News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson made the following comments during the company earnings conference call about its Dow Jones business:
Advertising at Dow Jones remained strong in the fourth quarter and was a significant contributor to the segment throughout the year. Total advertising at Dow Jones achieved year-over-year growth of 20% for the full year, the highest on record. Dow Jones also made progress in expanding its high-yielding subscriber base, which rose 9% to almost 4.9 million, including over 4 million digital-only subscribers. As a point of comparison, digital advertising at Dow Jones rose 16% in the most recent quarter, while it shrank, it contracted, it diminished at the New York Times. In what was a resounding performance for News Corp, Dow Jones really is worthy of note. Dow Jones profitability saw 54% in the quarter to $106 million. And as noted earlier, for the year, segment EBITDA was $433 million, up 30%, while revenues rose to over $2 billion, an 18% increase.
The imperative at Dow Jones is to provide a premium service and premium value to a premium audience and is remembering that this is a premium audience at scale, with more than 100 million visitors each month to Dow Jones sites and thousands of the world’s largest companies as enterprise clients. Our task, our opportunity is to offer more of the information, the intelligence demanded by discerning professionals. These are fertile fields for the future.
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