Comcast’s Earnings Report May Be a Rorschach Test

Comcast is the largest cable company in the US as well as the corporate parent of the massive media entertainment conglomerate NBC Universal. The most honest headline for any of the media giant's earnings reports is probably "Comcast rakes in billions and billions yet again, as usual"—for Comcast, this quarter's measly .6 percent "edge" up in profit translates to a cool $20 million—but the company may have more eyes on it than usual due to a pending merger with Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable company in the country.

Some feel the merger of the two companies, which are both massively unpopular, would be so disastrous for consumers as to be compared to the end of days. Reports say the merger is by no means a sure thing; employees of the two companies, however, say the leadership is fully confident the merger will be approved by regulators and are moving full speed ahead toward integration.

Whether the merger goes through is really the only important question for Comcast investors at this point—which may be why finance reporters apparently closed their eyes and pointed at a random place in the earnings report in order to come up with today's headlines:

Comcast's Earnings Miss Estimates as Subscriber Growth Slows (Bloom​berg)

Comcast (CMCSA) Meets Earnings Estimate, Share Price Drops (Zack​s.com)

Comcast 4th-quarter net income nearly flat (The Detroit ​News)

Comcast revenue rises as it adds video, internet customers (R​euters)

Comcast Q4 Profit Flat Despite Revenue Gains At Cable, NBCU (V​ariety)

Comcast Profit Edges Higher on Broadband, Business Strength (W​SJ)

Comcast has good 4th quarter, boosts dividend (Philly.c​om)

Comcast Corp fourth-quarter profit climbs (MyIr​is.com [auto-generated article])

Comcast Slips: Q4 Rev Beats, EPS Misses; Expands Buyback Program to $10B (Barro​n's)

2014 was a great year financially (Comca​st)