Comcast Corp. promoted Mike Cavanagh, a former Wall Street banker, to president of the Philadelphia telecom and entertainment company, the company said Wednesday. He is the first executive to hold the title outside the Roberts family.
Cavanagh's promotion takes place at a tenuous time for Comcast with its stock price declining considerably over the last year as it looks for new areas of growth and lags in entertainment streaming. The global economy also faces a potential recession.
Comcast stock traded just below $29 a share on Wednesday at noon. It peaked in August 2021 at around $60 a share.
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The prices in other telecom and entertainment companies, among the Verizon, Walt Disney and Netflix, have also declined.
Ralph Roberts, one of a troika that founded the cable-TV company in the 1960s, and his son, Brian, 62, who is chief executive officer and chairman, were the only prior presidents in the company's history, Comcast said. Cavanagh, also the company's chief financial officer, has not been appointed to the board.
Last month, Comcast's board sought to bolster the company's stock by purchasing up to $20 billion in the shares as investors sold them. Comcast said that it had already repurchased $9 billion this year.
Cavanagh said in a statement that he looks "forward to working together to shape the bright future of Comcast." He was compensated $27.4 million last year.
Comcast, the biggest publicly traded company based in Philadelphia with about 8,000 employees downtown, faces new competition in its bread-and-butter broadband business with wireless competitors offering 5G wireless internet to homes. In recent years, Comcast also has struggled to transition to streaming entertainment from broadcast television and cable-TV formats.
Comcast hired Cavanagh, a former top executive at JPMorgan Chase, in 2015.
