News Corp's News Media profit drops 40% to $18m in a record quarter

News Corp reported on November 4, 2026 what its chief executive called a record first quarter, with revenue up 6% to $2.28bn for the three months ended September 30, net income up 43% to $215m and Total Segment EBITDA up 19% to $403m. The growth came from three of its four operating segments. The fourth, News Media, home to The Sun, The Times, the New York Post and News Corp Australia's mastheads, moved the other way: revenue slipped 1% to $540m and segment EBITDA fell 40%, from $30m to $18m.

That divergence runs straight through the company's advertising. Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal and Barron's, grew advertising revenue 9% to $93m, with digital advertising up 12%. News Media advertising fell 2% to $187m, primarily on lower print revenue, according to the quarterly report on Form 10-Q that News Corp filed on November 5. Across the whole company, advertising brought in $323m, a 2% increase that left it at about 14.2% of revenue, down from 14.8% a year earlier (PPC Land calculation).

The 10-Q and two daily share buyback notices, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on November 5 and November 6, add detail the results announcement left out. Free cash flow was negative $89m. HarperCollins has not recognized any gain from the $1.5bn Anthropic book settlement it is part of. And by the close of trading on November 5, News Corp had spent $573.2m under its $1bn repurchase program, buying stock on the day after the results at prices about 10% below those it paid the day before.

In Short

News Corp, the company behind The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and HarperCollins, made more money than ever in a July to September quarter, mostly from business news, property websites and books. Its group of general newspapers and radio stations earned 40% less, because print advertising kept shrinking and the company spent money on new outlets. If you sell or buy ads, the takeaway is that News Corp's advertising growth now comes almost entirely from the Wall Street Journal's digital pages, while AI licensing money is promised but not yet visible in its accounts.

A record quarter carried by three segments

The quarter ran from June 29 to September 27, 2026, though News Corp dates its statements to September 30 for convenience, according to the 10-Q. Fiscal 2027 runs to the Sunday closest to June 30, 2027.

Source: News Corp Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026.

Robert Thomson, the chief executive, put the year-over-year gains in the context of an unbroken run. "These results herald our fourteenth consecutive quarter of year-over-year profitability growth," he said in the results announcement. "Our three engines of growth - Digital Real Estate Services, Dow Jones and Book Publishing - collectively delivered robust results despite volatile economic conditions." On the earnings call the same day, he said those three segments lifted their combined segment EBITDA 24%, while the company's margin rose to 17.7% from 15.9%. Added together, the three produced $447m of segment EBITDA, against $360m a year earlier (PPC Land calculation). News Media, which supplied 24% of group revenue, contributed about 3.9% of the positive segment EBITDA (PPC Land calculation).

Currency did part of the work. A weaker US dollar added $43m, or 2%, to revenue, according to News Corp, and Adjusted Revenues, which strip out currency effects, acquisitions and divestitures, rose 4%. Adjusted Total Segment EBITDA rose 13%, against 19% on a reported basis.

Below the segment line, the headline net income figure includes the share of profits owed to REA Group's outside shareholders. Net income attributable to News Corp stockholders was $159m, up 42% from $112m, according to the 10-Q. Other, net contributed $38m, compared with $4m a year earlier, and $37m of that came from the gain on REA Group's sale of REA India's remaining business. Income tax expense rose to $81m from $62m.

Earnings per share were $0.29, against $0.20, and adjusted earnings per share were $0.28, against $0.22. Share repurchases helped: the diluted weighted average share count fell to 542.7m from 566.9m, a reduction of about 4.3% (PPC Land calculation). A year ago, PPC Land reported that News Corp's first quarter of fiscal 2026 brought revenue of $2.14bn and Total Segment EBITDA of $340m, the baseline for this quarter's comparison.

Advertising: one business grows, the other shrinks

Dow Jones

Dow Jones advertising revenue rose $8m to $93m, according to the 10-Q, "primarily due to $7 million of higher digital advertising revenues driven by multiple sectors." Digital represented 70% of Dow Jones advertising, up from 68%. On those shares, digital advertising was roughly $65m, up from about $58m (PPC Land calculation).

Thomson named the sectors. "Advertising demand, particularly across tech and finance, helped fuel 9% ad revenue growth for the period overall with digital advertising achieving double-digit growth for the fourth consecutive quarter at 12%," he said. Lavanya Chandrashekar, the chief financial officer, said print advertising grew 4%, and that both digital and print improved on the prior quarter's growth rate. "We did see notable strength at The Wall Street Journal," she said in response to an analyst question, adding that "it's coming from both the tech sector as well as the finance sector and it's the kind of the unique positioning that they're able to get by advertising with the Journal."

The improvement follows a weaker spell. PPC Land reported in August that in News Corp's fiscal fourth quarter, Dow Jones advertising grew 5%, digital rose 10% and print fell 6%.

News Media

The News Media segment's advertising revenue fell $4m, or 2%, to $187m. The 10-Q attributes the decline "primarily" to lower print advertising, partially offset by a $5m positive currency effect. Without that currency lift, News Media advertising would have been about $182m, a decline of about 4.7% (PPC Land calculation). For the whole of fiscal 2026, the segment's advertising fell 5% in constant currency to $776m, PPC Land reported in August, when advertising fell to 15% of News Corp's revenue.

Thomson pointed to one bright spot. Advertising at talkSPORT, the UK sports radio network, "benefited from vibrant streaming growth, thanks in part to the World Cup." He then added: "Advertising would have benefited further had England, as it should have, made the final." Neither the 10-Q nor the call gives a figure for talkSPORT's advertising.

The quarter also included the run-up to the US midterm elections. "In the U.S., we have just experienced an election, which has inevitably prompted the politicization of everything from water to wattage," Thomson said. News Corp did not report a political advertising figure. The contrast with FOX, which since its separation from 21st Century Fox has carried the obligation to indemnify News Corp for UK newspaper claims, is stark: FOX reported a 47% rise in advertising revenue to $2.08bn for the same quarter, on World Cup and midterm spending.

Digital Real Estate Services

Advertising at Digital Real Estate Services rose 5% to $43m. Most of that segment's money comes from the separate real estate revenue line, which grew 13% to $418m.

Search, AI answers and the "destination site" argument

The weakness in News Media came with a familiar explanation. "News Media continues to navigate complex market pressures, including a challenging advertising environment and the ongoing evolution of the search and social algorithm landscape," Thomson said in his prepared remarks. He tied the outlook for search to agentic AI, software that acts on a user's behalf: "As mentioned earlier, that search landscape will change dramatically with the advent of agentic AI."

Douglas Wardlaw of JPMorgan pressed the point during the question session. "We've heard from some publishers and Internet platforms this earnings season about the headwinds from search traffic and AI overlays," he said. "Your digital ad growth stayed at double digits, so maybe you're seeing something different."

Thomson's answer rested on the idea of destination sites. "We're very fortunate that our companies are destination sites," he said, adding that "at a couple, we've actually seen recent increases in traffic to some of the larger sites." He did not name which sites, or give a percentage. He drew a line between News Corp's properties and publishers built on evergreen material: "That is sites thinking that endless lists or gardening or food would fatten their traffic. Well, those sites have definitely been on a digital diet in the AI age. The generic does not flourish as synthesis proliferates."

He gave audience figures instead of referral data. "At a monthly level, we have 249 million uniques in the U.S. So it's a huge audience but it's also a network, 84 million at the New York Post, 66 million at Realtor, for example," Thomson said. He described a network effect in which Realtor.com can send traffic to Bible Gateway, which can send it to wsj.com and the New York Post, and called it "our own circulatory system." Chandrashekar added that direct traffic is the predominant source of visits to The Wall Street Journal. Neither executive gave a share for search referrals, a traffic trend for any single site or a source for the 249 million figure.

That leaves the claim hard to test against what other publishers have measured. Chartbeat data covered by PPC Land showed search falling from 21% to 12% of North American publisher pageviews between the third quarters of 2025 and 2026. Digital Content Next, a trade group whose members include The New York Times, told a federal court in October that its members' unique visitors fell 26% between 2023 and 2025. Google's AI Overviews feature prominently in that debate. Thomson did not mention Google by name on the call.

He did set out a view of what comes next. "In the agentic age, individual agents will be potentially free of the political bias and media myopia that characterize some old-school digital aggregators and will seek out sources that provide tangible value," he said. Asked by Brent Penter of Raymond James how News Corp is positioned as consumers use agentic AI to manage subscriptions, Thomson said the agents "will be seeking out individual stories and servicing them, which is certainly more beneficial to us than what you might call egregious aggregation." On the risk that agents make cancellation easier, he argued that a subscription business which depends on making cancellation difficult has a strategic problem, and that News Corp's approach is to exceed subscribers' expectations. These are forecasts; the company offered no data on agent-driven traffic or subscriptions.

Woo and sue: licensing, litigation and the Anthropic money

The partnerships

The results announcement carried the company's AI position in a single paragraph. "We remain vigilant in protecting that priceless intellectual property. We are pleased to have partners in OpenAI and Meta that recognize the importance of our content, and remain optimistic that other platforms will choose compensation over confiscation, principle over plunder. To that end, we will woo and we will sue," Thomson said.

On the call he went further on negotiations. "We're in active negotiation on several fronts and those talks with AI platforms are progressing well. Clearly, we can't reveal any details of confidential deals," he said. Once concluded, he said, the impact would be visible "in our accounts very clearly." Beyond the large horizontal platforms, he said News Corp is "in discussion with specialist verticals who need our content and our immediacy to freshen their models and create compelling products for their specialist clients."

News Corp gave no value for the OpenAI or Meta agreements. Press reports collected in PPC Land's coverage of Prebid's AI payment models put the OpenAI deal at more than $250m over five years and the Meta deal at up to $50m a year for three years; neither figure appears in the 10-Q or on the call.

The money is also hard to find in the accounts. The 10-Q reports no separate AI licensing line. Dow Jones circulation and licensing revenue rose 8% to $268m, which the filing says was "driven by higher content licensing revenues, increased digital circulation revenues due to the conversion of customers from introductory promotions to higher pricing and growth in digital-only subscriptions." In News Media, "price increases and higher content licensing revenues were more than offset by print volume declines." Licensing therefore sits inside subscription lines whose other drivers are larger, and the filing does not say how much of each increase it accounts for.

The Anthropic settlement

Thomson twice raised Anthropic. On the call he said: "We do expect the first tranche of the $1.5 billion Anthropic's books settlement to be received in the near term." Chandrashekar said the company continues "to anticipate the commencement of the Anthropic settlement payments in the near term."

The $1.5bn is not News Corp's figure. It is the total of the class action settlement that Anthropic agreed in September 2025, which PPC Land reported at the time as about $3,000 per work across roughly 500,000 books, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California before Judge William Alsup. The 10-Q states that HarperCollins is covered "as a class member," that the settlement "received final court approval" in July 2026, and that "as the timing and amount of any potential proceeds receivable under the settlement remain subject to the claims process, the Company has not yet recognized any gain related to this matter." News Corp did not say how many HarperCollins titles fall within the class or how proceeds will be split with authors.

The settlement has not ended the dispute. "And we still have issues with Anthropic," Thomson said. In his prepared remarks he turned to the company's flotation plans: "As for the AI platforms, we note that Anthropic has signaled, with much fanfare, its intent to IPO in the near future. Publishers have serious concerns about Anthropic's unlicensed use of copyrighted content to power its AI tools." Anthropic filed for a Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT on October 26, reporting $16.29bn of revenue for the first half of 2026.

The lawsuits

"We also have cases against the perplexing Perplexity and the not-so-bravura Brave," Thomson said. "I noticed The New York Times has also brought an action against Brave this week." The New York Times and three other papers sued Brave on November 2 over AI answers and ad blocking. Thomson gave no detail of News Corp's own Brave case, and the 10-Q does not describe it. The Dow Jones lawsuit against Perplexity, case 1:24-cv-07984, survived a motion to dismiss in August 2025, as noted in PPC Land's coverage of CNN's later suit against Perplexity.

Thomson also signaled a wider target. "I would emphasize that not only are we pursuing companies that steal our content but also taking an aim at those companies which knowingly purchase that purloined content," he said. "They are obviously receiving stolen goods and should cease and desist." He did not name any buyer.

Dow Jones: subscriptions, risk data and a $1bn target

Dow Jones produced a record first quarter, with revenue up 8% to $630m and segment EBITDA up 11% to $160m, a margin of 25.4%. Thomson said it was the 15th consecutive quarter of year-on-year EBITDA growth at the unit. Digital revenue made up 85% of the segment, up from 84%.

Source: News Corp Form 10-Q. Barron's Group includes Barron's, MarketWatch, Financial News and Private Equity News. Total News Products adds Investor's Business Daily. Figures include enterprise subscriptions and exclude most off-platform distribution.

Sequential net additions of digital-only subscriptions were about 219,000, Chandrashekar said, "benefiting from the timing of enterprise subscription deals," and the highest in almost three years. Circulation revenue grew 4% and digital circulation 6%. Digital represented 76% of circulation revenue, up from 75%. She said growth in digital direct subscription ARPU accelerated both year over year and quarter over quarter, without giving a figure.

The professional information business grew 5% to $256m. Dow Jones Risk & Compliance rose 11% to $104m, which Chandrashekar attributed mostly to higher volume and product upsells. "The recent spate of painful fines for prominent financial institutions highlights the need to minimize risk and maximize compliance," Thomson said. Dow Jones Energy grew 8% to $79m and recorded its highest first-quarter increase in net new bookings since News Corp acquired it in fiscal 2022, with customer retention of about 90%. Thomson said the Energy business expanded "despite the Middle East conflict that inevitably had an impact on our activities." Other information services fell 4% to $73m, lapping the resolution of a customer dispute in the prior year.

Costs rose too. Dow Jones selling, general and administrative expenses grew 10% to $224m, on the timing of marketing spend and higher employee costs, according to the 10-Q. Dow Jones capital expenditure jumped to $38m from $15m.

Thomson said the Dow Jones team "remain firmly on track to reach the $1 billion EBITDA target that was outlined at the Dow Jones Investor briefing earlier this year." This quarter's $160m, multiplied by four, comes to $640m (PPC Land calculation, ignoring seasonality), and the call did not state a date for reaching the target.

Digital Real Estate: higher prices, fewer listings

Digital Real Estate Services grew revenue 10% to $529m and segment EBITDA 34% to $212m, lifting the margin to about 40.1% from 33.0% (PPC Land calculation). On an adjusted basis, revenue rose 4% and EBITDA 23%; currency contributed $15m of the EBITDA increase, according to the 10-Q.

REA Group

REA Group, the Australian property portal operator in which News Corp holds 62.0%, increased revenue 13% to $369m, of which $27m came from currency. In constant currency, growth was 5%. Chandrashekar said Australian residential yield grew 8%, or 14% on a controllable basis, through price increases, deeper penetration of premium listings and add-on products. National new buy listings fell 2%, with Sydney and Melbourne down 16%. She said realestate.com.au averaged 11.5 million monthly unique visitors and 137 million monthly visits in the quarter, "nearly 100 million more than the nearest competitor."

October was weaker. "October listings were down 13% year-over-year but down 8%, removing the impact of 1 less working day," Chandrashekar said.

REA completed the sale of REA India's remaining business in September, and Thomson identified the buyer as Aurum. From the second quarter, News Corp's results will no longer include REA India. In September REA also agreed to buy 35% of Distilled, operator of Ireland's property portal Daft.ie, for about A$409m, or roughly $290m, according to the 10-Q and the call. REA expects to fund the purchase with borrowings and cash on hand, and the deal requires regulatory approval before an expected close in fiscal 2027. REA also replaced its undrawn credit facility with a three-year A$500m revolving facility maturing on September 30, 2029, priced at the Australian BBSY rate plus 1.05% to 1.95% depending on leverage. That debt is non-recourse to News Corp.

Realtor.com

Move, which operates Realtor.com, grew revenue 5% to $160m, its eighth consecutive quarter of growth. "Realtor has now grown revenues 8 straight quarters, an impressive trend given the macro environment," Chandrashekar said. The driver was RealPRO Select, its premium marketing product for top-performing agents, along with a focus on higher-priced listings. Adjacencies, covering new homes, rentals and sellers, rose to 23% of revenue.

Lead volume fell 11%. The 10-Q links that decline to "recent increases in mortgage rates, which may continue to negatively impact the U.S. housing market in the near term," while Chandrashekar also cited a deliberate shift toward higher-quality, higher-value leads. Revenue per existing home sold, which the company uses as a proxy for yield, rose 25% compared with the fourth quarter of 2022. Citing Comscore, she said Realtor.com recorded 4.9 visits per unique user, up 8% year over year, ahead of Redfin and Homes.com. Thomson credited operational discipline and AI integration for converting revenue growth into profit.

HarperCollins: audiobooks and a softer comparison

Book Publishing grew revenue 9% to $582m and segment EBITDA 29% to $75m, with the margin rising to 12.9% from 10.9%. Part of the profit increase reflects a weak base. The prior-year quarter included a $13m write-off of a customer receivable after a book distributor closed, according to the 10-Q. Adding that back, prior-year EBITDA would have been about $71m, and the underlying increase about 6% (PPC Land calculation).

Digital sales rose 6% and represented about 23% of consumer revenue, unchanged on a year ago. Audiobook revenue rose 13%. "Audiobooks delivered a sterling performance with 13% year-on-year growth, propelled by our global partnership with Spotify and by a focus on enhancing audio as a higher-yielding listening event," Thomson said. Backlist titles, published in earlier years, provided 66% of consumer revenue, against 65%. Costs rose 7%, driven by royalties, manufacturing and marketing for new releases, Chandrashekar said.

Thomson listed Ann Patchett's Whistler, Rebecca Kuang's Taipei Story, Daniel Silva's Ransom and Lucy Foley's Miss Marple novel Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel among the quarter's titles. For the second quarter he pointed to Sylvester Stallone's The Steps, which he said debuted as the number one best seller at the end of September, and to Greta Gerwig's adaptation of C.S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew, with a February premiere.

Inventory rose to $332m from $302m at June 30. Chandrashekar described the build as protection against supply chain problems ahead of the holiday season. HarperCollins is also equipping a new warehouse under a finance lease of up to $120m agreed in October 2025, of which $23m appeared on the balance sheet at the end of September.

AI featured in Thomson's account of the books business as well. "AI is going to really provide a role in helping to bring books to life through these vivid voices and the ability to generate a compelling audio experience that makes the book even more valuable," he said, citing innovation at Spotify and Audible. "And don't forget as well how AI will enable much more cost-effective translations into multiple languages, both in text and audio and thus reach new audiences and generate new revenue." He did not say whether HarperCollins already uses synthetic narration.

News Media: print decline and new outlets

News Media revenue fell $5m to $540m, but currency flattered the result by $17m. Without it, revenue would have been about $523m, down about 4% (PPC Land calculation). Other revenue fell 14%, advertising 2%, and circulation and subscription revenue rose 3%, all of it from currency, according to the 10-Q.

Segment EBITDA fell $12m. The 10-Q attributes the decline to lower revenue. Chandrashekar described the result as including "disciplined investment at the New York Post and tougher trading conditions," and Thomson pointed to "modest investments in both the California Post and News24, our Australian-based broadcast network whose global reach has expanded rapidly."

Subscriber figures held up. The Times grew digital subscribers 7% to 686,000, according to Thomson. In Australia, total digital subscribers held at 1.16 million, while digital ARPU "remained resilient." He said the New York Post, which marks the 225th anniversary of its founding by Alexander Hamilton later this year, "has rarely been in such strong financial shape, having previously suffered decades of losses before the recent turnaround." The company did not give the Post's revenue or profit.

For the second quarter, Chandrashekar said News Corp expects "broadly similar trends to quarter 1, including modest incremental costs compared to the prior year related to the continued rollout of The California Post."

Cash flow, buybacks and the share price

Negative free cash flow

Net cash from operating activities fell to $13m from $85m, and capital expenditure rose to $102m from $81m, producing free cash flow of negative $89m, against positive $4m a year earlier, according to the 10-Q. The filing attributes the operating decline primarily to "higher working capital due to the timing of payments and higher tax payments." Cash taxes rose to $77m from $56m.

Two analysts asked about it. To Ailsa Lei of UBS, Chandrashekar said: "The CapEx increase in this quarter was entirely driven by timing. We continue to be very confident in our ability to deliver strong free cash flow for the year." To Entcho Raykovski of Evans & Partners, she gave two working capital reasons. "More of our revenue was weighted into the back -- the last month of the quarter," she said, at Dow Jones and HarperCollins, so the cash will be collected in the second quarter. The second was the inventory build at HarperCollins. She noted that the company's cash flow "does tend to be more second half weighted due to seasonality."

Cash and cash equivalents fell to $1.78bn from $2.10bn at June 30. Of that, $632m sat in foreign subsidiaries, including $181m held by REA Group that News Corp cannot access unless REA declares a dividend. Borrowings totalled $2.0bn, made up of $995m of 3.875% notes due May 2029, $495m of 5.125% notes due February 2032 and a $499m term loan due March 2031, plus the HarperCollins lease. An interest rate swap brought the term loan's effective rate to 3.399%. A $1bn revolving facility was undrawn.

The 10-Q also records $1,193m of remaining performance obligations, contracted revenue not yet recognized, of which $368m is expected over the rest of fiscal 2027, $312m in fiscal 2028 and $200m in fiscal 2029. The filing does not break the figure down by contract type.

Buybacks before and after the results

News Corp repurchased 5.6 million shares for $166m in the quarter, against 3.0 million for $94m a year earlier. Average prices were $28.58 for Class A stock and $32.19 for Class B, and $501m remained under the $1bn program announced on July 15, 2025. Dividends paid in the quarter totalled $61m, mostly to REA Group's minority shareholders. A semi-annual dividend of $0.10 per share, declared in August, was paid on October 7.

The two 8-K filings reproduce News Corp's daily buyback notices to the Australian Securities Exchange. They show the company kept buying through the results.

Source: News Corp Form 8-K filings of November 5 and November 6, 2026.

On those figures, the average price paid for Class A stock fell to about $27.35 on November 5 from about $30.26 on November 4, and for Class B to about $29.86 from about $33.00, declines of roughly 10% (PPC Land calculation). The lowest Class A price on November 5 was also below the $28.58 average News Corp paid across the first quarter. The filings record prices, not reasons.

The November 6 notice puts total spending under the 2025 program at $573,249,429, leaving about $427m of the $1bn authorization (PPC Land calculation). Comparing that with the $501m remaining at September 30 implies roughly $74m of repurchases between the end of the quarter and November 5 (PPC Land calculation). The ASX forms list 143,211,027 Class B shares on issue, which does not match the 178,920,372 Class B shares the 10-Q reports outstanding on October 30; the forms do not explain the difference.

AI inside the company

Craig Huber of Huber Research asked whether News Corp could quantify savings from AI. "We're not quantifying cost savings," Chandrashekar said. She listed product development, engineering, coding, quality testing, customer service and data analytics as areas of use, and said "we're actually using AI across all of our functions, across all of our business units," including HR, finance and marketing. Thomson said Realtor.com and REA "are talking to each other virtually every day about the implementation of new AI applications," and that AI "is going to enhance the real estate experience, not undermine."

Impairment and restructuring charges were $20m, against $19m. The 10-Q shows $19m of new one-time employee termination costs in the quarter and restructuring liabilities of $58m at September 30. The company did not connect those charges to AI.

What else the 10-Q discloses

The filing updates several legal matters. Oil Price Information Service, part of Dow Jones Energy, settled US class actions over PVC pipe pricing in May 2025, with final court approval in June 2026. A similar class action filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in September 2025 remains under evaluation. OPIS also received a grand jury subpoena from the Department of Justice Antitrust Division in January 2025 and a civil investigative demand from a state attorney general in April 2025, both seeking documents on PVC pipe including the PVC and Pipe Weekly Report; OPIS says it is complying.

HarperCollins remains a defendant in the final stage of antitrust class actions filed from February 2021 against Amazon and several publishers in the Southern District of New York. The court dismissed the claims against the publishers with prejudice in March 2024, but the plaintiffs' time to appeal does not expire until the claims against Amazon are determined. On the UK newspaper phone hacking and payments matters, News Corp accrued about $4m and recorded about $12m as receivable from FOX under the 2013 indemnity.

Why this matters for the marketing community

For advertisers and agencies, News Corp now presents two very different inventories under one roof. The Wall Street Journal's digital advertising is growing at double-digit rates, pulled by technology and finance buyers, while the general news and tabloid portfolio in the UK, Australia and New York continues to lose print advertising, a decline that currency gains partly disguise. In a quarter in which FOX's advertising rose 47%, News Corp's company-wide advertising grew 2% and slipped as a share of revenue.

For publishers, the quarter shows both the case and the gaps in the "destination site" argument. Thomson reported strong audience totals, a large unique visitor count and direct traffic dominance at the Journal, at a time when PPC Land coverage of Chartbeat and Digital Content Next data has documented steep declines in search referrals across the industry. News Corp did not provide the referral figures that would show whether its sites are exceptions or simply better insulated.

The AI licensing story is similarly incomplete. News Corp names OpenAI and Meta as partners and says more deals are in negotiation, yet the 10-Q folds licensing into subscription revenue lines and assigns no value to either agreement. The most concrete AI money in prospect, the Anthropic settlement, remains unrecognized, and its share for HarperCollins depends on a claims process covering a whole class of rights holders. How much of the woo and sue strategy shows up as revenue, rather than as rhetoric, is the question the next few quarters will have to answer.

Timeline

• June 28, 2013 - News Corp separates from 21st Century Fox; the separation agreement provides for indemnity on UK newspaper claims, later assigned to FOX.
• February 2021 - Antitrust class actions are filed against Amazon and publishers including HarperCollins in the Southern District of New York.
• September 22, 2021 - News Corp announces its 2021 stock repurchase program of up to $1bn, completed during fiscal 2026.
• Fiscal 2022 - News Corp acquires the business now known as Dow Jones Energy.
• March 2024 - The court dismisses the remaining HarperCollins antitrust complaint with prejudice.
• August 2024 - Class actions over PVC pipe pricing name OPIS as a defendant.
• January 2025 - OPIS receives a Department of Justice grand jury subpoena.
• May 2025 - OPIS settles the US PVC pipe class actions.
• July 15, 2025 - News Corp announces the 2025 repurchase program of up to $1bn.
• August 2025 - The court denies Perplexity's motion to dismiss the Dow Jones lawsuit.
• September 2025 - Anthropic agrees to a $1.5bn settlement, about $3,000 per work; a similar PVC pipe class action is filed in British Columbia.
• October 2025 - HarperCollins agrees a finance lease of up to $120m for new warehouse equipment.
• November 2025 - News Corp reports first quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of $2.14bn and Total Segment EBITDA of $340m.
• June 2026 - The US OPIS settlement receives final court approval.
• July 2026 - The Anthropic class settlement receives final court approval.
• August 2026 - News Corp reports fiscal 2026 results, with advertising at 15% of revenue; the board declares a $0.10 semi-annual dividend.
• August 7, 2026 - News Corp files its 2026 Form 10-K.
• September 2026 - REA completes the sale of REA India's remaining business, agrees to buy 35% of Distilled for about A$409m and signs an A$500m credit facility.
• September 27, 2026 - The first quarter of fiscal 2027 ends.
• October 7, 2026 - News Corp pays the $0.10 dividend.
• October 2026 - Chartbeat data shows search at 12% of North American publisher pageviews.
• October 26, 2026 - Anthropic files for a Nasdaq IPO under the ticker ANT.
• October 29, 2026 - Digital Content Next files a brief citing a 26% drop in members' unique visitors.
• October 30, 2026 - News Corp has 358,254,762 Class A and 178,920,372 Class B shares outstanding.
• November 2, 2026 - The New York Times and three papers sue Brave; FOX reports a 47% rise in advertising revenue.
• November 4, 2026 - News Corp reports first quarter fiscal 2027 results and holds its earnings call; it buys 54,641 Class A and 23,784 Class B shares.
• November 5, 2026 - News Corp files its 10-Q and an 8-K; it buys 70,004 Class A and 30,471 Class B shares at lower prices.
• November 6, 2026 - An 8-K puts total spending under the 2025 program at $573.2m.
• Fiscal 2027 - REA's Distilled investment is expected to close, subject to regulatory approval.
• September 30, 2029 - REA's A$500m credit facility matures.

Related PPC Land coverage

• Advertising drops to 15% of News Corp revenue as digital reaches 61% - News Corp's fiscal 2026 results, including Dow Jones and News Media advertising trends.
• News Corp reports AI content partnerships as digital subscriptions reach 62% of revenue - The year-ago first quarter and the company's "wooing and suing" approach to AI firms.
• Anthropic agrees to $1.5 billion settlement in largest copyright case - Terms of the book settlement in which HarperCollins is a class member.
• Anthropic files for Nasdaq IPO with $16.3bn in first-half revenue - The listing Thomson referred to on the call.
• New York Times and three papers sue Brave over AI answers and ad blocking - The suits Thomson cited alongside News Corp's own case against Brave.
• CNN sues Perplexity for copying 17,000 works in landmark AI copyright case - Includes the status of the Dow Jones case against Perplexity.
• Prebid maps 4 AI payment models for publishers, from $0.001 a page - Collects reported values of AI licensing deals, including News Corp's.
• Search drops to 12% of North American publisher pageviews, Chartbeat finds - Industry referral data against which News Corp's traffic claims can be read.
• Publisher group says AI cut visitors 26%, quoting Microsoft's 'doom loop' - Digital Content Next's court brief on publisher traffic losses.
• News publishers lose half their Google search traffic in two years - NewzDash analysis of the shift from Google Search to Discover for news sites.
• FOX ad revenue gains 47% to $2.08bn on World Cup and midterm ads - The same quarter at FOX, which shares News Corp's history.
• AI search upends publishers: global digital subscriptions grow but fragment - FIPP and WAN-IFRA subscription data covering Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal.

Summary

Who: News Corp, its chief executive Robert Thomson and chief financial officer Lavanya Chandrashekar, and its segments Dow Jones, Digital Real Estate Services (REA Group and Realtor.com), HarperCollins and News Media.

What: Revenue rose 6% to $2.28bn and Total Segment EBITDA 19% to $403m, while News Media segment EBITDA fell 40% to $18m. Dow Jones digital advertising grew 12% and News Media advertising fell 2%. Free cash flow was negative $89m, HarperCollins has recognized no gain from the $1.5bn Anthropic class settlement, and buybacks under the 2025 program reached $573.2m.

When: Results for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 were published on November 4, 2026, followed by the 10-Q on November 5 and buyback filings on November 5 and November 6.

Where: News Corp is based in New York and operates mainly in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom; filings went to the SEC and buyback notices to the Australian Securities Exchange.

Why: The results show a company whose growth now depends on business information, property listings and books, while its general news titles face falling print advertising and changing search traffic, and its AI licensing income has yet to appear as a disclosed figure.