New Comcast Has Capital Ideas

摘要

More than anything, Wall Street is hungry for growth, and Brian Roberts promises to deliver. Now that the Comcast chief has completed his $57.4 billion takeover of AT&T Broadband, Roberts assured an audience at last week's Broadband Plus Show in Anaheim that, in short order, he will restore moderate subscriber growth and huge earnings growth in the ailing AT&T operation. In these dark times in the market, though, Wall Street is also riveted on something else: a company's ability to generate real, or "free," cash. On that point, Roberts cautioned against high expectations. That's because the quickest way for a cable operator to spur free-cash flow is to slash capital spending on system upgrades, investment required to add advanced data, digital and video-on-demand services.