AI Stocks Are Lifting the Communication Sector, but Comcast (CMCSA) Keeps Sinking

Comcast (CMCSA) stock keeps falling while its sector rises. The company earns most of its money from home internet and cable TV, a shrinking business, and splitting itself in two has not fixed that. That is why a dramatic breakup failed to lift the shares, which trade around $23.73, near a 52-week low. The problem sits inside the company, not the market. CMCSA Stock Levels: CMCSA The Sector Is Rising, but Not for Cable The gains did not spread evenly. The communication services sector, where Comcast sits, rose about 1.4% over the past six months. However, that gain came from its biggest members, the AI-linked giants Alphabet and Meta, not from the telecom and cable names. Half-Year Sector Performance: FinViz The connectivity names were left behind. Comcast stock has fallen close to 30% over the past year, and cable rival Charter Communications is down about 33% in 2026. The gap points to Comcasts core business. Its home internet unit keeps losing customers to fixed wireless services from Verizon and T-Mobile, a 5G alternative to cable broadband. Comcast sits on the losing side of that shift. Why Comcast Is Splitting Itself in Two Comcast runs two very different businesses. One sells home internet and cable TV. The other is NBCUniversal, which owns NBC, the Peacock streaming service, and the Universal theme parks. The internet and TV side is shrinking. Customers keep dropping cable and switching to cheaper wireless home internet from T-Mobile and Verizon. Bolted together, the slow-growth internet business made the whole stock look weak. So Comcast plans to separate the two into standalone companies, betting each is worth more alone. Comcast selling at 4x multiple with a dividend yield of 5.38%, EPS at $5."Company to split separate into two independent publicly traded companies through a tax-free spin-off of NBCUniversal and Sky. Following the spinoff transaction, Comcast (CMCSA) shareholders will own pic.twitter.com/UJmq9PENXS The mechanism is a spinoff. Current shareholders receive stock in the new media company, no cash changes hands, and the deal is tax-free. However, reshuffling the two units does not win back a single lost customer. A Reshuffle Does Not Fix the Decline A split changes the structure, not the numbers. Comcasts connectivity arm, the broadband and wireless business, is its profit engine, with about $7.9 billion in adjusted earnings last quarter. However, that profit fell more than 4% from a year earlier as customers left. The media arm being spun off has the opposite problem. It brought in $11.94 billion of revenue last quarter but just $331 million in adjusted earnings, and its Peacock streaming service lost $432 million. So the breakup separates a shrinking cash engine from a growing but unprofitable one, and it fixes neither. Separating the two businesses adds no broadband customers and makes no streaming service profitable, so each carries the same problem into its new company. Rich Greenfield, analyst at LightShed Partners, told the New York Times the move was a concession of failure. Investors put that skepticism to the test the moment the news broke. The Pop That Did Not Last The announcement first sparked excitement. Comcast stock gapped up and rallied about 19% to nearly $27 on June 29, as traders bet the breakup would surface hidden value. Comcast Daily Price Chart: TradingView The gain did not hold. The stock reversed almost the entire move and fell back to $23.73 by July 1, down 3.34% on the session. That round trip is the markets verdict. A reorganization that adds no customers and no revenue gave buyers little reason to stay. The real test, though, is whether big investors bought in. Large funds move a stock more than anyone else, and the flow data shows they stayed away. Comcast money flow, measured by Chaikin Money Flow (CMF), a gauge of whether institutional buyers or sellers control a stock, has stayed negative and drifted lower. Money Flow Declines: TradingView In plain terms, the big money kept selling even after the headline. Fresh buyers did not step in to support the price. Options traders were more hopeful. The put-call ratio, which weighs downside bets against upside bets, sat near 0.43, meaning calls outnumbered puts and hedging stayed light. Comcast Put-Call Ratio: Barchart That optimism, however, was not backed by real buying, as shown by the declining CMF. Wall Street shared the caution. Wall Street Is Split on Comcast The analyst response was divided. Rosenblatt upgraded Comcast to buy and raised its target to $31, while Deutsche Bank turned more positive yet trimmed its target to $32. Others stayed cautious. Citi kept a buy rating but cut its target from $35.50 to $32, and Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Scotiabank, and JPMorgan all held. The CMCSA price targets span $28 to $36, all above the current price. Even so, four of seven Wall street firms refuse to call the stock a buy. CMCSA Analyst Price Targets: TipRanks For now, the breakup hands Comcast a new structure, not a new business. Until it stops losing broadband customers and stems its media losses, the stock has little reason to join a sector being carried by AI.