News Corp lifted overall revenue 9% to $US2.19 billion in the March quarter, mainly driven by its digital real estate services, financial publisher and information provider Dow Jones and books.
“News Corp has again delivered resounding results this quarter, and we remain on track for another year of record profitability given the strength seen thus far in the fourth quarter,” said CEO Robert Thomson.
“The third quarter was compelling evidence of the transformation of our business, and demonstrated the robustness of our core growth engines, which we expect will propel us towards a strong fiscal finish.
“Our confidence comes as the world is grappling with the potential impact of AI.
“We are an AI inputs company and that fact was reflected in our recent deal with Meta, which complements our partnership with OpenAI.
“We are in discussions with other companies who recognize the preciousness of provenance, and these potential deals should have a positive impact on our revenue and profitability.
“We are also tracking a number of dodgy digital firms scraping illicitly, illegally our precious content and shamelessly reselling this purloined property.
“We have these baleful bad-boy bots in our sights and intend to pursue them vigorously. And we believe companies that willingly buy this stolen content from these nefarious fences are also culpable.”
The news media unit, which includes Australian publishing, revenue was up 5% to $US538 million. Advertising in the segment was up 3% to $US191 million, helped by a positive impact from foreign currency fluctuations and higher digital advertising revenue.
Without foreign currency gains, news media revenue would have been down 3%.
Circulation and subscription revenue increased 7% to $US296 million, helped by higher cover and subscription pricing and digital subscriber growth, partially offset by print volume declines.
Digital revenue represented 40% of news media segment revenue compared to 39% in the prior year.
Digital subscribers at News Corp Australia were 1,171,000 (992,000 for news mastheads), compared to 1,148,000 (981,000 for news mastheads) in the prior year.
The Times and Sunday Times digital subscribers, including the Times Literary Supplement, were 676,000, compared to 629,000 in the prior year.
The Sun’s digital offering reached 65 million global monthly unique users in March, compared to 74 million in the prior year.
The New York Post’s digital network reached 78 million unique users in March, compared to 85 million in the prior year.
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