Michael J. Cavanagh
Chief Financial Officer at Comcast
Thanks, Brian, and good morning everyone. I'll begin on slides 4 and 5 with our consolidated 2021 financial results. Revenue increased 9.5% to $30.3 billion for the fourth quarter and 12% to $116.4 billion for the full year. Adjusted EBITDA increased 17% to $8.4 billion for the fourth quarter and 13% to $34.7 billion for the full year. Adjusted EPS increased 38% to $0.77 per share for the fourth quarter and 24% to $3.23 for the full year.
And we generated $3.8 billion of free cash flow for the fourth quarter and $17.1 billion for the year on a reported basis, which includes a $1.3 billion benefit related to the tax impact of the bond exchange we completed in August, $620 million of which fell in the fourth quarter as well as roughly $1 billion from returns on investing activities, most of which occurred in the fourth quarter.
Excluding these items, free cash flow was $14.8 billion for the year. Now, let's turn to our business segment results, starting with Cable Communications on slide 6. For the fourth quarter, Cable revenue increased 4.5% to $16.4 billion, EBITDA increased 7.8% to $7.1 billion, and net cash flow grew 9.2% to $4.5 billion. For the full year, we grew customer relationships by 1.1 million with 169,000 net additions in the fourth quarter. Overall customer growth continues to be driven by broadband where we added 1.3 million net new residential and business customers for the year and 212,000 in the fourth quarter.
Our net adds this quarter reflect the continuation of lower overall marketplace activity, particularly move activity compared to historical trends. While this resulted in lower connect volumes, it also contributed to high levels of customer retention with broadband churn improving to the lowest rate for any fourth quarter on record. Broadband was also the largest contributor to our Cable revenue growth with broadband revenue increasing 8.5% in the quarter driven by the strong net additions over the past year, as well as healthy growth in average revenue per customer.
Moving to Wireless, revenue increased 40% driven by growth in customer lines and higher device sales. Overall, we added 1.2 million lines for the year and 312,000 lines in the quarter, the best result since launching this business in 2017, bringing total mobile lines to 4 million. As Brian noted, over the past year we have made tremendous strides fully integrating wireless into our core cable operations, achieving standalone profitability of $157 million this year. Now that we've crossed strongly into profitability and the business is deeply integrated into our core cable operations, we won't be disclosing standalone wireless EBITDA going forward. Business Services revenue increased 11.5% or approximately 7% excluding the acquisition of Masergy, which closed at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
Our strong organic results were driven by customers taking faster data speeds, higher attach rates of our advanced products and rate increases on some of our services, as well as the continued growth in our customer base, which grew by 63,000 net new customers over the past year with 17,000 additions in the fourth quarter. For Video, revenue declined 1.2% driven by customer net losses totaling 1.7 million over the past year, including 373,000 in the fourth quarter, partially offset by higher average revenue per customer.
This higher revenue per customer was driven by the residential rate adjustment we implemented at the beginning of 2021, which we believe was also a driver of video subscriber losses. We implemented a similar rate increase earlier this month, so we expect this trend to continue throughout 2022. Last, advertising revenue decreased to 12.5% reflecting lower political advertising compared to record levels in last year's fourth quarter. Excluding political, advertising was up 9% with modest growth in core and double-digit growth in advanced advertising. Turning to expenses, Cable Communications' fourth quarter expenses increased 2%.
Programming expenses decreased one 1.2%, reflecting a decline in video customers, partially offset by higher rates. As we enter 2022, programming expenses should reflect the benefit of fewer contract renewals, combined with the impact from our anticipated decline in overall video customers. Non-programming expenses increased 4.1% and were flat on a per relationship basis, reflecting investment to drive organic growth in the business as well as the expenses related to our recent acquisition of Masergy. The primary driver of the year-over-two-year [Phonetic] change was technical and product support, which increased about 10% largely related to growth in our Wireless business and was partially offset by lower bad debt and customer service expense.
Cable Communications EBITDA increased 7.8% to $7.1 billion for the fourth quarter and Cable EBITDA margin reached 43.4%, reflecting 130 basis points of year-over-year improvement. We believe we are striking the right balance by continuing to invest in our growth businesses, which are driving the top line and proving to be a great return for us, while at the same time continuing to increase our operating efficiency and take unnecessary cost out of the business. All of this together should enable us to drive higher profitability and expand margins both in 2022 and thereafter.
Cable capital expenditures increased 3.7% in the quarter and 4.9% for the year, resulting in capex intensity of 10.8%, our lowest full year on record and essentially in line with 2020s 11% driven by lower spending on customer premise equipment and support capital, partially offset by higher spending on scalable infrastructure and line extensions. As we noted on our call in July, we expect our cable capex intensity will remain around 11% for the next few years as we continue to increase the number of homes and businesses that we pass and accelerate our investment and the technology that will enhance the overall capacity of our network, both downstream and upstream.
This is a direct step to DOCSIS 4.0, which allows for multi-gig symmetrical speeds essentially with the software update providing very little to no disruption to the home in a very capital efficient way. Now, let's turn to slide 7 for NBCUniversal. Starting with total NBCUniversal results, revenue increased 26% to $9.3 billion and EBITDA decreased 6.8% to $1.3 billion. Media revenue increased 8.4% to $5.8 billion, driven by higher distribution and advertising revenue with a significant contribution from Peacock. Distribution revenue increased 12% reflecting higher rates post the successful completion of several carriage renewals at the end of 2020 and a growing contribution from Peacock due to our growth in paid subscribers, partially offset by subscriber declines at our networks. As a reminder, beginning in the first quarter of 2022, we will lap these carriage renewals.
Advertising revenue increased 6% reflecting higher pricing, which benefited from our strong upfront and a growing contribution from Peacock, which was only partially offset by ratings declines and a difficult comparison to record levels of political advertising at our local stations and last year's fourth quarter. Media EBITDA decreased 49% to $721.1 million in the fourth quarter, including a $559 million EBITDA loss at Peacock.
Excluding Peacock, Media EBITDA decreased 24% reflecting higher costs associated with more sporting events at our regional sports networks compared to last year when the NBA and NHL delayed the start of their seasons due to COVID-19 as well as higher television programming and marketing costs, driven by the return of our full schedule compared to last year when our schedule was impacted by COVID-19. This difficult cost comparison will continue in the first quarter.
Before moving on, I want to build on Brian's comments regarding Peacock. In 2021, Peacock generated revenue of nearly $800 million and an EBITDA loss of $1.7 billion, which includes content spend of over $1.5 billion. Even with a relatively limited programming slate we've achieved a level of success in MAAs, paid subs and engagement that is driving our decision to double our content spend on Peacock in 2022 to over $3 billion with the goal of ramping domestic content spend to $5 billion over the next couple of years, some of which will be incremental and some of which will be a reallocation from linear programming.
For 2022, while we expect a significant step up in revenue, the incremental investment we are spending in both content and marketing and service will likely result in an EBITDA loss of roughly $2.5 billion. While the timing of when Peacock breaks even maybe pushed out from where we originally expected, we believe pursuing a dual revenue stream is the right strategy to create long-term value, and given the strength in our Theme Parks and high margin linear businesses, the good news is that we will fund this pivot out of NBCUniversal cash flows.
Moving next to Studios, revenue increased 36% to $2.4 billion but EBITDA declined 34% to $51 million. This decline was driven by the timing of our film slate, partially offset by growth in TV content licensing. Film has a multi-year business model with titles monetized over time as they transition through different theatrical and licensing windows. As a result of pausing film releases in 2020 during the pandemic, we had fewer new titles come into the licensing window in the fourth quarter compared to a year ago. And at the same time, marketing costs were higher as we released Sing 2 and Halloween Kills in theaters.
This impact of fewer carryover titles and higher year-over-year marketing costs associated with more theatrical releases will begin to diminish as we move forward, but will continue to pressure EBITDA growth for the next few quarters. Last, at Theme Parks, revenue increased by $1.2 billion to $1.9 billion and we generated EBITDA of $674 million, which was our highest on record for any fourth quarter driven by strong momentum in the U.S. and Japan. At our U.S. parks, we benefited from strong domestic attendance and per caps that were above pre-pandemic levels. At Universal Studios Japan we saw improved attendance levels as government-mandated capacity restrictions were eased during the quarter.
At our newly opened park Universal Beijing, we are pleased with our first full quarter of operations where the level of demand from our guests was high, but overall attendance was impacted by COVID-related restrictions. Despite that, Beijing's EBITDA was essentially breakeven in the quarter and we anticipate modest profitability in our first full year of operation in 2022. For total Theme Parks, while we have been very pleased with the pace of our recovery, particularly in the U.S., we recognize that the business is subject to variability related to the pandemic, which tends to be more pronounced at our International Parks.
Now let's turn to slide 8 for Sky, which I will speak to on a constant currency basis. For the fourth quarter, Sky revenue decreased 2.5% to $5.1 billion as solid growth in the UK was offset by our results in Italy, where we continued transition through the change to our Serie A broadcast rights. Direct-to-Consumer revenue decreased 1% reflecting a modest decline in average revenue per customer relationship and overall customer relationship additions of 61,000 in the fourth quarter. This gain mostly came from a meaningful increase in streaming subscribers, primarily driven by seasonally strong entertainment content as well as a widely viewed sports schedule.
The higher level of streaming additions in the quarter, more than offset the level of customer losses we experienced in Italy, which were also better than we had anticipated. In the UK, Direct-to-Consumer revenue increased mid-single digits, driven by continued healthy customer additions, supported by record low churn and higher average revenue per customer. Revenue growth benefited from growth in broadband and wireless streaming and hospitality as pubs and clubs revenue has recovered back to 2019 levels. This was offset by a decrease in customer relationships and average revenue per customer in Italy both mainly due to the change in our Serie A broadcast rights.
Rounding out the rest of revenue, Content revenue declined 23% driven by the change in sports licensing agreements in Italy in Germany. And advertising revenue increased 1% with healthy growth in the UK and Germany, mostly offset by a decline in Italy. Turning to our EBITDA results; Sky's EBITDA increased 188% to $464 million, driven by our strong performance in the UK and improvements in Germany and Italy. Overall, the results reflect lower sports programming costs due to resets in our sports rights, partially offset by a change in sports rights amortization, which resulted in an increase of $130 million.
As a reminder, we announced this change last quarter. It did not impact our full year results but it does impact the quarterly pattern of recognizing sports rights amortization costs with expenses higher in the first and fourth quarters and lower in the second and third quarters. I'll wrap up with free cash flow and capital allocation on slide 9. As I mentioned previously, in 2021, we generated around $15 billion in organic free cash flow excluding the items I referred to earlier. Consolidated total capital increased 3.6% to $12.1 billion, largely driven by higher investment on our broadband network.
Looking ahead to 2022, we expect Cable capex intensity to stay around 11% and NBCUniversal capex related to the construction of Epic Universe to be up around the $1 billion. Working capital was $1.5 billion for the year, a $1.3 billion increase over last year's level, reflecting a post-COVID ramp of investment in studio content and our broadcast of the Summer Olympics. But less than we originally expected, largely due to the timing of content spend at both NBCUniversal and Sky and a faster than expected recovery at Theme Parks. Turning to capital allocation, we ended the year with net leverage at 2.4 times and returned a total of $8.5 billion to shareholders, including $4.5 billion in dividend payments and $4 billion in share repurchases.
For 2022 as I said previously, we expect to continue to maintain leverage at around current levels, which I expect will support continued strong capital returns. As we announced this morning, we are raising the dividend by $0.08 to $1.08 per share, our 14th consecutive annual increase and our Board of Directors has increased our share repurchase authorization to $10 billion. This capital allocation policy will allow us to maintain the balance we've talked about, investing organically in the businesses, maintaining a strong balance sheet and returning capital to shareholders.
So, thanks for joining us on the call this morning. With that, I'll turn it back to Marci who will lead the question and answer portion of the call.