• by Ray Schultz , February 6, 2025

News Corp. has no complaints about its second-quarter performance. 

“News Corp had a fruitful quarter, qualitatively and quantitatively,” says Robert Thomson, chief executive of the company. “Revenues on a continuing operations basis, which excludes Foxtel, grew 5 percent to $2.24 billion, net income from continuing operations surged 58 percent to $306 million and Total Segment EBITDA rose 20 percent to $478 million.”

The Q2 revenue boost was mostly driven by higher Australian residential revenues at REA Group, along with higher circulation and subscription revenues at Dow Jones. and a sales boost in the book publishing segment. 

The company also realized a 1% or $11 million positive impact from foreign currency fluctuations. This increase was partly offset by “modestly” lower News Media revenues. 

Thomson adds: “The three pillars of growth—Digital Real Estate, Dow Jones and Book Publishing—continued to expand Segment EBITDA robustly. We also saw the positive impact of rigorous cost discipline and digital development in the News Media segment, and our overall margin rose meaningfully compared to the prior year.” 

On another front, News Corp. is providing “priceless content for Generative AI, and remain vigilant in our pursuit of degenerative AI,” Thomson continues. “We are pleased with our partnership with OpenAI and hope that other companies in the segment take a similarly enlightened approach.”

But he issues this warning: “Our legal action against the perplexing Perplexity is underway and we look forward with relish to document discovery. The sudden rise of DeepSeek is itself a salutary lesson for all AI players. Data centers, chips, and energy costs aside, we believe DeepSeek lacks the immediacy of trusted news and, ultimately, content will be king in the world of AI.”