News Corp’s Dow Jones Sees Small Growth in Earnings Release; News Media Stagnates
News Corp is a conglomerate of numerous brands, but our coverage focuses exclusively on its Dow Jones and News Media divisions. News Corp also operates on a July 1st fiscal calendar, so we are reporting on Q3 2024 numbers.
Dow Jones
Dow Jones reported $544 million in revenue, a 3% increase year-over-year. It also reported $118 million in EBITDA, 8% year-over-year, and $405 million in nine months ended March 31st. The revenue breakdown was:
- Circulation & Subscription: $445 million, up 4% year-over-year
- Advertising: $86 million, down 2% year-over-year
- Other: $13 million, down 13% year-over-year
The consumer subscription business continues to see strong double-digit growth.
Dow Jones’ Consumer Subscriptions
| (in thousands) | Q3 Fiscal 2024 | Q2 Fiscal 2024 | Q1 Fiscal 2024 | Q4 Fiscal 2023 |
| The Wall Street Journal | ||||
| Digital-only subscription | 3,715 | 3,528 | 3,457 | 3,406 |
| Total subscriptions | 4,217 | 4,052 | 3,991 | 3,966 |
| Barron’s Group | ||||
| Digital-only subscription | 1,221 | 1,104 | 1,055 | 1,018 |
| Total subscriptions | 1,355 | 1,242 | 1,197 | 1,168 |
| Total Consumer | ||||
| Digital-only subscription | 5,068 | 4,746 | 4,611 | 4,510 |
| Total subscriptions | 5,723 | 5,427 | 5,308 | 5,242 |
The Barron’s Group is a smaller part of the consumer subscription business, but it feeds into an overall bundling that News Corp has been discussing more frequently. In the earnings call, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said:
Given the access to a bundle of premium products [Barron’s, MarketWatch, Investor’s Business Daily] with the Wall Street Journal at the heart, the Dow Jones team is confident we should see a reduction in churn and an increase in circulation revenues in quarters to come.
Like The New York Times, this ability to offer a bundle allows the business to grow revenue from its current subscriptions and likely increase ARPU.
But Dow Jones’s real shining story is its professional information business. It closed the $1b+ acquisition of OPIS in early 2022 and followed quickly with a $300 million acquisition of Base Chemicals. Both of these deals have contributed to strong revenue growth.
This unit is critical because it has 90%+ retention and lucrative margins. When News Corp announced the OPIS deal, it said it was generating adjusted margins of 50%. This makes b2b businesses—especially those tied to data—so attractive. Thomson said on the call, “It remains on track to be the largest contributor to the segment’s profitability by the end of this fiscal year.”
Specifically, Risk & Compliance delivered $76 million in revenue, and Dow Jones Energy generated $63 million in revenue.
News Media
On the inverse, the news media business continues to struggle, showing very little revenue change going back to Fiscal Q1 2022. News Media entails News Corp’s Australian media brands and UK brands such as The Sun, The Times, Sunday Times, and the New York Post. The News Media division reported $530 million, down 6% year over year. The revenue breakdown was:
- Circulation & Subscription: $275 million, up $1 million year-over-year
- Advertising: $193 million, down 13% year over year
- Other: $52 million, down 9% year over year.
If News Corp was primarily this division, I suspect management would be more concerned. But this is why the Dow Jones division is so important. As Thomson said on the call:
10 years ago we were dependent on advertising for almost half our revenues. Most tellingly, advertising at News Media then our largest source of revenue now accounts for only 8% of total revenue. I should repeat that number 8%, and half of that figure is now digital advertising. So the character of the company has fundamentally changed.
Nevertheless, it’s a stagnant division. In Fiscal Q1 2022, it generated $615 million in revenue. And now, in Fiscal Q3 2024, it has generated $530 million.
Management’s plan is two-fold:
- Last October, it announced a joint venture with the Daily Mail Group to combine print operations. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority is still reviewing this.
- Expansion into the United States.
On that second point, Thomson said:
The Times of London will expand digitally and gradually into the US during Q4 inspired by the success of the US Sun in reaching new audiences and enhancing digital revenues.
Whether it works remains to be seen, but there’s an obvious reason why News Corp cares so much about Dow Jones’ professional information business.
For the complete data we track on Dow Jones & News Media, click here.
