News Corp Profit Jumps 28%, Driven by Dow Jones, Digital Real Estate Growth
News Corp. beat Wall Street expectations for its fiscal fourth quarter, with a 28% increase in profits and 1% increase in revenue driven by higher circulation and subscription revenues at the Dow Jones segment and higher Australian residential revenues at REA Group. The gains were partly offset by lower revenues at the news media and book publishing segments.
During the fourth quarter, total average subscriptions to Dow Jones’ consumer products approached 6.3 million, a 7% increase compared to the prior year. Digital-only subscriptions to Dow Jones’ consumer products grew 9% to
over 5.7 million.
Total subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal grew 7% year over year to more than 4.5 million. while digital-only subscriptions grew 9% to over
4.1 million, which included growth in enterprise and individual consumers. Digital now make up 91% of total subscriptions.
Along with the results, News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson made a plea on Tuesday to “cherish the value of intellectual property” as the age of artificial intelligence has threatened protections.
“Much is made of the competition with China, but America’s advantage is ingenuity and creativity, not bits and bytes, not watts but wit. To undermine that comparative advantage by stripping away IP rights is to vandalize our virtuosity.” he told analysts on Tuesday’s earnings call.
He proceeded to make a direct reference to President Donald Trump’s “The Art of the Deal.”
“Is it right that his books should be consumed by an AI engine which then profits from his thoughts by cannibalizing his concepts, thus undermining future sales of his book? Suddenly, The Art of the Deal has become the Art of the Steal,” Thomson continued. “Is it fair the creators are having their works purloined? Is it just that the President of the United States is being ripped off?”
His plea comes as Trump has pushed the tech industry to be even more aggressive in AI and staying ahead of China. He said that it was “not doable” to expect AI companies to pay for all the content they use to train their models, which are the key to how a chatbot like ChatGPT is able to spit out uniquely generated responses.
Thompson urged the companies who are spending tens of billions of dollars on data centers and chips to spend tens of millions or more to ensure that the “content ecosystem remains healthy,” that there is a “vast range of varied and verifiable sources,” and that a “deeply derivative woke AI does not become the default pathway to digital decay.”
“In the meantime, we will fight to protect the intellectual property of our authors and journalists and continue to woo and to sue companies that violate the most basic property rights,” Thomson concluded, a reference to its move to sue Perplexity AI last year.
Here are the quarterly results:
Net income: $86 million, up 28% compared to $67 million in the prior year. For its full year for fiscal 2025, profit grew 71% to $648 million.
Revenue: $2.11 billion, up 1% year over year, compared to $2.09 billion expected by analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance. For its full year for fiscal 2025, revenue grew 2% to $8.45 billion, driven by the growth of its Digital Real Estate Services, Dow Jones and Book Publishing divisions.
Earnings per share: 9 cents per share on a diluted basis. On an adjusted basis, EPS was 19 cents, compared to 18 cents per share expected by analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance.
The latest quarterly results come as the Wall Street Journal is facing a $10 billion libel lawsuit from Donald Trump over the outlet’s reporting of the president’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. WSJ has previously said it would “vigorously defend” itself in court. The parties have reportedly agreed to delay owner Rupert Murdoch’s deposition in the case to give News Corp. a chance to have its motion to dismiss heard.
Thompson, notably, did not mention the Trump lawsuit.
The Dow Jones segment saw revenue grow 7% to $604 million and profits grow 10% to $151 million in the fourth quarter. For the full year, revenue grew 4% to $2.33 billion, while profits climbed 8% to $588 million.
The segment’s growth was driven by higher circulation and subscription revenues from continued growth in the professional information business and higher digital circulation revenues, offset by higher employee and technology costs the impact of recent acquisitions and legal and settlement costs. Digital revenues at Dow Jones in the quarter represented 83% of total revenues, compared to 81% in the prior year.
Meanwhile, book publishing revenue fell 4% to $494 million and profits fell 12% to $50 million during the quarter. For the full year, revenue for the segment grew 3% to $2.15 billion and profits grew 10% to $296 million.
Softer consumer spending and fewer notable front list titles weighed on the results during the quarter. Key titles included “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt, “The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits” by Jennifer Weiner and “Watch Me” by Tahereh Mafi.
Digital sales, which made up 25% of consumer revenues for the quarter, fell 3% year over year due to a 7% decline in audiobook sales. Backlist sales represented 65% of consumer revenues in the quarter.
News media revenue fell 4% to $545 million and profits fell 13% to $28 million in the quarter. For the full year, revenue for the segment fell 4% to $2.17 billion, but profit increased 15% to $153 million.
The segment’s results for the quarter were driven by lower revenues from the transfer of third-party printing revenue contracts to News UK’s joint venture with DMG Media and lower advertising revenues. Digital revenues represented 38% of news media segment revenues in the quarter, compared to 37% in the prior
year, and represented 36% of the combined revenues of the newspaper mastheads.
In July, News Corp. authorized a new $1 billion stock buyback program in addition to $300 million remaining from a previous $1 billion program authorized four years ago.
“We expect to begin executing repurchases at an accelerated rate shortly after the release of these results,” Thomson added. “This significantly larger total and significantly faster tempo emphasize our belief in the company’s financial strength.”