News Corporation beat Wall Street expectations for its fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2025, 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.
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Total subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal grew 7% year over year to over 4.5 million average subscriptions. Digital-only subscriptions grew 9% to over 4.1 million, which included growth in enterprise and individual consumer subscriptions and represented 91% of total Wall Street Journal 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 said. “Even the President of the United States is not immune to this blatant theft. The President’s books are still reporting healthy sales, but are being consumed by AI engines which profit from his thoughts by cannibalizing his concepts, thus undermining future sales of his books. Suddenly, The Art of the Deal has become The Art of the Steal.”
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.
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.
Digital real estate services saw revenue grow 4% to $466 million and profit jump 13% to $152 million in the quarter. For the full year, revenue grew 9% to $1.8 billion and profit rose 18% to $601 million.
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.
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.
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.”
