Comcast (CMCSA) closed at $23.22 on October 30, 2026, according to the Yahoo Finance quote page. That is near the bottom of its 52 week range of $20.48 to $32.86. On the numbers in its own filings, the stock looks cheap. I wanted to see how long that impression survives once I go looking for reasons it might be wrong.
Every number below comes from two documents filed on October 22, 2026: the Q3 2026 10-Q and the Q3 earnings release (Exhibit 99.1), plus the FY2025 10-K for full year EPS. The balance sheet date is September 30, 2026. The price is from October 30, 2026. I did the arithmetic myself, so check it.
Why it looks cheap
The 10-Q cover reports about 3.55 billion shares outstanding on October 15, 2026. At $23.22 that is a market value of roughly $82 billion.
Diluted EPS was $5.39 for 2025 and $4.78 for the first nine months of 2025, so Q4 2025 was about $0.61. Add the $2.55 reported for the first nine months of 2026 and trailing GAAP EPS comes to about $3.16. That puts the stock at a little over 7 times trailing earnings.
Shareholders' equity was $92.5 billion at September 30, so the stock also trades below book, at roughly 0.9 times. The dividend is $1.32 a year, which is about 5.7% at that price. Free cash flow for the nine months was $12.7 billion, and dividends paid were $3.6 billion.
That is the headline. Here is what it quietly assumes.
What the bull case needs to be true
When I write down a thesis on a stock like this, I try to reduce it to a few claims that can each be checked. For Comcast I end up with four.
The broadband business, which carries most of the profit, is stable enough that today's earnings are a fair guide to future earnings.
Free cash flow is real and recurring, so the dividend and debt paydown are funded by the ongoing business.
Book value means something, so trading below it implies a margin of safety.
The planned split into two companies does not destroy value through costs, taxes or leverage.
For each claim, I then ask what fact would overturn it and where that fact would be published.
Broadband: the claim most likely to break
In the earnings release, domestic broadband residential customers were 28.34 million at the end of Q3 2026 against 28.90 million a year earlier, a decline of about 554,000. The company lost 144,000 in Q3 alone, worse than the 91,000 lost in Q3 2025. Domestic broadband revenue fell 4.7% to $6.24 billion, and the release says this was due to lower average rates as well as fewer customers.
Fewer customers paying less each is the pattern I care about most. Residential Connectivity & Platforms Adjusted EBITDA fell 5.8% to $6.11 billion and its margin went from 36.8% to 35.9%. Management describes this as investment in its go to market strategy. That may be true, and it is also what a price war looks like from the inside.
There are offsets. Wireless lines grew to 10.56 million, with 368,000 net additions in the quarter, and wireless service revenue rose 14.7%. Business Services Connectivity revenue grew 2.7%. Whether those can outgrow the broadband decline is the open question.
What would overturn the stability claim: broadband customer losses that keep widening for another two or three quarters while revenue per customer keeps falling. Where to check: the customer metrics table in each earnings release, the segment results in Item 2 of each 10-Q, and the trending schedule Comcast posts on its investor relations site.
Earnings versus cash
The nine month comparison is a good reminder of why I never take one period's P/E at face value. GAAP net income attributable to Comcast was $17.8 billion for the first nine months of 2025 and $9.1 billion for the same period of 2026. The reconciliation table in the release shows that 2025 included a $7.06 billion gain related to an investment, worth $1.89 per share. Adjusted EPS, which strips that and other items, fell from $3.46 to $2.90.
The trailing P/E I calculated does not include that 2025 gain, since it fell in the first nine months of 2025. Q4 2025 may still contain its own items, which is something I would check in the 10-K before relying on the 7 times figure.
On cash, the 10-Q shows nine month operating cash flow of $22.9 billion, down from $24.8 billion. Income tax payments fell from $2.38 billion to $1.50 billion. The filing says 2025 legislation is expected to significantly reduce tax payments over the next several years, mainly through extra depreciation deductions. That helps cash flow now. It also means some of today's free cash flow comes from tax timing that will not last forever. Capital expenditures rose to $8.3 billion from $8.0 billion, driven by customer premise equipment and network spending in Connectivity & Platforms.
Book value and debt
Below book sounds safe until you read the asset side. At September 30, goodwill was $53.2 billion, franchise rights $59.4 billion and other intangible assets $19.1 billion. Together that is about $131.7 billion, well above the $92.5 billion of equity. Tangible book value is negative. Price to book tells me very little here.
Total debt was $87.4 billion, more than the market value of the equity. The company has been paying it down: $10.4 billion of repayments in nine months, including early purchases of $4.1 billion of notes maturing between January 2027 and June 2029. The current portion of debt was $3.56 billion. The revolving credit facility has a debt to EBITDA covenant tested quarterly, and the 10-Q says Comcast met it and expects to keep doing so. With $11.8 billion of available borrowing capacity, near term refinancing looks manageable. What worries me more is EBITDA continuing to shrink under a large debt load.
The split
In June 2026 Comcast announced a plan to spin off NBCUniversal and Sky, expected in mid 2027. The 10-Q risk factors are frank: completion depends on board approval, tax opinions, regulators and financing, and the two smaller companies will each carry costs that are shared today. Buybacks were suspended from the start of Q3 and are expected to stay paused through the separation. Comcast also agreed in July to buy ITV's Media & Entertainment business for up to £1.6 billion.
The thing I cannot answer from public filings yet is how the $87.4 billion of debt will be divided. That single fact changes the value of each piece more than any earnings multiple.
Honest open questions
Is the broadband decline a temporary result of pricing investment, or a permanent step down in share? Will wireless and business services grow fast enough to cover it? How much of current free cash flow depends on tax benefits that fade? How will debt and dividend policy look for each company after the split? Theme Parks EBITDA also fell 17.1% in the quarter, and management calls the headwinds cyclical. That claim is worth testing too.
The low multiple does not settle any of these. It is the market's way of pricing them.
How I keep track of this
This kind of filing work is what DisconfirmAI's Research is meant for. You ask a question with the filing attached, it pulls the numbers with their source and period, and it keeps verified, inferred and doubtful points apart, which makes it easier to see where you are guessing. The open questions above then fit a Radar watch, for example domestic broadband customer losses each quarter and any filing that describes how debt will be split between the two companies. Radar checks on the schedule you set and records an empty scan when nothing changed, so you can see the check ran.
The product overview is at disconfirmai.com/en.
Disclaimer
This is a research walkthrough based on public filings as of October 30, 2026. It is not investment advice and it is not a recommendation to buy or sell Comcast or any other security. Figures were calculated by me from the documents linked above and may contain errors. Read the original filings before relying on anything here.
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