, cable one and a broadcast one and an international one and those studios will continue to produce for our existing channels. And increasingly over time, produce for direct-to-consumer and we will figure out the right kind of transfer pricing and margin for those services, so that everybody's to produce and continue to produce for all different outlets.

Michael Cavanagh

Management

And I am Mike. For Sky, healthy means you know really growth in customers, growth across all markets and you know growth in financial results which is better you know higher than last year is what I would say healthy is mid-single-digits is a fair you know level to think about. And I did point out that will be more back and waited for the reasons I have mentioned earlier just sports rights you know coming, reset for Italy in August of last year, so we'll have to in the second half of the year we'll lap that and we'll see the improved rates for Premier League and the UK business kick in in the second half. So we'll achieve that healthy growth over the course of the year with back half lighter and back end second half heavier.

Brian Roberts

Management

So let me just end the call by saying really how please we were at 2018 and we're off to a great start in 2019. I think just that last answer that Mike gave, we look at Sky as really unique, it's different than Cable and it's taking all of us time to understand those differences and the same thing, it's got the content company and it's covers the entire footprint where it offers its product. So as it renegotiates, it's probably got different characteristics than either of our two businesses. But I think you're going to like what you see and it's going to add to our capabilities worldwide. And those capabilities really do come together I think in the OTT announcement just to pick that as an example because not only will it draw out the best of our content creation capabilities whether that's in film or television, whether that's original or you know recurring series, it needs broadband to get the great capabilities of that streaming service and that's the core of where the cable companies focused. As we discuss this morning and that broadband had a fantastic 2018. And xFi has a roadmap of innovation unto itself in 2019 and beyond which is as exciting as what we've done previously on great speed and now we're looking at other ways. And all this takes advantage of X1 and Q which are the best capabilities in the world in what we do. We can always do better, we had 500 engineers meeting yesterday in our new Technology Center and we've just got a real you know I think credibility in the technology space now to keep innovating. And it all comes back to what we give our customers and we see how well Sky's performance has been and customer experience and NPS make great progress on the cable side taking truck rolls out and calls as we've heard NPS performance improvement. So all in all you know that's what's giving us the confidence to raise the dividend and to start 2019 off to a great start. So thank you to the team.

Jason Armstrong

Management

Thank you everyone for joining us today. Regina, we'll end the call there.

Operator

Operator

There will be a replay available of today's call starting at 12 o'clock p.m. Eastern Time. It will run through Wednesday, January 30th at midnight Eastern Time. The dial-in number is 855-859-2056 and the conference ID number is 6837336. A recording of the conference call will also be available on the company's website beginning at 12 30 p.m. Eastern Time today. This concludes today's teleconference and thank you for joining. You may all disconnect.