News Corp Sales Rise on Media Gains

News Corp reported a 13% increase in its quarterly revenue, boosted by growth in its digital real-estate services, Dow Jones and book-publishing divisions, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The New York-based media company, whose holdings include The Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins Publishers and news organizations in the U.K. and Australia, reported a profit of $235 million, or 40 cents a share, for the December quarter, up from $231 million, or 39 cents a share, a year earlier. Adjusted earnings, which excludes certain costs, were 44 cents a share.

Revenue increased to $2.72 billion for the fiscal second quarter from $2.41 billion a year earlier. Analysts polled by FactSet expected revenue of $2.64 billion and adjusted earnings of 28 cents a share.

The company’s digital real-estate services division logged a 35% rise in revenue to $456 million and a 25% increase in segment earnings to $178 million. The division includes a majority stake in REA Group Ltd. REA -0.40% , a publicly traded digital real-estate company based in Australia, and an 80% stake in Move Inc., an online real-estate business based in Santa Clara, Calif., that primarily operates the website Realtor.com.

Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of the Journal, Barron’s and MarketWatch, reported a 14% increase in revenue to $508 million, and a 32% increase in segment earnings to $144 million. The increase was primarily due to higher advertising and subscription revenue and circulation growth. The acquisition of Investor’s Business Daily brought in $18 million in revenue during the quarter, the company said.

The Journal averaged more than 2.9 million digital subscribers in the quarter, up 19% over the previous year. Including the print edition, the Journal averaged more than 3.6 million subscribers for the period. Dow Jones’s consumer-facing products, which include readers of Barron’s, MarketWatch, Financial News and Investor’s Business Daily, had an average of 4.7 million subscribers in the three-month period.

News Corp’s news-media segment, which includes the Sun, the New York Post and the Times in the U.K., increased 11% in revenue to $638 million. The unit had a profit of $111 million, compared with $66 million a year earlier.

News Corp said its news-media businesses saw a continued uptick in advertising revenue as marketers increased their spending with the easing of the pandemic.