Intellectual Property Law

Comcast CFO: We're a Resilient Business

By Cynthia Brumfield

(Taking a break from my obsession with Wall Street. Que sera, sera.)

The media industry titans are all lined up to speak this week at Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in New York and given the credit crisis, the mood is decidedly subdued. First up at the event this morning was Comcast CFO Michael Angelakis (webcast here), who reassured investors that the nation's number one cable company is relatively insulated from the market and economic gyrations.

"We have a very resilient business," Angelakis said, referring to the recession. "I think we have a pretty rock solid business" in terms of growth opportunities with not a lot of risk.

The credit crisis "doesn't impact us dramatically" although "it's a scary world out there," he said. Comcast has credit lines, insurance policies and interest rate hedge investments that are pretty stable, Angelakis said, so the company thinks it's on firm footing in the event of an economic meltdown.

On the wireless front, Angelakis offered this bit of insight: Comcast will probably not build out the AWS spectrum it purchased in 2006 as part of a cable consortium that bid on the licenses. Comcast's share of the $4.2 billion tab was around $1.9 billion, and based on what Angelakis said, the operator could flip the spectrum for a profit.

"We have no intention of building that out right now," he said, referring to the AWS spectrum. "If our Clearwire strategy [Comcast's participation in a joint venture with Clearwire, Google and a group of fellow cable companies] is successful, we'll look at whether we will build that out. It may just be an excess asset that we don't really need."

In terms of the Clearwire effort, the main focus right now is to actually close the joint venture. Otherwise, "it?s still early days and we?re working well with our partners," Angelakis said.

Full post as published by IP Democracy on September 17, 2008 (boomark / email).