Digital now accounts for more than 50% of WSJ subscriptions

News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson made the following comments on the company’s third-quarter earnings call:

Speaking of the Wall Street Journal, we continue to build on the momentum of digital styles, adding more than 300,000 subscribers year-over-year. Digital now accounts for 53% of total subscription, up from 44% last year and 38% two years ago. In fact we added even more subs this quarter than in the second quarter, suggesting that the appetite for premium news and thoughtful commentary is undiminished.

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At Dow Jones, ad revenue trends improved relative to prior quarter, meanwhile the risk in compliance business remains particularly healthy with revenue growth over 20% and prospect certainly appearing positive the real and compliance is essential. As mentioned there was robust digital subscriber growth at the Journal, with more than 30% increase versus the prior year and the momentum has continued. In fact, not only did we have the 300,000 year-over-year increase plus this also set a record in digital subscriber growth since the launch of our sales and subscriber reporting metric.

Chief Financial Officer Susan Panuccio made the following comments:

As Robert mentioned, we are continuing to see strong paid volume growth in digital at the Wall Street Journal, while total subscriber volumes across all formats reached $2.2 million, a 12% year-over-year increase, driven by higher digital only sales which rose over 30% versus the prior year.

Circulation revenues at Dow Jones grew mid-single digits due to both volume gains and higher subscription pricing, led by the Wall Street Journal, which grew high-single digit. Professional information business revenues remained relatively stable with the prior year, similar to last quarter, as we continue to see very strong growth in risk and compliance together with a strong pipeline for new business.

Read the entire transcript here.