Shares of Comcast (CMCSA) are up 5% on Thursday as the media giant beat revenue expectations for the fourth quarter. Net income rose over 7% on a year-over-year basis. The company also added around 3 million subscribers to its streaming platform Peacock, a 50% year-over-year gain. Is this enough for Peacock to be worth the investment from Comcast and cross the line into profitability?

Jonathan Chaplin, New Street Research Managing Partner, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss Comcast's performance and how Comcast is focusing its energy on Peacock in a way that may take it ahead of the rest of the streaming pack.

"I think the way that Comcast is approaching it, though, is a little bit different from everybody else in a couple of respects," Chaplin says. "First of all, they're really looking at Peacock as an extension of sort of part of an integrated media business where they've got linear channels and Peacock, and they're running the businesses in terms of sort of content production as well as their relationships with advertisers in an integrated fashion, and they're really focused, at this stage, on... scaling in the US market as opposed to trying to build out a global platform."

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Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: All right. Well, Comcast, the latest media giant to report earnings, seeing net income rise just under 8% on a year-over-year basis. The company also adding three million subscribers to its streaming platform, Peacock, in the fourth quarter. Bringing its total to 31 million.

We want to bring in Jonathan Chaplin. He's New Street Research Managing Partner, joining us now. Jonathan, it's great to see you here. Taking a look at Comcast stock up just about 5%, it seems like, at least, at the surface here, taking a look at the initial take on this earnings report, a strong quarter here for the company. What's your reaction?

JONATHAN CHAPLIN: Yes. I think financial results were great. Their revenue was better in pretty much every segment than people expected. Profitability was better across the board, as well. If you adjust out the impact of severance charges, which are one-time impact that nobody anticipated.

So, overall, looking at the financials, this was a better-- just clearly a better than expected quarter, which is what's driving the stock up today.

BRAD SMITH: With Peacock and the subscriber numbers that we've seen and all of the streaming news that we've seen come forward this week. Of course, comparing Comcast's service with Netflix. And what we've seen come through in their subscriber figures. Where, ultimately, does this tell you about the consumer who is looking at the entertainment landscape right now and deciding where they're getting the most value?

JONATHAN CHAPLIN: So our thoughts on the streaming landscape, in general, or the content landscape, in general, is that it's oversupplied. And, ultimately, there won't be enough dollars going around to support all of the different platforms out there.

I think the way that Comcast is approaching it, though, is a little bit different from everybody else in a couple of respects. First of all, they're really looking at Peacock as an extension or part of an integrated media business, where they've got linear channels and Peacock. And they're running the businesses in terms of content production, as well as their relationships with advertisers in an integrated fashion. And they're really focused at this stage on scaling in the US market, as opposed trying to build out a global platform.

And so as we look at Peacock, what I think-- we've passed the peak of losses for Peacock. They're probably going to stabilize in terms of programming costs here. They're growing subscribers at a pretty phenomenal rate.

And if they can continue to do that, this is going to be the second streaming platform that crosses the line into profitability over the course of probably the next four to six quarters in our view.