News Corp., the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, reported earnings on Monday that displayed the good, bad and ugly of the newspaper business.
Christine Wang of CNBC.com had the good:
The stock climbed as much as 5 percent in extended trading.
Chief Executive Robert Thomson said the company has made “real progress” on its digital revenue streams. He said that print advertising challenges were partially offset by “higher digital revenues and disciplined cost initiatives.”
News Corp.’s news and information services unit, which includes Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, brought in $1.24 billion in revenue during the quarter. Analysts expected the segment to bring in $1.23 billion in revenue, according to a StreetAccount consensus estimate.
“We continue to push digital, which accounted for 24% of segment revenues this quarter, up from 20% in the prior year,” Thomson said in a statement.
Lukas Alpert of The Journal had the bad:
The company—which publishes The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers in the U.K., Australia and the U.S.—posted a loss of $15 million, or 3 cents a share, compared with profit of $175 million, or 30 cents a share, a year ago.
Revenue slipped 2.4% to $1.97 billion, as gains in its digital real-estate business weren’t enough to offset declines in the New York-based company’s news and book-publishing divisions.
Factoring out certain items, the media company posted an adjusted per-share loss of 1 cent. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected total revenue of $1.96 billion in the quarter and break-even on an adjusted, per-share basis.
News Corp shares were up 2.8% to $12.22 in after-hours trading on Monday.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization fell 21% on the year to $130 million due to weak print advertising and increased programming-rights costs at the company’s cable network programming unit.
D.B. Hebbard of Talking News Media had the ugly:
In its book division, revenues in the quarter decreased $20 million, or 5 percent, due at least in part to having to go up against revenues from Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee that hit a year ago.
On the plus side, News Corp’s acquisition of Move is panning out. Revenues in the quarter for the Digital Real Estate Services segment increased $35 million, or 18 percent.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal announced that it would combine sections on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and institute layoffs in its newsroom.
“All newspapers face structural challenges and we must move to create a print edition that can stand on a sound financial footing for the foreseeable future while our digital horizons continue to expand. As I previously mentioned, there will unfortunately need to be an elimination of some positions as part of this process,” editor in chief Gerard Baker said in a staff memo.
