By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg
News Corp reported revenue and profit gains for its fiscal third quarter, driven by growth at Dow Jones, HarperCollins Publishers and the digital real-estate group.
"We have pursued digital growth, realigned our assets, focused relentlessly on cost discipline and asserted the essential value of our intellectual property in a changing, challenging content world," said Chief Executive Robert Thomson.
The results
The media company said revenue increased 1% to $2.01 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet expected revenue of $2 billion.
Net income attributable to shareholders rose to $103 million from $30 million a year earlier. On a per-share basis, earnings from continuing operations rose to 14 cents from seven cents.
Class A shares rose 2.8% in after-market trading.
The context
Earlier this year, News Corp completed the sale of its stake in Australian pay-television company Foxtel to sports streaming service DAZN Group. News Corp earlier said it would focus on its core key growth areas: Dow Jones, digital real-estate services and book publishing.
Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Barron's and other titles, reported a 6% increase in revenue, to $575 million, while segment earnings rose 12%. Advertising revenue was flat for digital and print. Digital advertising accounted for 63% of total advertising revenue in the quarter for both periods.
Digital subscriptions at The Wall Street Journal increased to 3.91 million for the March quarter, compared with 3.79 million in the period that ended Dec. 31.
Including the print edition, total subscriptions to the Journal averaged 4.34 million, up from 4.23 million in the prior quarter.
Book-publishing revenue at HarperCollins Publishers increased 2% to $514 million, while segment profit increased 3%. Top titles included "Wicked" by Gregory Maguire and "Dream Girl Drama" by Tessa Bailey.
Revenue in the company's digital real-estate services segment increased 5% to $406 million. Segment profit increased 19%.
Revenue at the News Media group, which includes the New York Post, fell 8%, in part because of lower advertising revenue and lower circulation and subscription revenues. Segment profit increased 22%, reflecting in part cost savings.
Write to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at Jeffrey.Trachtenberg@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 08, 2025 17:52 ET (21:52 GMT)
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