Bengaluru: News Corp, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires and book publisher HarperCollins, reported a quarterly loss as it struggles to cope with a decline in newspaper advertising sales.
News Corp’s net loss attributable to shareholders was $15 million (Dh55 million), or 3 cents per share, compared with a profit of $175 million, or 30 cents per share, a year earlier. On an adjusted basis, the company reported a loss of 1 cent per share.
The company, controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has been reducing staff and implementing other cost-cutting measures in its Dow Jones division, which includes the Journal, while building up its digital real estate business.
Revenue in the company’s news and information division, which accounts for about two-thirds of total revenue, fell 5.3 per cent to $1.22 billion in its first fiscal quarter ended September 30. Advertising revenue fell 11 per cent.
News Corp is not alone in its struggle to arrest a decline in print advertising.
New York Times Co reported a nearly 20 per cent drop in print ad revenue in the latest quarter, while USA Today publisher Gannett Co Inc reported a decline of about 15 per cent.
Spending on newspaper advertising in the United States is expected to fall 11 per cent this year to about $12 billion, according to media research firm Magna Intelligence.
However, News Corp said revenue in its rapidly growing digital real-estate unit jumped 18.3 per cent to $226 million.
Momentum in the business is expected to accelerate this year, Chief Executive Robert Thomson said in a statement.
The business includes REA Group Ltd, a leading real estate advertising company in Australia, and Move Inc, which operates Realtor.com in the United States and other countries.
Revenue from the company’s book publishing business fell 4.9 per cent to $389 million, compared with the year-ago quarter, which gained from the release of Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman”.
The company, whose newspapers include the New York Post, the Times in London and the Australian, said its revenue fell to $1.97 billion from $2.01 billion a year earlier.
