News Corp Financial Analysis

News Corp is a multinational media conglomerate that has assets in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Its most well known assets include Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins Publishers, The Times and The Sun, and various other newspapers and media properties across its geographic holdings.

In this analysis, we focus on Dow Jones and News Media, ignoring Realtor.com, HarperCollins Publishers, and its subscription video services. While these contribute to News Corp’s overall cash flow, they are fundamentally different business units.

Fiscal Year 2024

Segment Revenue (Dow Jones & News Media Only)

Revenue (in millions)Q3 Fiscal 2024Q3 Fiscal 2023% ChangeQ2 Fiscal 2024Q2 Fiscal 2023% ChangeQ1 Fiscal 2024Q1 Fiscal 2023% Change
Dow Jones
Circulation & Subscription4454264%4414176%4364145%
Advertising8688-2%126131-4%9194-3%
Other1315-13%171513%10743%
Total5445293%5845634%5375154%
News Media
Circulation & Subscription2752740%2722605%2752692%
Advertising193221-13%229253-9%203213-5%
Other6268-9%6266-6%7071-1%
Total530563-6%563579-3%548553-1%

Dow Jones Subscriber Numbers

(in thousands)Q3 Fiscal 2024Q3 Fiscal 2023Q2 Fiscal 2024Q2 Fiscal 2023Q1 Fiscal 2024Q1 Fiscal 2023
The Wall Street Journal
Digital-only subscription3,7153,2993,5283,1673,4573,157
Total subscriptions4,2173,8884,0523,7803,9913,778
Barron’s Group
Digital-only subscription1,2219691,1048941,055862
Total subscriptions1,3551,1281,2421,0621,1971,040
Total Consumer
Digital-only subscription5,0684,3474,7464,1394,6114,099
Total subscriptions5,7235,1175,4274,9435,3084,922

Digital Advertising as % of Ad Revenue

Q3 Fiscal 2024Q3 Fiscal 2023Q2 Fiscal 2024Q2 Fiscal 2023Q1 Fiscal 2024Q1 Fiscal 2023
Dow Jones63%59%62%59%66%65%

Fiscal Year 2023

Segment Revenue (Dow Jones & News Media Only)

Revenue (in millions)Q4 Fiscal 2023Q4 Fiscal 2022% ChangeQ3 Fiscal 2023Q3 Fiscal 2022% ChangeQ2 Fiscal 2023Q2 Fiscal 2022% ChangeQ1 Fiscal 2023Q1 Fiscal 2022% Change
Dow Jones
Circulation & Subscription$432$4340%$426$37713%$417$35617%$414$34921%
Advertising$100$116-14%$88$102-14%$131$141-7%$94$904%
Other$14$15-7%$15$888%$15$1136%$7$540%
Total$546$565-3%$529$4879%$563$50811%$524$44418%
News Media
Circulation & Subscription$272$293-7%$274$285-4%$260$280-7%$269$285-6%
Advertising$220$260-15%$221$232-5%$253$290-13%$213$223-4%
Other$79$764%$68$638%$66$68-3%$71$684%
Total$571$629-9%$563$580-3%$579$638-9%$576$615-4%

Dow Jones Subscriber Numbers

(in thousands)Q4 Fiscal 2023Q4 Fiscal 2022Q3 Fiscal 2023Q3 Fiscal 2022Q2 Fiscal 2023Q2 Fiscal 2022Q1 Fiscal 2023Q1 Fiscal 2022
The Wall Street Journal
Digital-only subscription3,4063,0953,2993,0363,1672,9183,1572,803
Total subscriptions3,9663,7493,8883,7183,7803,6183,7783,509
Barron’s Group
Digital-only subscription1,018848969810894757862723
Total subscriptions1,1681,0381,1281,0081,0629631,040935
Total Consumer
Digital-only subscription4,5104,0294,3473,9414,1393,7744,0993,626
Total subscriptions5,2424,8985,1174,8484,9434,7074,9224,572

Digital Advertising as % of Ad Revenue

Q4 Fiscal 2023Q4 Fiscal 2022Q3 Fiscal 2023Q3 Fiscal 2022Q2 Fiscal 2023Q2 Fiscal 2022Q1 Fiscal 2023Q1 Fiscal 2022
Dow Jones60%58%59%62%59%56%65%61%

Commentary

Q3 Fiscal 2023

  • The ad recession was in full swing for News Corp with revenue down in this category across the board. Dow Jones had far weaker advertising numbers in the quarter than the News Media division, which is an indication that financial advertising was far lower in the quarter. If we compare to Dotdash Meredith, it also reported weaker growth in financial advertising.
    • This is the first time in a while that digital as a percentage of total ad revenue at Dow Jones stayed flat / did not exceed the previous year’s growth. It is a wonder that print advertising held up more in the quarter than digital.
  • The B2B business continues to be the driver of much of Dow Jones’ growth. According to Susan Panuccio, CFO: “We are continuing to see very strong momentum in our professional information business with revenues rising 38% year-over-year reflecting the acquisitions of Opus and CMA coupled with strong revenues from risk and compliance. PIP revenues accounted for 37% of segment revenues.”
    • The question that I have is where does Dow Jones go from here? With other parts of the business not growing much, does Dow Jones get even more acquisitive and start looking to compete for other data assets? It’s less cyclical revenue compared to advertising and drives strong margins for the business.
    • If we look at Segment EBITDA, every other division at News Corp (even beyond the ones that I cover here) saw solid drops year-over-year. Dow Jones grew by 24% YoY to $109 million, in big part because of the B2B business.
  • What I found most remarkable, though, is that the News Division held up as strongly as it did. Seeing revenue only drop by 3% in a quarter that was, otherwise, very unfriendly from an ad perspective is interesting. One big driver is that traffic to these sites continues to grow quite considerably.
    • According to CEO Robert Thomson: “One success story is the sun.com were total pageviews in the quarter search 94% year-over-year reaching close to a billion views. The site, which has benefited from the partnership with the New York Post and our other U.S. properties, has triumphed in tough times and notably, the Sun’s U.S. digital advertising revenues now exceed those of the British platform.”
    • Having multiple scale platforms and being able to circulate content amongst them is a way to really crush pageviews.

Q2 Fiscal 2023

  • Because News Corp is an international business, its revenue numbers can often be impacted by foreign exchange. For example, in Q2 Fiscal 2023, there was $71 million in FX Impact across Dow Jones & News Media. In the case of News Media, this was enough to take what would have been 1% revenue growth to a 9% reduction. 
  • Dow Jones has also been reaping the rewards of its acquisitions of OPIS and CMA, which contributed $36 million and $18 million, respectively, in the quarter. Dow Jones has been moving into the B2B space over the past couple of years. Without these, revenue in this segment would have only increased by 1% compared to the previous year. 
  • The company announced that the Dow Jones portfolio had hit over 5 million total subscriptions after the quarter ended. With the addition of Investors Business Daily in May 2021, Dow Jones has been working on bundling its product. While it does not discuss ARPU numbers, CEO Robert Thomson said: “Almar Latour and the team are increasing the emphasis on upselling subscriptions with the bundling of Market Watch, the WSJ, IBD and Barron’s. The basic strategy is to provide an ever more premium service for our readers as we leverage valuable audiences across platforms.”