News Corp. CEO Thomson discusses Dow Jones’ fourth quarter

Here are comments made by News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson during its fourth quarter earnings conference call about the performance of Dow Jones:

Dow Jones experienced a strong digital subscription growth over the past year. Circulation revenue for the year at The Wall Street Journal grew mid-single-digits, thanks to digital expansion and improved pricing. In fact, this year, circulation revenues were higher than advertising revenues, underlining the balanced revenue streams at Dow Jones.

Overall, more than 50% of Dow Jones revenues came from digital this year. That’s part of a calculated realignment of the revenue streams and also a testament to the strong and growing value of premium content. Custom content is also a big driver of advertising revenues and we expect it to represent a larger part of Dow Jones growth going forward.

Dow Jones also continued to rollout new and improved products in fiscal year 2016. Including WSJ Pro, the What’s News app, and the WSJ City App in the U.K., and importantly, a Factiva mobile app. Factiva is a treasure trove of valuable content and we are working to customize and enhance the experience for subscribers.

On the institutional side, Dow Jones will continue to push high-growth segments including risk and compliance. As companies are under increasing scrutiny and must necessarily be strictly compliant, we have firm faith in that business, which expanded 34% last quarter compared to a year ago.

To read the rest of the transcript, go here.