WSJ sees advertising improvement

News Corp., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, reported first quarter earnings on Wednesday and said that the business newspaper is seeing  more advertising, reports Joe Pompeo of Capital New York.

Pompeo writes, “Executives from the global media conglomerate said that advertising was on the upswing within News Corp’s Australian newspaper stable, long a blemish on company earnings reports, and at the company’s marquee American broadsheet, The Wall Street Journal, which had a strong October thanks to higher print-advertising revenues in the finance and technology categories, they said.

“‘The advertising headwinds in Australia have dissipated,’ chief executive Robert Thomson said on a Thursday evening conference call to discuss News Corp’s financial results for the first quarter of the 2015 fiscal year. ‘Advertising at The Wall Street Journal has been robust in recent weeks, with October showing strong gains versus the previous year.’

“Still, advertising at the Journal was down in the high single digits year-on-year during the three-month period that ended on Sept. 30. Australian ad revenues were down 5 percent year-on-year compared with 16 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014, and ad revenues at the company’s U.K. papers, including The Times of London and The Sun, were down 6 percent, about flat with the previous quarter. News Corp.’s publications also include the New York Post, The Sunday Times and The Australian.”

Read more here.