Comcast Corporation (CMCSA): what the price requires
The current priced-in claim for Comcast Corporation (CMCSA) is temporarily suppressed because the live engine record is unavailable. The dated report remains a snapshot, not a current market read.
Generated: 2026-07-13 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/CMCSA
Headline
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Ticker | CMCSA |
| Company | Comcast Corporation |
| Current price | $23.98/sh |
| Composition | Domestic broadband 21% / Domestic wireless 4% / International connectivity 4% / Video 21% / Advertising (Residential Connectivity & Platforms) 3% / Other (Residential Connectivity & Platforms) 4% / Total Business Services Connectivity Segment 8% / Domestic advertising (Media) 7% / Domestic distribution (Media) 9% / International networks (Media) 4% / Other (Media) 2% / Content licensing (Studios) 7% / Theatrical (Studios) 1% / Other (Studios) 1% / Total Theme Parks Segment 8% / Other revenue 3% / Eliminations -7% |
What The Price Requires (Inversion)
The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Inversion basis | whole-company |
| Operating margin needed | 10.9% |
| Operating margin today | 17.4% |
| Margin compression implied | -6.5pp |
| Multiple paid | 8x operating income |
The operating-margin requirement is derived from the framework's value band at year 12, a separately labeled basis from the headline growth/duration solve.
The price sits below what even a 5%/yr operating-profit decline would warrant; the inversion reports a bound, not a solved growth path.
Solve inputs: computed at a 7% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage (computed at the 7% minimum rate; the CAPM rate 5.8% sits below it).
How unusual the bet is: within-range
| Reference | Value |
|---|---|
| vs own history | -1.15σ |
| cohort percentile (of 32 peers) | 9 |
| implied end-window share | 0% |
Valuation X-Ray
The price is supported by asset-based and earnings-power and relative-multiple and growth-DCF value. A value/asset-supported name, not a pure growth bet.
How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.
| Family | Median price/FV | Models | Reads |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asset | 0.83x | 5 | justifies |
| Earnings | 0.41x | 5 | justifies |
| Relative | 0.34x | 5 | justifies |
| Growth | 0.55x | 4 | justifies |
Families that justify the price: Asset, Earnings, Relative, Growth
The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 9.6%); the inversion above states its own rate.
Per-Model Detail (n=19)
| Model | Family | FV | Price/FV | Applicable | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DCF Perpetual Growth | Growth | $70.50 | 0.34x | yes | FCF base $20.4B, growth 1% (input: historical growth), terminal g 1.5%, WACC 9.6%, 5yr projection |
| DCF Exit Multiple | Growth | $39.29 | 0.61x | yes | Exit EV/EBITDA: 4.0x / 2.3x / 4.3x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 5yr |
| Relative Valuation | Relative | $38.45 | 0.62x | yes | P/E 10x (sector median), scenarios: 8.4x / 10.0x / 11.6x (bear / base = sector held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 5.13x |
| Simple DDM | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Two-Stage DDM | Growth | $48.94 | 0.49x | yes | Stage 1: 20% for 5yr, Stage 2: 3.5% perpetual |
| Simple Excess Return | Asset | $27.31 | 0.88x | yes | BV/sh $24.41, ROE (TTM) 10.4%, ke 9.3% |
| Two-Stage Excess Return | Asset | $28.84 | 0.83x | yes | 5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3% |
| Discounted Future Market Cap | Growth | $16.25 | 1.48x | yes | Rev $125.3B, growth 1% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 0.6x / 0.7x / 0.8x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 8x) |
| Peter Lynch Fair Value | Relative | $72.62 | 0.33x | yes | EPS $2.43, growth 30% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=0.32 (Undervalued) |
| Margin Trajectory | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Earnings Power Value | Earnings | $44.42 | 0.54x | yes | Normalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $20.25B × (1−26%) / WACC 9.6% → EPV (no growth) |
| Residual Income | Asset | $29.12 | 0.82x | yes | BV $24.41 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 10.4% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 6.7%/yr |
| Graham Number | Asset | $36.54 | 0.66x | yes | √(22.5 × EPS $2.43 × BVPS $24.41) — Graham's conservative floor |
| EV/EBITDA Relative | Relative | $69.59 | 0.34x | yes | EBITDA $35.38B × sector EV/EBITDA 7.0x |
| FCF Yield | Earnings | $62.07 | 0.39x | yes | FCF $20391.0M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity |
| SBC-Adj FCF Yield | Earnings | $58.09 | 0.41x | yes | SBC-adj FCF $19.06B (FCF $20.39B − SBC $1.33B) capitalized at Kₑ |
| Ben Graham Formula | Earnings | $78.46 | 0.31x | yes | EPS $2.43 × (8.5 + 2×15.0%) × (4.4 / 5.3%) |
| ROIC-Justified P/B | Asset | $9.27 | 2.59x | yes | BV $24.41 × (ROIC 3.6% / WACC 9.6%) |
| P/Sales Sector | Relative | $41.56 | 0.58x | yes | Revenue $125.28B × sector P/S 1.2x |
| PEG Fair Value | Relative | $91.18 | 0.26x | yes | EPS $2.43 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 25.0% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 37.5x |
| Earnings Yield | Earnings | $26.29 | 0.91x | yes | EPS $2.43 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%) |
| Funds From Operations Multiple | Relative | — | — | no | — |
| Clinical Phase NPV | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Merton | Asset | — | — | no | — |
| V5 Mechanical | — | — | — | no | — |
Solvency
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Net debt | $90.5b |
| Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax) | 5.72x |
| Net debt / operating income (pre-tax) | 4.25x |
| Interest coverage | 4.9x |
| Share count CAGR (buyback) | -7.1% |
| Burning cash | no |
Bullet Takeaways
- Comcast is built on a broadband network that throws off enormous cash, paired with a wireless business growing fast, theme parks, and an entertainment arm spanning NBCUniversal studios and Peacock.
- The market is treating it as a melting asset: at roughly eight times operating income and below its own book value of about $24 a share, the price sits lower than even a modest ongoing profit decline would warrant.
- The fork to watch is broadband: net subscriber losses narrowed to 65,000 in the first quarter, the first year-over-year improvement since 2020, but fiber and fixed-wireless competition is the structural pressure that decides whether the cash machine holds.
Bull Case
The bull case for Comcast rests on a moat the price has stopped believing in: the broadband network. Owning the wire into tens of millions of homes is one of the better businesses in the economy, because once the cable is in the ground the incremental cost of carrying another gigabit is small and the customer relationship is sticky. That shows up in the numbers, a trailing operating margin above 15% on $125 billion of revenue and free cash flow north of $20 billion. The company converts that cash into capital return at scale, returning roughly $5.3 billion through buybacks and nearly $5.0 billion through dividends in 2025, and shrinking its share count by more than 5% a year, which means each remaining share owns a steadily larger slice of the cash machine.
The growth inside the conglomerate is more than the broadband story suggests. Wireless is the standout: Comcast added a record 435,000 wireless lines in the first quarter, reaching about 16% penetration of its residential broadband base, by reselling network capacity it does not have to build, a high-incremental-margin add-on to an existing customer relationship. Peacock is climbing toward profitability, adding 2 million subscribers to reach 46 million with revenue up more than 70%, and management guided it to approach breakeven. The theme parks, anchored by the new Epic Universe, are a differentiated experiential asset; Disney, the dominant peer, describes the same experiences-and-content model, and Comcast is investing into it rather than harvesting it.
The valuation is the bull's strongest single point, because the market is pricing Comcast for decline that the recent data does not yet show. The price sits below book value and at roughly eight times operating income, in the lower half of its peer range, with essentially every valuation method, asset value, earnings power, peer multiples, and even forward growth, landing above the price. The broadband subscriber trend just improved year over year for the first time since 2020, wireless is accelerating, and the Versant spin-off of the declining linear-cable networks, completed at the start of 2026, leaves a cleaner business of connectivity, parks, and streaming for the market to value. A buyer at this price is paying a single-digit multiple for a cash-generative network franchise that is still growing its best segments. That is the gap the bull points at.
Bear Case
The structural pressure that defines the bear case is competition for the broadband customer, and it is intensifying from two directions at once. Fiber overbuilders are wiring Comcast's footprint with a technically superior product, and the wireless carriers are selling fixed-wireless home internet that did not exist as a real alternative a few years ago. T-Mobile, one of those competitors, tells its own investors that "continuous innovation in products and services, are essential for retaining and expanding our customer base" and that it will keep investing heavily in spectrum to do it. That is the competitor describing the war it intends to wage on Comcast's most profitable product. The first-quarter improvement in broadband losses to 65,000 was real, but over half of it came from one-time promotions tied to the Olympics and Super Bowl, not from a durable reversal, so the structural question is open.
The pieces around broadband carry their own pressures. Video continues its secular decline as cord-cutting grinds on. Peacock is still losing money, with an EBITDA loss of $432 million in the quarter on peak sports-rights costs, and streaming profitability for everyone depends on content spending that is hard to contain; Disney notes that sports advertising revenue "are subject to changes in viewership levels and the demand for sports programming", a variability that cuts against the media segment's earnings reliability. The theme parks are cyclical and consumer-discretionary, exposed to any slowdown in travel spending. None of these is a crisis on its own, but together they mean the conglomerate's growth depends on wireline broadband and wireless carrying segments that are flat to declining.
The balance sheet is the amplifier that turns slow decline into a real risk. Comcast carries about $90 billion of net debt, nearly five times trailing operating income, against only about $9 billion of liquid assets, and interest coverage of roughly four times is adequate but not generous for a business facing competitive pressure on its core cash generator. The debt is serviceable as long as broadband cash flow holds; it becomes a constraint if subscriber losses reaccelerate and the metal of the business, free cash flow, thins. The market's sub-book, single-digit-multiple valuation is the tell: it is not mispricing a hidden gem so much as pricing the real risk that a leveraged broadband incumbent slowly loses share to better-funded and technically superior competitors. The bear case is not collapse; it is that cheap can stay cheap while the moat erodes.
Valuation
Comcast is a value situation on every method, which makes the interesting question not whether it is cheap but why the market insists on pricing it that way. At roughly eight times operating income and below its own book value of about $24 a share, the price sits in the lower half of its peer range and below what even a modest ongoing decline in operating profit would warrant. working the price backward frames this as a bound: the market is already discounting the cash flows toward a shrinking future. The cheapness is not the opportunity by itself; the durability of the cash flow is the question the cheapness is asking.
The method families agree to an unusual degree, and the agreement is the signal. The asset-based methods, anchored on book value and a return on equity around 10%, land near or modestly above the price. The earnings-power methods, capitalizing roughly $20 billion of free cash flow, land well above it. The peer-multiple methods, on a sector earnings multiple near 10 times, land above it. Even the forward-growth methods, crediting only low single-digit growth, mostly reach or exceed the price. When every family says cheap on a business that genuinely generates the cash the methods capitalize, the market is making a judgment the models cannot: that the broadband cash flow is at structural risk from fiber and fixed-wireless competition, and that the conglomerate's slower-growth media and parks segments do not offset it. The methods value the cash; the market doubts its durability.
Solvency is where the value read meets its discipline. Net debt of about $90 billion against $9 billion of liquid assets, near five times operating income with interest covered about four times, is serviceable on today's cash flow but leaves less room than the peer-multiple cheapness implies. The offset is capital return: the share count is falling more than 5% a year and the dividend is well covered, so the company is actively converting its cash into per-share value while it can. The Versant spin-off of the declining linear networks cleans the picture for valuing the connectivity-and-experiences core. The decisive variable is broadband net additions; if the first-quarter improvement proves durable rather than promotional, the methods' verdict that the stock is cheap becomes the right one, and if it does not, the leverage is the reason the discount persists.
Catalysts
The catalyst that matters most is the broadband subscriber trend. The first quarter brought net broadband losses of 65,000, an improvement of 117,000 year over year and the first such improvement since late 2020, though management acknowledged that over half of it came from one-time promotions tied to the Olympics and Super Bowl. Whether the next few quarters show organic stabilization or a return to losses is the single most important read on the entire thesis.
Wireless and streaming are the growth catalysts. Comcast added a record 435,000 wireless lines in the quarter at about 16% penetration of its broadband base, and Peacock reached 46 million subscribers with revenue up more than 70% while management guided it to approach profitability for the first time in the following quarter. The inflection to Peacock breakeven would remove a persistent drag on consolidated earnings, and continued wireless momentum is high-margin growth layered on the existing customer base.
The structural catalyst already landed: the spin-off of Versant Media, Comcast's linear cable networks, completed on January 2, 2026, separating the fastest-declining piece so the market can value the connectivity, parks, and entertainment businesses on their own terms. Capital return continues alongside, with the annual dividend at $1.32 per share and ongoing buybacks. Analyst sentiment is mixed but has improved at the margin, with a Hold consensus and targets ranging from the low $30s into the $50s, and BofA upgrading to Buy with a target of $37 in January, a spread that reflects exactly the broadband-durability debate the catalysts will settle.
Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)
Residential Connectivity & Platforms / Business Services Connectivity (reported)
- T (AT&T INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- VZ (VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- TMUS (T-Mobile US, Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- CHTR (Charter Communications, Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
Media / Studios (reported)
- NFLX (Netflix, Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- DIS (WALT DISNEY CO/)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- WBD (Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- FOXA (FOX CORPORATION)
- (no filing in the citation store)
Theme Parks (reported)
- CHTR (Charter Communications, Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- WBD (Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- LILA (Liberty Latin America Ltd.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- LBTYA (Liberty Global Ltd.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- ROKU (Roku, Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- ADEA (Adeia Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
Methodology Note
- Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
- Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
- Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
- Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.
Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.
Sources
Q1 2026 earnings release and call · Q1 2026 earnings release · company spin-off disclosure, January 2026 · analyst notes, 2026