News Corp reports record 2Q profits amid focus on digital

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News Corp on Thursday recorded its most profitable quarter since it spun off its publishing assets into a separate company from its TV assets more than seven years ago — including record earnings at The New York Post.

The Big Apple company touted growth across a wide array of categories, including at its digital real estate services, book publisher HarperCollins and Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones.

News Corp Chief Executive Officer Robert Thomson even gave The Post a shoutout for turning a rare profit.

“History also made at The New York Post, which reported its first profit in modern times — a notable feat for what had been a chronic loss-making masthead founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton,” the CEO said.

In the second quarter, News Corp posted net income of $261 million, or 39 cents a diluted share versus income of $103 million, or 14 cents, in the year-ago period. Adjusted EPS rose 34 cents a share.

Weakness in the advertising market weighed on revenue, which dipped 3 percent to $2.41 billion. Nonetheless, the company bested Wall Street’s estimates of EPS of 1 cent on revenue of $2.24 billion.

The results marked the company’s most profitable quarter since “the new News Corp was launched more than seven years ago,” Thomson said. He attributed the surge to the “ongoing digital transformation of the business.”

Thomson noted digital ad growth was up 64 percent year-over-year.

“It was also a quarter in which the Post recorded a significant victory for all media, for the freedom of the press, by standing resolute and principled against censorship imposed by Twitter,” Thomson said, referring to Twitter shutting down The Post’s account after the paper’s reporting about Hunter Biden.

“Ultimately, Twitter realized that it had made an egregious mistake and thankfully reversed its decision. Our journalists are not lapdogs with laptops, our journalists are not stenographers, our journalists are not woke, our journalists are awake to their profound responsibilities.”

Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, posted its largest profits since News Corp. acquired the company in 2007, driven by record digital advertising revenues and continued growth in digital subscriptions, the company said.

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