Comcast, Charter Joint Venture Streaming Platform: What Investors Need To Know

A new streaming platform is coming to consumers’ televisions and comes from a well-known media and a well-known cable company.

What Happened: A joint venture was announced Wednesday between Charter Communications Inc CHTR and Comcast Corp CMCSA.

The companies will launch a national next generation streaming platform.

“The partnership will further develop and offer the flex streaming platform that includes a world-class user interface and voice search, and will be available on 4K streaming devices and smart TVs through nationwide retailers, Charter and Comcast,” the companies said.

As part of the joint venture, Comcast will license its Flex streaming platform and hardware and also contribute its XClass TVs retail business and Xumo streaming service. Charter will contribute $900 million over multiple years to help fund the joint venture.

XClass TVs will be launched with national retail partners and could also be made available directly by Comcast and Charter in the future.

Xumo will continue as a global streaming service operating as part of the joint venture.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Charter to bring this platform and its award-winning experience to millions of new customers. These products are all designed to make search and discovery across live, on-demand and streaming video seamless and incredibly simple for consumers,” Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said.

Related Link: Netflix Shares Plunge After Q1 Earnings, First Subscriber Loss Since 2011

Why It’s Important: The companies said the new joint venture would offer partners the opportunity to reach customers across major markets.

The streaming platform will feature top streaming apps and also carry free content choices from Xumo. Peacock, which is a streaming platform from Comcast, will be featured on the platform.

Peacock could get a boost from the new streaming platform as a featured app.

Charter has over 32 million customers in 41 states and Comcast has over 57 million customers. The cross promotional efforts from the companies and their wide user base could make the platform a potential rival to streaming platforms like Roku Inc ROKU.

With many consumers having accounts across multiple streaming apps, connected TVs and streaming platforms remain popular options to maintain all apps in one place and to provide the ability to cross search from all subscribed options.

Price Action: Charter shares were down 1.01% on Wednesday at $482.01 and Comcast shares are closed 0.77% lower at $24.60, according to Benzinga Pro.

Roku shares are down 7.63% to $84.76 on Wednesday on news of a potential new competitor.

Photo: Courtesy of corporate.comcast.com