What happened with NWSA today?
No read yet
Uses news and trading volume to explain the day’s move and how it relates to the market.
Stop guessing. Get the call, a three-month target price, the best and worst cases, and a source for every claim.
Most of News Corporation’s revenue comes from news, information services and books, while property websites provide another substantial stream. Circulation and subscriptions are its largest revenue source. Dow Jones sells readers access to publications such as The Wall Street Journal and supplies businesses with subscriptions to research, risk-screening and other information tools, including Factiva and Dow Jones Risk & Compliance. Its news outlets, including The Times and the New York Post, also collect subscription payments, sell advertising to businesses seeking their audiences and license content. These businesses depend on keeping readers and enterprise customers willing to pay and attracting advertisers.
HarperCollins sells print and digital books through booksellers, technology companies and other customers, and licenses publishing rights. Book sales depend on readers’ acceptance of individual titles and the timing of major releases; retailers can generally return unsold print consumer books.
Through majority-owned REA Group and Move, News Corporation operates property websites including Australia’s realestate.com.au and the U.S. site Realtor.com. Agents and developers pay for listings and promotion, while Realtor.com also sells consumer leads and earns referral fees when related property transactions close. This business depends on property listings, home-search audiences and professionals’ demand for advertising and leads. Move operates Realtor.com under an agreement and trademark license from the National Association of Realtors, with operating requirements and specified grounds for termination.
The risk section is the longest, dullest part of the filing. This keeps only what can really hurt you: where it hits, how hard, when it plays out.
Every company claims an edge. Each one is checked against hard numbers like margins and returns: which hold, and which line gives way first.
News Corp’s results also depend heavily on Australian property listings and pricing at its majority-owned REA Group, which is missing from this list.
S&P Global competes with News Corp’s Dow Jones for business customers buying financial data, analytics and energy and commodity information. Watch its Market Intelligence and Energy businesses for signs of competition facing Dow Jones’s paid information products.
The New York Times competes with News Corp’s Wall Street Journal and other news titles for readers’ subscription payments and advertisers’ spending. Its digital news and bundled subscriptions are worth watching for how it attracts paying readers.
Amazon is both a customer and a supplier to News Corp: it buys and distributes HarperCollins’s print and digital books, while Amazon Web Services supplies cloud services used across the group.
FactSet and News Corp’s Dow Jones draw subscription revenue from the same financial institutions’ information budgets, and FactSet also carries Dow Jones Newswires in its offerings. Watch subscriptions to its financial data and portfolio-analysis tools for a read on those customers’ spending.
Morningstar and News Corp’s Dow Jones both rely on financial professionals paying for investment information. Morningstar’s subscriptions to research, data and investment platforms offer a way to track the information budgets that also support Dow Jones’s enterprise products.
USA TODAY Co., Inc.’s USA TODAY and Newsquest compete with News Corp’s news publications for digital readers, paid subscriptions and advertisers’ spending. Watch their paid digital-only subscriptions and digital advertising rather than total digital revenue, which also includes marketing services and other sources.
Fox’s news and business-news programming competes with News Corp’s news brands for audience attention and advertisers, but reaches viewers through television distributors and digital platforms rather than the same publishing model. Its news programming’s appeal to viewers and advertisers is the relevant comparison, not Fox’s whole business.
Lee Enterprises faces the same challenge as News Corp’s news publications: replacing print subscription and advertising revenue with digital payments from readers and advertisers. Its digital-only subscriptions and marketing services for local advertisers show how that transition is progressing in its community newspapers.
S&P Global Inc. earningsSPGI
S&P Global’s report will show how customers are spending on financial and energy information, and how much competition Dow Jones faces for that business.
Watch S&P Global’s Market Intelligence and Energy businesses. Growth in both would show that companies are still paying for financial and energy information, but also that Dow Jones faces a rival winning business from those budgets. If both contract, customers may be cutting information spending across the market; that would not by itself mean Dow Jones is gaining ground.
New York Times Co. earningsNYT
The New York Times’ report will show how well its digital news and bundled subscriptions attract paying readers who could also choose News Corp titles such as The Wall Street Journal.
Read The New York Times’ digital-only subscriptions alongside its bundled subscriptions. Growth in both would show that readers are willing to pay for digital news and that competition for subscription revenue remains strong for The New York Times and News Corp titles such as The Wall Street Journal. If both weaken, paid-news demand may be cooling, but that alone would not show readers switching to News Corp.
News Corporation earningsThis company
News Corp’s report will show whether Dow Jones subscriptions and its property listings and lead services are still turning customer demand into segment earnings.
Compare revenue with Segment EBITDA for Dow Jones and Digital Real Estate Services. Segment EBITDA measures earnings after operating and selling, general and administrative expenses, but before depreciation and amortization and other excluded items. If revenue and Segment EBITDA rise together, subscriptions, property listings and leads are bringing in sales that convert into earnings. If revenue holds up but Segment EBITDA falls, costs are absorbing the growth; if both weaken, demand or profitability in these businesses is fading.
