Comcast's fourth quarter of 2025 closed an investment-heavy year, with total revenue up 1% but adjusted EBITDA down 10% and adjusted EPS down 12% as the broadband go-to-market pivot and the full first-year cost of the new NBA contract weighed on results. Broadband lost 181,000 subscribers while wireless capped its strongest year ever (~1.5 million net lines for 2025) and theme park EBITDA crossed $1 billion in a quarter for the first time. The company generated a record $19.2 billion of full-year free cash flow and completed the Versant Media spin-off on January 2nd.
Thank you, Operator, and welcome, everyone. Joining us on today's call are Brian Roberts, Mike Cavanagh, Jason Armstrong, and Steve Croney. I will now refer you to slide two of the presentation accompanying this call, which can also be found on our Investor Relations website and which contains our safe harbor disclaimer. This conference call may include forward-looking statements subject to certain risks and uncertainties. In addition, during this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please see our 8-K and trending schedule issued earlier this morning for the reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brian.
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Before I turn the call over to Mike and Jason to walk you through our results, I wanted to take a moment to say a few words about the team and the year ahead. We're at an inflection point, both in our industry and at Comcast. The business is changing rapidly, competition has never been more intense, and the choices we're making right now matter. I feel very good about how we're positioned, and it really starts with our leadership. Steve Croney joins us for the first time on this call today. From day one running this business, he's challenged long-held assumptions and moved quickly to reset priorities around actions that will drive growth. We spent time last week at Steve's leadership meeting where he brought together the entire team following a major reorganization.
Coming out of that, my confidence has only increased. There's a clear sense of focus and urgency. Everyone understands the priorities and is moving with speed and purpose. I think you'll enjoy meeting Steve today for those that don't know him. As Mike starts this year as co-CEO, I could not be more excited about him stepping into his role. We've worked side by side for a long time, and he brings an exceptional combination of strategic clarity and operating discipline. As we continue to pivot the company towards our six growth drivers, Mike is leading the strategy and execution of that shift. As we look ahead to the upcoming Winter Olympics, we're excited about the prospects for Team USA, but more importantly, we're reminded of the power of shared moments to bring people together across the globe.
Like so many, I'm heartbroken by the tragic events of recent weeks, and our thoughts are with the families and communities that have been deeply impacted. In a time of profound division, we hope the Olympic Games can offer a moment of connection for our country and for people everywhere. Now, I'd like to turn it over to you, Mike.
Thanks, Brian. 2025 was a year of meaningful progress for us. We moved with urgency to make decisive management, operational, and structural changes, resetting how we run our businesses and how we compete, all with a clear focus on positioning the company for sustained growth. A key step in that effort was appointing Steve Croney as CEO of Connectivity and Platforms, and I couldn't be more pleased to have him leading that business. Under Steve's leadership, we've made the most significant go-to-market shift in our company's history. We've simplified our broadband offering by moving away from short-term promotions toward a clear, transparent value proposition. Customers now choose from four nationwide speed tiers with straightforward, all-in pricing that includes our best-in-class gateway and unlimited data, along with a five-year price guarantee that brings predictability and removes long-standing complexity from the category.
We also strengthened our wireless approach with new offers tailored to different customer segments, from Premium Unlimited plans for higher-value households to a 12-month free line promotion designed to increase mobile awareness and attachment. At the same time, we began to simplify the overall customer experience with faster access to live agents, easier digital buy flows and activation, and same-day delivery. Those changes are beginning to show up in customer behavior. Voluntary churn continues to trend lower. NPS is moving in the right direction. Adoption of the 5-year price guarantee remains strong, and gig speed sell-in has improved meaningfully with approximately 40% of the base on Gig+ tiers. We've also expanded the use of simplified market-based pricing and retention, including broader deployment of new everyday pricing. Refreshed packaging is driving higher Xfinity Gateway attachment, enabling a more differentiated in-home experience with better streaming performance and lower latency.
Turning to wireless, I'm pleased to share that we've modernized our MVNO partnership with Verizon, supporting continued profitable growth for Comcast, Charter, and Verizon. With these enhancements, we have an even stronger relationship with Verizon to enable our customers to have a world-class experience. With the addition of T-Mobile as a network partner for our business customers later in the year, we continue to have a capital-efficient mobile platform with a cost structure that supports a durable and growing convergence value proposition for our customers. Wireless continues to be a powerful driver of that convergence strategy, and 2025 was our strongest year yet. We added approximately 1.5 million net lines, ending the year with over 9 million total lines and roughly 15% penetration of our residential broadband base.
That performance reinforces wireless as a key growth engine for the company while also strengthening customer relationships and lifetime value across our connectivity portfolio. Even as wireless competition intensifies, our broadband scale, industry-leading Wi-Fi, and improving offers position us well to grow wireless profitably while maintaining a disciplined long-term approach. Finally, we continue to make substantial progress on our network upgrade with roughly 60% of the footprint now transitioned to mid-split spectrum and a virtualized architecture. We're already seeing benefits from greater automation and the deployment of AI across the network to optimize the end-to-end customer experience. Our investments are delivering tangible operating benefits, including a 20% reduction in trouble calls and a 35% reduction in repair minutes where we've deployed FDX technology. 2025 also marked great progress across content and experiences.
At Parks, the opening of Epic Universe is already acting as a catalyst across Orlando, driving longer stays, higher per-cap spending, and increased demand across our parks and hotels, reinforcing the attractive returns we see from continued investment in this business. In media, we've made meaningful progress at Peacock, improving EBITDA losses by approximately $700 million for the year, and we're pleased with the successful launch of the NBA on NBC and Peacock late in the year, which is delivering strong viewership while expanding reach and engagement across our platforms. We strengthened our content pipeline with a long-term creative partnership with Taylor Sheridan, adding premium franchise-scale film and television IP.
And finally, we've completed the spin of Versant Media, creating a focused, well-capitalized public company while enabling NBCUniversal to concentrate on driving profitability in our media business, powered by best-in-class live sports, entertainment, and news across NBC, Peacock, and Bravo. Looking ahead, 2026 is about building on the changes we made in 2025 and advancing the next phase of our plan centered on levers that matter most. Our priorities in connectivity and platforms are clear: position the business for a return to growth, deepen convergence through wireless, and fully leverage our network leadership across residential and business services. This will be the largest broadband investment year in our history, focused squarely on customer experience and simplification, with the goal of migrating the majority of residential broadband customers to our new simplified pricing and packaging by year-end.
In wireless, we expect a meaningful portion of customers currently taking a free line to transition to paid relationships in the second half of the year as engagement deepens and customers experience the value of the product consistent with the progression we've seen over time. We'll further simplify activation and service interactions with a focus on reducing call-ins, improving first contact resolution, and shortening speed to service. We'll also lean into our network leadership as we complete upgrades across most of the footprint and start marketing multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds and their differentiated capabilities, creating opportunities to move customers into higher-value tiers over time. And in Comcast Business, we'll remain focused on stabilizing small business while accelerating growth in mid-market and enterprise, where demand for advanced, secure, and scalable connectivity continues to increase. 2026 will also be a defining year for content and experiences.
It marks NBCUniversal's 100th anniversary, a century of leadership in broadcast and live storytelling, and a year in which NBCUniversal will deliver roughly 40% of the industry's major live events, bringing the biggest moments in media to audiences at scale. Sports remains one of our most durable strengths, with the full breadth of that portfolio on display, beginning with legendary February featuring the Super Bowl on NBC and Peacock, followed by the Winter Olympics in Milan and the NBA All-Star Game, all sold out. Later in the year, Major League Baseball returns to NBC and Peacock under a new agreement, followed by the World Cup on Telemundo. And at Peacock, we expect another year of meaningful EBITDA improvement as we continue progressing toward break-even, even as we absorb the NBA rights.
Our studio slate remains exceptional, led by The Odyssey from Christopher Nolan, the Super Mario Galaxy movie and Minions 3 from Chris Meledandri, and Disclosure Day from Steven Spielberg. At Parks, 2026 marks the first full year of Epic Universe, alongside the opening of Universal Kids Resort in Frisco, Texas, the debut of our first outdoor roller coaster at Universal Studios Hollywood, and groundbreaking on our new Universal Resort in the U.K. So to wrap up, my focus remains squarely on growth. We've been consistent in investing behind the six growth engines that define our future while protecting one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry and returning substantial capital to shareholders. We like the position of both of our major businesses.
Our broadband network and products are best in class, our customer experience keeps improving, and as the market shifts to multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds, we're well positioned to grow. We have the best hand in convergence, combining broadband leadership with a differentiated, capitalized mobile business, and we're the market leader with small businesses and the fastest-growing provider in mid-market and enterprise. On the media side, we operate world-class theme Parks and Studios, and we're scaling a streaming platform that runs in concert with our television business, delivering unmatched sports, news, and entertainment. Taken together, we feel very good about where we're positioned with the right assets, the right strategy, and the financial strength to perform through cycles and create long-term value. With that, I'll turn it over to Jason.
Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with a high-level overview of our consolidated results and then get into more detail on our businesses. Total company revenue grew 1% in the fourth quarter, benefiting from strength across our six growth businesses, which collectively represents 60% of our revenue, and grew at a mid-single-digit rate. Notably, theme parks, Peacock, and domestic wireless, three of our six key growth drivers, each grew revenue right around 20%. As we previewed, we are in an investment period. We're pivoting in the broadband business through changes to packaging and pricing and significant investments in the customer experience, all designed to stabilize our base and subsequently grow revenue in the category again. We are also absorbing the full cost of the first year of the new NBA contract in our content and experiences segment and expect that to scale over time.
As a result, Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter declined 10%, and adjusted earnings per share declined 12%. We generated $4.4 billion of free cash flow in the quarter, which includes about $2 billion of a cash tax benefit related to an internal corporate reorganization. Recall, we received the P&L benefit associated with this in last year's fourth quarter, and at the time mentioned that the cash benefit from this would occur in 2025. So this quarter's free cash flow includes the benefit of that. Finally, during the quarter, we returned $2.7 billion to shareholders, including $1.5 billion in share repurchases. Now turning to our businesses, starting with connectivity and platforms. The competitive environment for broadband remains intense, similar to prior quarters, while we saw wireless competition step up towards the end of the fourth quarter.
Against that backdrop, we continue to advance our new go-to-market strategy we launched earlier this year. While it's still early, we remain encouraged by what we're seeing, including lower voluntary churn, strong adoption of our five-year price guarantee, a significant improvement in take rates of Gig+ speeds, and continued uptake of free wireless lines. We remain focused on transitioning the majority of our customer base to simplified market-based pricing plans, and importantly, prioritizing getting to the other side of this transition as quickly as possible. As we have highlighted, this pivot comes with an investment. That includes rate reinvestment through simplified broadband pricing and offering free wireless lines, which impact near-term revenue, as well as higher operating costs tied to customer experience initiatives.
These dynamics were reflected in the quarter through dilution to broadband ARPU growth and elevated marketing, product, and customer service expenses, contributing to the 4.5% decline in connectivity and platforms EBITDA. As we have said before, as we continue to invest through this transition, we expect incremental EBITDA pressure over the next couple of quarters until we begin to lap these initial investments in the second half of 2026. As we move past this investment period, we will have the vast majority of our base on new pricing and packaging for broadband. We'll have a much higher percentage of our customers on Gig+ speed plans, which are substantially differentiated from fixed wireless and satellite offerings, and we'll have a large base of free wireless customers moving into paying relationships with us. All tailwinds to our business at that point, which will better position us for long-term growth.
Now let me get into some more details of the quarter, starting with broadband. Subscriber losses were 181,000, as the early traction we're seeing from our new initiatives was more than offset by continued competitive intensity. Broadband ARPU grew 1.1%, slight growth, but consistent with the deceleration that we had previewed, reflecting our new go-to-market pricing, including lower everyday pricing and strong adoption of free wireless lines. Looking ahead, we expect further ARPU pressure for the next couple of quarters, driven by the absence of rate increase, the impact from free wireless lines, and the ongoing migration of our base to simplified pricing. At the same time, convergence revenue grew 2% in the quarter, driven by 18% growth in wireless. We added 364,000 wireless lines, and similar to last quarter, nearly half of our residential postpaid connects came from customers taking a free line.
Our free line strategy is a logical and, importantly, a rational competitive approach from us. It adds value to our core broadband product, builds familiarity in a tough-to-penetrate wireless market, and will convert to a paying relationship after one year in a product category where we are firmly profitable and one which delivers strong bundling benefits to our core broadband business. We also continue to see a strong uptake of our Premium Unlimited plans, further strengthening our position in the higher-value postpaid market. In total, we now have over 9 million wireless lines, with penetration of our residential broadband base above 15%. While the wireless environment has become more competitive, we remain confident in our strategy. Our converged offerings continue to deliver meaningful savings versus comparable plans from our competitors, reinforcing the value proposition we deliver to our customers.
Looking ahead to the second half of 2026, we expect to convert the vast majority of free lines into paying relationships, which in turn should provide a meaningful tailwind to convergence revenue growth. Turning to business services, revenue increased 6%, and EBITDA grew 3% in the quarter. Results continue to reflect the dynamic we've been seeing for several quarters, with modest revenue growth in our small and medium business segment and strong momentum at our enterprise solutions business. In SMB, competitive intensity remains elevated, particularly from fixed wireless, but we're driving higher ARPU through increased adoption of advanced services, including cybersecurity and Comcast Business Mobile. Enterprise solutions continue to gain traction as we expand our customer base and deepen our relationships. This remains an area of investment and an important growth driver going forward.
In addition, in 2026, we look forward to expanding our business mobile relationships through our T-Mobile and Verizon. In content and experiences, there are a few items I'd like to highlight. At Theme Parks, we delivered another strong set of results, with growth accelerating in the fourth quarter. Revenue increased 22%, and EBITDA grew 24%, with EBITDA crossing the billion-dollar level for the first time. This performance was driven by strong results at Universal Orlando. We're really pleased with what we're seeing from Epic, which continues to drive higher per-cap spending and attendance across the entirety of the resort. While we're not yet operating at full run rate capacity, we've made meaningful progress expanding ride throughput, and we remain focused on scaling further over the next several quarters, with higher attendance, stronger per-caps, and additional operating leverage over time.
At Studios, we've had great success with the Wicked franchise, which has now grossed well over $1 billion worldwide. Our overall results reflect tough comparisons to last year's film slate, the timing of content licensing deals, and higher marketing spend associated with the higher volume of films this year. Turning to media, we successfully completed our spin-off of Versant Media on January 2nd, after the quarter close, so our fourth quarter results still reflect a full quarter of ownership. We will provide pro forma trending schedules, excluding Versant Media, ahead of our first quarter earnings to help with comparability in forecasting as we go forward. Media revenue increased 6% in the fourth quarter, primarily driven by Peacock.
Peacock revenue grew more than 20% to a record $1.6 billion, supported by strong distribution revenue growth of over 30%, as paid subscribers increased 8 million year-over-year and 3 million sequentially, reaching 44 million as of December 31st. Advertising revenue at Peacock grew nearly 20%, benefiting from our strong sports lineup, including the premiere of the NBA and the timing of the exclusive NFL game this quarter. Total advertising increased 1.5%, with strong underlying demand driven by our record upfront, continued strength from Sunday Night Football, which delivered the most watched season in its history, and the launch of the NBA this quarter, partially offset by lower political advertising compared to last year. Media EBITDA declined in the quarter, primarily reflecting the addition of NBA rights.
As we've discussed, we are straightlining the amortization of these sports rights, which creates upfront EBITDA dilution, particularly in the first season, with game counts driving the quarterly realization of this expense. While the fourth quarter represented about 25% of our total games for the season, the first quarter will be the peak volume period, with roughly 50% of our games played, which will also result in peak EBITDA dilution. Over time, we expect to offset this impact through advertising growth and subscriber acquisition and monetization across both Linear and Peacock. At Peacock, while losses came in at $552 million for the quarter, reflecting the addition of NBA rights and our exclusive NFL game, full-year Peacock losses improved over $700 million year-over-year.
Peacock has reached meaningful scale and continues to demonstrate improving monetization, giving us confidence in our ability to absorb near-term investments, including the first full year of the NBA, and in 2026, we expect Peacock losses to meaningfully improve again. I'll wrap up with free cash flow and capital allocation. For the full year, we generated $19.2 billion of free cash flow, up significantly year-over-year and the highest year on record. We benefited in 2025 from lower cash taxes, favorable working capital comparisons, particularly related to studio production spend, and lower capital spending. As we look towards 2026, it's important to note that one-time cash tax benefits in 2025, including the $2 billion mentioned upfront, will not recur. In addition, recall we said the benefits from new tax legislation would average about $1 billion per year for the next five years.
Thanks, Jason. I appreciate it, and it's great to be on the call, and I look forward to getting to know those of you I've yet to meet.
As Brian and Mike have outlined, we've been moving with urgency on a number of important changes across the business, and the team is focused and aligned on executing against the plan. When I think about what success looks like, it starts with being honest with ourselves and clearly defining our reality. The market is going to remain intensely competitive. Success isn't about waiting for the environment to change; it's about how we perform inside of that environment. We're executing against a clear, actionable plan to change the trajectory of the business. We are focused on simplifying how we operate, eliminating redundancy, and aligning the entire team around a single set of growth objectives, all of which are centered around improving our competitiveness in the marketplace.
A lot of the progress Mike outlined on pricing, mobile penetration, network modernization, and the customer experience is exactly what this plan is designed to deliver: fewer distractions, clearer ownership and accountability, and much better execution. From there, we stay focused on our core pillars. First is the network, which remains our foundation. We offer gig internet and wireless to 65 million homes, the largest converged network in the country. Our job is to stay well ahead of demand on speed, performance, and capacity. Usage continues to grow at double-digit rates, and as competition intensifies, a scalable, reliable, and increasingly intelligent network will become an even more important competitive advantage. Second is the product. This is where we have our clearest differentiation. Customers make decisions based on the quality and reliability of their Wi-Fi, and our Wi-Fi reliability ranks number one in our footprint based on independent open-signal testing.
We have a Wi-Fi-centered strategy designed to reliably support hundreds of connected devices and deliver a seamless experience in and out of the home. Mobile then builds naturally on this foundation. When customers take mobile with broadband, lifetime value increases substantially, and those customers are more meaningfully loyal. Third is the customer experience, which is our biggest opportunity by far. We must make it easier to do business with us and build a more loyal customer base through greater price transparency, more simplicity, fewer friction points, and consistently getting it right the first interaction. And importantly, the same operating model applies to Comcast Business, where we are accelerating growth in enterprise while continuing to lead in SMB, with a clear shift towards advanced multi-product solutions.
When we get these three critical pieces right, I am determined to improve our broadband performance year-over-year in the near term, return to revenue and EBITDA growth, drive higher mobile penetration, and create much better customer outcomes, which include higher relationship and transactional net promoter scores, lower effort, and stronger loyalty. All of this is within our control. It doesn't assume relief in the competitive environment, and it doesn't rely on any one lever. It's about executing better, with the industry's best products, a differentiated Wi-Fi-first experience, and a unified team focused on growth. With that, back to you, Marci, for Q&A.
Thanks, Steve. Operator, let's open the call for Q&A, please.