NEW YORK: News Corp’s revenue fell for the fourth quarter in a row, hurt by a stronger dollar and dwindling advertising revenue in its core news and information business, which includes the Wall Street Journal.
Newspaper and magazine publishers have been under unabated pressure to offset a decline in print advertising dollars by shoring up their digital business to attract advertisers and by boosting subscriptions.
News Corp, controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, said revenue at its news and information unit declined 8.1 percent in the second quarter.
The unit, which accounted for about 65 percent of total revenue, also houses Dow Jones and the New York Post. Here, ad revenue fell 12 percent, mainly due to weakness in print ads.
The company said digital revenue increased and accounted for a third of total ad revenue at Dow Jones. It did not provide numbers.
“News Corp is a company with a lot of opportunities in front of it and a lot of ways to leverage its assets. This particular quarter shows that’s still a work in process,” said Tony Scherrer, director of research at Smead Capital Management, which owns about 3.9 million shares of News Corp.
News Corp, which split off from Twenty-First Century Fox Inc in 2013, has been diversifying to rely less on its print business.
The company said it expects its fast growing digital real-estate unit, where revenue jumped 35 percent, to become a core pillar of profitability.
Revenue in its book publishing business, which includes HarperCollins Publishers, fell 5 percent.
