News Corp says it is considering an offer made to buy out its 65 percent stake in Australian pay television company Foxtel.
The potential sale was revealed by News Corp CEO Robert Thomson as part of the company’s quarterly financial disclosure exercise on Thursday, during which News Corp revealed it earned $2.58 billion in revenue from its various business segments during its fourth fiscal quarter (Q4, coincides with calendar Q2).
“We are confident in the company’s long-term prospects and are continuing to review our portfolio with a focus on maximizing returns for shareholders,” Thomson said in a statement. “That review has coincided recently with third-party interest in a potential transaction involving the Foxtel Group, which has been positively transformed in recent years. We are evaluating options for the business with our advisors in light of that external interest.”
Thompson did not say who had offered to buy out News Corp’s stake in Foxtel, or for how much. News Corp holds a controlling 65 percent stake in Foxtel, with Australian telecom giant Telstra owning the rest.
News Corp is a well-diversified international media conglomerate with a number of differentiated products, including book, newspaper and magazine publishing in the United States (the Wall Street Journal, Harper Collins, the New York Post, Barron’s), the United Kingdom (The Sun, The Times) and Australia (The Australian, the Herald Sun).
The company also owns various broadcast media assets in the United Kingdom and Australia, including Times Radio, Talk TV, Foxtel and Sky News Australia. News Corp separated from Fox Corporation (then 21st Century Fox) in 2012, which imparted U.K.-based Sky onto the latter.
Foxtel remains one of News Corp’s biggest television assets. Through Foxtel, the company operates a national cable and satellite TV distributor, as well as pay TV channels like Fox 8, Arena, Fox Sports News, A&E, the History Channel and Sleuth. Foxtel also operates Hubbl, a streaming company that includes subscription-based products like Binge, Flash News and Kayo Sports.
Subscription video services brought in U.S. $506 million during Q4, a U.S. $5 million increase compared to Q4 2023, the company said. Higher revenue from Kayo and Binge was cited among the reasons for an uptick in revenue from the business segment. Foxtel itself represented 32 percent of total circulation and subscription revenues at News Corp, compared with 29 percent during Q4 2023.
As more customers gravitate toward streaming, Foxtel’s core cable and satellite business is starting to wane. Around 1.21 million cable and satellite subscribers were counted toward the end of Q4, representing a 9.7 percent drop compared to the prior year. Higher advertising revenue from networks and streaming helped offset subscriber declines at the business, News Corp said.
