From a Wall Street Journal story by Kimberly Chin headlined “News Corp Sales Rise on Real Estate, Book Publishing, Media Gains”
News Corp reported a 13% increase in its quarterly revenue, boosted by growth in its digital real-estate services, Dow Jones and book-publishing divisions.
The New York-based media company, whose holdings include The Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins Publishers and news organizations in the U.K. and Australia, reported a profit of $235 million, or 40 cents a share, for the December quarter, up from $231 million, or 39 cents a share, a year earlier.
Revenue increased to $2.72 billion for the fiscal second quarter from $2.41 billion a year earlier….
The stock was up 13% over the past year through the close Thursday.
The company’s digital real-estate services division logged a 35% rise in revenue to $456 million and a 25% increase in segment earnings to $178 million. The division includes a majority stake in REA Group Ltd., a publicly traded digital real-estate company based in Australia, and an 80% stake in Move Inc., an online real-estate business based in Santa Clara, Calif., that primarily operates the website Realtor.com.
Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of the Journal, Barron’s and MarketWatch, reported a 14% increase in revenue to $508 million, and a 32% increase in segment earnings to $144 million. The increase was primarily due to higher advertising and subscription revenue and circulation growth. The acquisition of Investor’s Business Daily brought in $18 million in revenue during the quarter….
The Wall Street Journal averaged more than 2.9 million digital subscribers in the quarter, up 19% over the previous year. Including the print edition, the Journal averaged more than 3.6 million subscribers for the period. Dow Jones’s consumer-facing products, which include readers of Barron’s, MarketWatch, Financial News and Investor’s Business Daily, had an average of 4.7 million subscribers in the three-month period.
News Corp’s news-media segment, which includes the Sun, the New York Post and the Times in the U.K., increased 11% in revenue to $638 million. The unit had a profit of $111 million, compared with $66 million a year earlier.
News Corp said its news-media businesses saw a continued uptick in advertising revenue as marketers increased their spending with the easing of the pandemic…r.
News Corp’s book-publishing division, which includes HarperCollins, recorded revenue of $617 million, up 13% from a year earlier. Segment earnings were $107 million, compared with $104 million a year earlier.
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