Fox Corp. posted higher revenue for the recently ended quarter, as advertising sales got a boost from soccer’s World Cup and National Football League games.
The company said revenue rose 4% to $4.61 billion for the three months ended Dec. 31, topping Wall Street expectations of $4.58 billion.
Fox said advertising revenue also rose about 4%, lifted by the World Cup, the NFL season, higher political advertising leading up to the midterms and continued growth at its ad-supported streaming service Tubi. Those gains offset lost advertising revenue from the absence of the media rights to the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, which was streamed on Amazon.com Inc.’s platform this season.
The Fox News parent company and Wall Street Journal parent company News Corp share common ownership. The quarterly results come after Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch last month called off his effort to merge the company with News Corp. Fox on Wednesday authorized a new $3 billion stock buyback plan, and said it would move quickly to buy $1 billion worth of shares. The company also declared a 25-cent semiannual dividend.
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In Fox’s cable network programming business, which houses the Fox Business Network and Fox Sports 1 channel as well as Fox News, revenue fell less than 1% as advertising revenue declined modestly. Affiliate revenue also fell slightly, as contractual price increases nearly offset subscriber losses from cord-cutting.
The segment’s earnings fell, weighed down by higher costs tied to the broadcasting of the World Cup, as well as legal fees and increased digital investments in Fox News.
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Fox’s television business posted 6% growth in revenue as higher advertising revenue tied to the World Cup as well as the NFL season and political advertising offset the loss of Thursday Night Football.
Overall for the fiscal second quarter, Fox posted a profit attributable to stockholders of $313 million, or 58 cents a share, compared with a loss of $85 million, or 15 cents a share, a year earlier. Adjusted earnings came to 48 cents a share, matching Wall Street expectations.
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Shares rose more than 1% in premarket trading.
