News Corporation Class B Common StockNWS
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News Corporation Class B Common Stock Citi’s 2026 Global TMT Conference

Review the key takeaways and the transcript of this earnings call.

Period 2026Duration33 minParticipants2

Transcript

Preview the first fifteen paragraphs, organized by speaker.

JasonAnalyst

Stay on time here. Very pleased to have Lavanya Chandrashekar, CFO of News Corp, with us today.

Lavanya ChandrashekarCFO

Lavanya, welcome. Thank you, Jason.

JasonAnalyst

I really like News Corp, but I find sometimes investors, maybe some investors, even though you're a good-sized company, are less than. I want to start with just a very basic question. If you wouldn't mind just walking through the key segments that News Corp has very quickly, just in terms of level setting for everyone. That would be a good place to start.

Lavanya ChandrashekarCFO

Thank you, Jason. Yeah. I really like News Corp, too.

Lavanya ChandrashekarCFO

Yeah, yeah. So that makes two of us at least.

Lavanya ChandrashekarCFO

I will focus on the first three, our core growth engine segments first, and then talk about our fourth segment later. Our three growth engines are the Dow Jones business, the digital real estate business, and HarperCollins Book Publishing business. Dow Jones the business is, a part of it is the direct-to-consumer business. You will be familiar with brand names such as The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, IBD, MarketWatch. Then the second part of the Dow Jones business is our B2B business, which is Dow Jones Risk & Compliance and Dow Jones Energy. Those are the two segments of the Dow Jones business that have been the outsized driver of growth for the Dow Jones business so far and expected to be in the future.

Lavanya ChandrashekarCFO

The digital real estate growth engine includes REA in Australia, our digital real estate portal in Australia, and includes realtor.com. realtor.com is, I believe, one of the most underappreciated parts of our portfolio. Book publishing is HarperCollins. That is a cash machine. I think all investors like cash machines. The fourth pillar of our business is our traditional media business. This is where the company started from. If I can help people remember that a number of our brands in the news segment are centuries old. I mean, The New York Post was founded by Alexander. You should go check out the new Alexander on The New York Post app. A very modern, wearing dark glasses Alexander. We have The Times of London, which goes back several centuries as well.

Lavanya ChandrashekarCFO

These are publications that have just an absolute wealth of historic content, but also current, reliable, dependable content. It is this content that is turning out to be an incredible asset in this age of AI. We are able to monetize this content, with AI platform deals that really help us to add incremental value to our business.

JasonAnalyst

Okay. That is a great overview. You just wrapped up your FY 2026, and I thought the results were actually really good. I mean, the top line was good, the margins were good, earnings growth was great, free cash flow was great. How sustainable would you say the growth is? I mean, you correct me if I am wrong, it feels like FY 2026 was your best year in four years, five years?

Lavanya ChandrashekarCFO

It was our best year of the last three years, but by a small margin.

Lavanya ChandrashekarCFO

Okay. This is a business that has grown 14% EBITDA growth in FY 2024, 14% EBITDA growth in FY 2025, and 15% EBITDA growth in FY 2026.

Lavanya ChandrashekarCFO

What was really special about FY 2026 is also the fact that we grew cash flow by 40%, and that is on a revenue growth rate of 7%. So this is a business that it is not a business that is just had one really great year. It is a business that has posted three consecutive years of really strong growth rates. I think that is really a big driver of why I think we are such a special business.

JasonAnalyst

And if you had to point to where investors should be most optimistic, based on your earlier comments, you think it is really going to be in the Dow Jones B2B part? That is where investors should be most excited?

Lavanya ChandrashekarCFO

Definitely the Dow Jones B2B part, but I think what makes News Corp special is really three things. I would say the first is our overall portfolio, and the strength of our portfolio comes from our three growth engines, the brilliant brands that we have within these growth engines. It comes from the global scale that we have. It comes from the results that we post. I mean, we have been able to restructure our portfolio on a consistent basis, divesting assets such as Foxtel and adding on bolt-on acquisitions on a regular basis into our three growth engines. This has helped to accelerate our growth. It is not just that we have done big divestitures. We have also, on a continuous basis, really helped to simplify the portfolio. In the last quarter of fiscal 2026 alone, we divested REA India and moving.com.

Lavanya ChandrashekarCFO

These helped to concentrate our investments into our three growth engines. The investments that we are making in these three growth engines are turning into positive results. You see that in the numbers that I quoted. You see it in the fact that 61% of our revenue is recurring revenue. A very small portion of our revenue base is now advertising revenue. 61% of our revenue is digital, and most of it is recurring revenue. This is three times what it was at the time that we spun out the company, and separated from our bigger parent company.

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