News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson made the following comments during its fourth quarter earnings conference call about Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch.com, Barron’s and Investor’s Business Daily:
Dow Jones posted its highest profitability for both the quarter and the full year since we acquired the company, helped by impressive results in the professional information business. In fact, taking a step back, Dow Jones has doubled its profitability in the past 4 years. And for the first time, Dow Jones was the highest contributor profits across all of News Corp in fiscal 2023 as we continue to develop the high margin B2B offerings.
We are focused on Dow Jones as a pillar of News Corp’s future growth with significant value appreciation for shareholders. Dow Jones is nearing an important threshold with the lucrative B2B business expected to be the highest contributor to profitability in fiscal 2024 and a key driver for future margin expansion.
Dow Jones has been bolstered over the past year by the acquisitions of OPIS and Chemical Market Analytics, and by continuing double-digit growth of risk and compliance. It is worth noting that risk and compliance revenues have risen six-fold over the past decade. We believe prospects remain decidedly bright, as the corporate imperative to minimize risk and maximize compliance grows in an ever more complex regulatory regime.
We believe the energy transition is an enormous global opportunity for OPIS and we will capitalize on it through new products. The establishment of compelling benchmarks and the generation of must have data, pricing and analytics, whether it be for fossil fuels, hydrogen, solar, lithium, cobalt, EVs, or carbon credits and offsets. The industry relies on OPIS for pricing transparency, which is critical to day by day decision making in a market that is undergoing massive transformation.
Dow Jones digital subscription growth accelerated in the second half, partly helped by bundling of our products to capitalize on our clients need for sophisticated market analysis and analytics. We want to channel MarketWatch readers to WSJ then to Barron’s and Investor’s Business Daily, and from there to our specialists business products, that is a pathway to profits for the company. Moreover, we are increasing our international digital focus for the Wall Street Journal, which currently has only 12% of subscriptions outside the U.S where there is much untapped potential.
Read the full transcript here.
