“We believe that our disciplined approach to running the business, including the benefits from our cost reduction efforts this quarter, positioned us to drive higher profitability, and further expand margins, both in 2023 and thereafter.”

In context

“cluding severance, these expenses were flat compared to last year, reflecting an increase in bad debt as we return to more normalized pre pandemic levels an increased technical and product support expenses driven by growth in our wireless business. These were offset by a decline in marketing and promotion and customer service expenses due to lower activity levels, efficiencies in running the business, and improvements we continue to make in our customer experience. Our focus on growing our high margin connectivity businesses, coupled with our focus on increasing operating efficiency and cost controls, drove strong EBITDA growth and margin expansion in 2022, excluding the higher severance expense, we grew full year EBITDA by 5.7% and increased EBITDA margins by 110 basis points to 44.8%. We believe that our disciplined approach to running the business, including the benefits from our cost reduction efforts this quarter, positioned us to drive higher profitability, and further expand margins, both in 2023 and thereafter. Now, let's turn to Slide seven for NBCUniversal. Starting with total NBCUniversal results, fourth quarter revenue increased 5.9% to $9.9 billion, and EBITDA decreased 36% to $817 million, including $182 million of severance expense in the quarter, excluding severance EBITDA decreased 22%. Media revenue increased 2.6% to $6 billion, mainly driven by Peacock, which nearly doubled its revenue to $660 million and Telemundos broadcast of the World Cup. Advertising revenue increased 4%, reflecting an incremental $263 million from the World Cup, as well as strong growth at Peacock and a healthy contribution of political advertising, partially offset by a decline in linear advertising. If we exclude the World Cup, advertising revenue declined 5.6% reflecting softening in the overall advertisin”