News Aktie

Welcome to News Corp's First Quarter Fiscal 2027 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. Media will be allowed on a listen-only basis. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Michael Florin, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to News Corp's Fiscal First Quarter 2027 Earnings Call. We issued our earnings press release about 30 minutes ago, and it's now posted. On the call today are Robert Thomson, Chief Executive; and Lavanya Chanchashaker, Chief Financial Officer. We have some prepared remarks, and we'll be happy to take questions from the investment community. .

This call may include certain forward-looking information with respect to News Corp's business and strategy. actual results could differ materially from what is said. News Corp's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings identify risks and uncertainties and that could cause actual results to differ and contain cautionary statements regarding forward-looking information. Additionally, this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measurements such as total segment EBITDA, and adjusted segment EBITDA and adjusted EPS. The definitions and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations of such measures can be found in the earnings releases for the applicable periods posted on our website.

With that, I'll pass it over to Rob Thomson for some opening comments.

Thank you, Mike. Following a year of record revenue and record profitability in fiscal 2026, we began the new fiscal year with our first quarter revenue, 6% higher than prior year at $2.3 billion. while total segment EBITDA surged 19% to $403 million. Our positive results were bolstered by strong performances across our 3 growth engines, Dow Jones, Digital Real Estate Services and Book Publishing, which saw a collective segment EBITDA increase of 24% compared to the prior year, even though economic conditions were volatile with conflict in the Middle East, tariff turbulence and interest rate increases. And our margin for the quarter was 17.7% compared to 15.9% in the same quarter last year, while Star earnings per share were $0.29 compared to $0.20 a year ago, and adjusted EPS were $0.28 compared to $0.22. The 19% increase in total segment EBITDA marked 14 consecutive quarters of growth and we have also reported 13 consecutive quarters of year-on-year revenue increases on a continuing operations basis. .

Our company has been transformed over the past decade of the digital age, and we believe the business is primed for further growth in the age of AI when trusted sources will inevitably become more valuable and consumers and companies will be able to prompt agents to seek out those sources. 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. We are traversing an era that rapidly exposes the femoral but which rewards companies with a cogent and coherent tech trajectory. Business is ultimately transactional. And digital drops, superficial slop is not the concrete insight sought by companies or the brilliant books sold by readers or property intelligence sought by families making the most important investment buying a home. And we have network now, meaning that those 3 growth areas are clearly more than the sum of their prosperous parts. In the U.S., we have just experienced an election, which has inevitably prompted politicization of everything from water to wattage. At least, there has been more focus on the integrity of inputs necessary in the AI age and we believe our content is an absolutely essential input.

Often lost in a debate is that intelligent content is actually the essence of AI. Infrastructure is not AI, silicon is not I Water is not AI. These are but necessary components. AI runs on created content, and we create that core intelligence. That intelligence is dependent on the content that our journalists, our writers, our teams across the world and across cultures create day after day, minute after a minute. So we, as a company, play a crucial role in creating the inputs that are contributing to the extraordinary outputs that people are experiencing. The outputs enhancing so much of the personal and of the professional. They are value-added experiences, and we are creating that core value and we do so with core values. As for the AI platforms, we note that anthropic has signaled with fanfare its intent to IPO in the near future. Publishers have serious concerns about Antropic's unlicensed use of copyrighted content to power its AI tools.

Consistent with our woo and sue strategy, we remain vigilant about protecting our IP. We will not tolerate any abuse of our IP and more broadly, the undermining of the very value of creation and creativity in our society. As we journey, and some other people stumble into the AI age, News Corp is no peripheral participant. We are a primary provider of the essential ingredients AI companies need to operate thoughtfully and productively. We are glad to have principal partners in OpenAI and Meta and others who appreciate the crucial role our inputs play. So we remain optimistic that other platforms will choose compensation over conversation, principal over plunder, and that they will understand that digital [indiscernible] is inimical to their own interests.

Turning to our segments. Dow Jones once again posted robust results with first quarter revenue rising 8% year-on-year to $630 million. while EBITDA increased 11% to $160 million, marking the 15th consecutive quarter of year-on-year EBITDA growth. Margin expanded by 80 basis points to 25.4% compared to the prior year, and we remain focused on building our high-margin professional information business. The Risk & Compliance business increased revenue 11% over the prior year, and the recent spate of painful fines for prominent financial institutions highlights the need to minimize risk and maximize compliance. The Dow Jones Energy business expanded 8% despite the Middle East conflict that inevitably had an impact on our activities. The team has pivoted savvily in the circumstances, and we are seeing a potent revenue pipeline that we expect will become more obvious later in the year. The news business saw circulation revenue expand 4% for the first quarter versus prior year, with digital volumes rising 10% to average nearly 6.5 million subscriptions during the period.

Advertising demand particularly across tech and finance helped fuel 9% revenue growth period overall with digital advertising achieving double-digit growth for the fourth consecutive quarter at 12%. And Elmar and Dowl 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. Speaking of investor briefings. Cam McIntire and the REA leadership team just held a particularly successful Investor Day in Australia and highlighted the company's revenue resilience and growth potential even in a market experiencing short-term disruption. Core messages, whether AI should be an accelerator for growth providing enhanced services for agents, sellers and buyers, and that the company has increased yield markedly even in times of a lagged listings growth and elevated interest rates.

Overall, in the Digital Real Estate Services segment, revenues for the first quarter rose 10% to $529 million and EBITDA surged 34% to $212 million. as REA and realtor.com both showed their structural strength in markets that were challenged. That excellent performance, obviously, augurs well for our company when market conditions become less hostile and more specious. At REA, revenues rose 13%, benefiting from high yield and the positive impact of a stronger currency despite a 2% national decline in listings. The team continued to sharpen their strategic focus by completing the sale of REA India to Orem and by agreeing to take a 35% stake in Distilled, the leading multi-vertical digital marketplace in Ireland, where our company has a strong media presence and we'll be able to deploy that network to enhance the business.

In the U.S., realtor.com defied a depressed market, posting its eighth consecutive quarter of top line revenue growth at 5% and achieving considerable gains in profitability. In a housing market constrained by 7% plus mortgage rates Damian and the team have exhibited exceptional discipline in their operational focus and AI integration. And that approach has converted revenue growth into meaningful bottom line expansion. They also continue to lead the industry in engagement with 4.9 visits per unique user in Q1 according to comScore, well above their competitors, while realtor.com remains the leading publisher of residential real estate news in the world's largest property market. In Book Publishing, revenues for the first quarter rose 9% to $582 million, while profitability surged 29% to $75 million. And our margins rose to 12.9% compared to 10.9% in the prior year. Audio books delivered a sterling performance with 13% year-on-year growth, propelled by a global partnership with Spotify and by a focus on enhancing audio as a higher-yielding listening event.

We had a plethora of successful titles, including Ann Patris Whistler, Rebecca Kwan's Type story and Daniel Silvers Ransom. We were delighted to reincarnate one of AgateChristi's most indomitable and encourageable characters Ms. Maple, thanks to the talented Luciole in the intriguing novel Murder At The Grand Alpine Hotel. The enduring breadth of our catalog will be on full display in the second quarter, including the knockout success of Silvestor Stallone's The Steps, which debuted as a #1 seller at the end of September. We are excited about titles from Brian Kilmed, Baba King Silver and Veronica Roth, As well as [indiscernible] much awaited adaptation of the Magician's Nephew, the CS Lewis Classic, which should benefit from extensive promotion ahead of the Fibra Premier. In the meantime, the late great Jeffrey Archer has had customer success with Adamaniv, which became an immediate best seller.

News Media continues to navigate complex market pressures including a challenging advertising environment and the ongoing evolution of the search and social algorithm landscape. As mentioned earlier, that search landscape will change dramatically with the advent of agentic AI. Revenues for the segment declined slightly versus prior year to $540 million, while EBITDA was $18 million for the quarter, which included modest investments in both the California Post and News24, our Australian-based broadcast network whose global reach has expanded rapidly. In the U.K., the Times grew digital subscribers by 7% to finish the quarter with 686,000 subs while advertising at TalkSport benefited from vibrant streaming growth. Thanks in part to the World Cup. Advertising would have benefited further had England as it should have made the final. In Australia, total digital subscribers held at $1.16 million, while digital ARPU remained resilient.

The New York Post is preparing to celebrate a notable milestone later this year, the 225th anniversary of its founding by Alexander Hamilton. And it has rarely been in such strong financial shape, having previously suffered decades of losses before the recent turnaround, which was built on a still study print subscription business and the material expansion of digital revenues. Our strong first quarter performance is a testament to the company's collective focus on higher margins and our determination to develop digital businesses with recurring revenues and promising prospects. These qualities have clearly set us far apart from other media companies or what you might call trade media. And some of that trade media has indeed become tragic media.

At News Corp, we remain committed to driving growth and profitability while exercising judicious cost discipline and prudent capital stewardship with the clear goal of creating value for all our shareholders. In this quest, we are grateful for the astute leadership of our Chair, Lachlan Murdoch and our Board of Directors. We also recognize the enduring residents of our Chairman Emeritus, Rupert Murdoch, and lowered the commitment and creativity of our employees around the world.

And now I turn to our Chief Financial Officer, Lavanya Chandrashekar for further insight into an excellent quarter for the company.

Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon to everyone. Our first quarter results demonstrate the continued strength and resiliency of the business and its consistent earnings power. We delivered another quarter of double-digit profit growth with increased profit margins led by our core growth engines. We achieved record first quarter profitability marking our 14th consecutive quarter of year-over-year total segment EBITDA growth on a continuing operations basis. Our focus on operational efficiency has driven meaningful margin expansion and we continue to see substantial runway for further improvement. We have posted updated slides highlighting our first quarter performance, along with the trending schedule to the Investor Relations section of the News Corp website.

As I mentioned last quarter, while we believe many in the investment community appreciate that News Corp has a very valuable portfolio of assets and treat at a discount to net asset value, with which we certainly agree. We are also continuing to deliver profit growth at a faster rate than most companies in our peer group, including those in the information services sector. We have demonstrated strong earnings and free cash flow power built in financial flexibility and a clear focus on maximizing value. Turning to the quarter. Revenue for the quarter were $2.3 billion, up 6% year-over-year, and total segment EBITDA was $403 million, up 19%. And margins expanded by 180 basis points to 17.7%. Our core growth engines, Dow Jones, Digital Real Estate Services and Book Publishing, continued to generate outsized performance and collectively grew segment EBITDA by 24% this quarter. On an adjusted basis, revenue increased 4%, and total segment EBDA grew 13%. The Earnings per share were $0.29 compared to $0.20 in the prior year. Adjusted EPS were $0.28, up from $0.22.

Turning to Dow Jones. This was a record first quarter with revenues of $630 million, growing 8% year-over-year. Digital revenues represented 85% of total segment revenue, up from 84% in the prior year. Risk and Compliance revenues increased 11% to $104 million, supported by customer growth, product expansion and pricing. We continue to see growth in both feed and platform revenue including for value-added solutions, such as advanced screening and monitoring and investigative research. The majority of incremental revenue growth this quarter was driven by higher volume and product upsells. At Dow Jones Energy, as anticipated, revenues grew 8% to $79 million, improving from the prior quarter rate supported by an improved pipeline of new business. We had the highest first quarter increase in net new bookings since the acquisition in fiscal 2022. Customer retention remains very strong at approximately 90%. Other Information Services revenues declined 4%, lapping the resolution of a customer dispute in the prior year.

Overall, Professional information business revenues increased 5%. In the news business, circulation revenues grew 4%, while digital circulation increased 6%. We continue to optimize yield and posted accelerated year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter growth in digital direct subscription ARPU and expect further improvements in fiscal 2027. Digital circulation represented 76% of total circulation revenue compared to 75% in the prior year. Digital-only subscription grew 10% year-over-year to nearly 6.5 million with sequential net adds of approximately 219,000 benefiting from the timing of enterprise subscription deals topped the highest sequential net adds in almost 3 years. Advertising revenue increased 9% to $93 million, driven by 12% growth in digital advertising, while print grew 4%. Both improving from the prior quarter rate. Growth was led by strong performance in the technology and finance categories. Digital advertising represented 70% of total advertising revenue, up 2 percentage points from the prior year.

Dow Jones segment EBITDA for the quarter grew a healthy 11% to $160 million, with margins increasing to 25.4% and improving by 80 basis points versus the prior year. Turning to digital real estate. Segment revenues were $529 million, up 10% reported and 4% on an adjusted basis. Segment EBITDA was $212 million, up 34% reported and 23% on an adjusted basis, benefiting from strong profit contributions at both REA and at realtor.com. REA revenue grew 13% and 5% in constant currency. Growth was driven by the Australian residential business, led by price increases increased depth penetration and growth in add-on products, resulting in 8% growth in yield or 14% growth in controllable yield. The growth was partially offset by lower listing volumes and geo mix. National new buy listings in the quarter fell 2%, with Sydney and Melbourne down 16%. Very importantly, realestate.com.au averaged 11.5 million monthly unique visitors and 137 million monthly visits for the quarter, nearly $100 million more than the nearest competitor.

As a reminder, News Corp's results include the revenue and losses from REA India this quarter. The divestiture of this business closed in September, and our results starting the second quarter will no longer include REA India. During the quarter, REA announced an agreement to take a 35% stake in distant, which is the leading multi-vertical digital marketplace operator across Ireland and Northern Ireland, an owner of Ireland's #1 property portal Jaf.ie. The investment is expected to be AUD 409 million or approximately USD 290 million. Please refer to REA's earnings release for more details. The presentation materials and a webcast from the recent Investor Day are posted on REA'S website for your reference.

In the U.S. realtor.com continued to make very strong progress this quarter despite the difficult U.S. property market conditions with revenues rising 5% to $160 million, driven by strong execution and lapping tougher year ago comparisons. And importantly, realtor continues to demonstrate improved profitability as it realizes further cost efficiencies through the integration of AI into its workflow. Realtor has now grown revenues 8 straight quarters, an impressive trend given the macro environment. This quarter, revenue performance was driven by the growth in Real Pro Select, its premium marketing solution for top-performing agents and teams. Strong demand for and increased penetration of Real Pro Select continued to drive higher yields, complemented by a strategic focus on higher-priced listings, which offer greater monetization potential. We continued to diversify the revenues with adjacencies, comprising new homes, rentals and sellers increasing to 23% of revenues. Lead volume declined 11% impacted by the broader market conditions, coupled with the repositioning of customer acquisitions to higher quality and higher value leads.

Importantly, revenue per existing homes sold, a proxy for yield rose 25% compared to quarter 4, 2022. Based on comScore for the first quarter, realtor.com continues to lead the industry in engagement with 4.9 visits per unique user, increasing 8% year-over-year and maintaining substantial leads over Redfin and Homes.com.

Turning to Book Publishing. HarperCollins posted another strong quarter. Revenues grew 9% to $582 million, outperforming recent industry trends. Segment EBITDA was $75 million, up 29% year-over-year driven by the strong top line performance and lapping the bad debt write-off related to an independent distributor in the prior year. On an adjusted basis, revenue and EBITDA increased 8% and 29%, respectively. Costs increased 7% this quarter, driven by higher royalties, manufacturing and marketing expenses related to new frontlist releases. Results were driven by strong demand for new releases in general trade and children's. Digital revenue at HarperCollins grew 6% with titles such as [indiscernible] Whistler driving strong growth at both Spotify and Audible, leading to a 13% increase in revenue from audio books. This quarter, the backlist contributed 66% of consumer revenues compared to 65% last year.

At this time, we continue to anticipate the commencement of the anthropic settlement payments in the near term. At News Media. Revenues declined 1% to $540 million as challenging advertising conditions were partially offset by currency favorability of the Australian dollar. Segment EBITDA was $18 million, down $12 million year-over-year which included disciplined investment at the New York Post and tougher trading conditions.

Turning to free cash flow. First quarter free cash flow was impacted by the timing of working capital and capital spending. We continue to be focused on driving strong free cash flow. And as a reminder, our free cash flow generation tends to be second half weighted due to seasonality. Turning to the outlook. At Dow Jones, we expect continued strong revenue performance, and we will support this growth with disciplined reinvestment and expect continued margin expansion. REA continues to be focused on driving value in the marketplace through new offerings, product enhancements and adjacencies while pursuing cost efficiencies. October listings were down 13% year-over-year but down 8%, removing the impact of 1 less working day. At realtor, despite difficult housing conditions due to higher rates, we remain focused on driving continued revenue growth and scaling profitability.

At Book Publishing, overall trends remain healthy. Like the first quarter, we expect higher cost to support a strong front list program. At News Media, we expect broadly similar trends to quarter 1, including modest incremental costs compared to the prior year related to the continued rollout of the California post.

With that, I'll turn it over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Brent Penter with Raymond James.

Just a couple on AI. Robert, you talked about the value of your content as an AI input. As you evaluate the AI deals that you've done so far, how do you think about the value you're getting out of those deals relative to a potential opportunity cost? And what have you learned from those deals? And then you also quickly mentioned agentic AI. So just as muse becomes a bigger topic -- how do you feel you're positioned for people using Agent AI to manage their consumer subscriptions?

Brent, first of all, we feel we're very well positioned in the agentic age and the agents themselves will be seeking out individual stories and servicing them, which is certainly more beneficial to us than what you might call egregious aggregation. 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. But once they are concluded, you'll be able to see the impact in our accounts very clearly. There's no doubt, we already have important partnerships with OpenAI and Meta. And apart from the other large players, which you might call horizontal platforms, we're in discussion with specialist verticals who need our content and our immediacy to freshen their models and create compelling products for their specialist clients. As for litigation, we do expect the first tranche of the $1.5 billion Atopic book settlement to be received in the near term, as Lavanya indicated. And we still have issues with Antropic, we have cases against the perplexing perplexity and the not so Bravura brave. I noticed that New York Times has also brought an action against brave this week. .

And I would emphasize that not only are we pursuing companies that still our content, but also taking it in at those companies, which knowing we purchase that per line content. They are obviously receiving stolen goods and should cease and desist. As for the subscription cancellation issue, look, if making it difficult for subscribers to cancel is a core part of your strategy then clearly, you have a problem and you need a new strategy. You should be making it impossible for people to subscribers that is to cancel by exceeding their expectations and delivering quality journalism that provides unique insights and absolute value and that's our strategy.

Thank you, Brent. Mariana, we'll take our next question, please.

Our next question comes from Ailsa Lei with UBS.

My question is on the higher year-on-year CapEx. If you could please give more color on what drives the spend and how we should be thinking about the rest of FY '27.

Sure, Ailsa. Thank you for the question. 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.

Thank you, Ailsa. Mariana, we'll take our next question, please.

Our next question comes from Entcho Raykovski with Evans and Partners.

I've also had a question related to free cash flow. I mean, given it was a little bit weaker in the quarter. And I also appreciate the seasonality. But can you provide a little bit more color around the timing factors which drive the working capital movements in the quarter. So putting CapEx to 1 side, obviously, the operating activities cash was quite a bit lower Yes. So some further color would be appreciated.

Thanks, Entcho. Yes, so I'll give you a little bit more color. I mean like other than the CapEx timing, the other thing that impacted free cash flow this quarter was the timing of working capital. And so what do I mean by the timing of working capital? It's really 2 things. One is from a revenue perspective, more of our revenue was weighted into the back -- the last month of the quarter. And that was really good news coming from the strength of the both the Dow Jones business as well as HarperCollins. And so obviously, that money gets collected in the second quarter. And then the second thing was a slight increase on inventories at HarperCollins again this is to -- given all of the supply chain issues that we -- that people are having, if this was really to make sure that we protected our ability to have an outstanding holiday season on HarperCollins. As you said, our cash flow does tend to be more second half weighted due to seasonality free cash flow continues, remains a key focus for us in terms of value expansion, and I am very confident that we will generate strong free cash flow for the year.

Thank you, Entcho. Mariana, we'll take our next question please.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Craig Huber with Huber Research.

I've got a couple of questions on AI, if I could, please. Can you just -- is it possible for you to quantify for us AI cost savings at your company, either at 1 or 2 segments or maybe for the whole company? I mean how significant are AI cost savings for you, right, like an annual run rate or something like that? And then secondly, where are you the most excited about using AI to enhance your products and services.

I'll do the first part of your question, Craig. We're not quantifying cost savings. What I would say is that we are focused on driving cost efficiencies in a disciplined manner, always protecting the long-term strength of the business. And AI is increasingly becoming a tool and a capability that allows us to do so. I mean, 1 of the -- a few examples maybe is what I can give you. One, I mean, obviously, in terms of our product development in terms of engineering, folding quality testing, et cetera, that's definitely a place where we're seeing -- I mean, our teams are using AI. They're extraordinary curious about being able to do so, they're doing so in a disciplined and with the right card rails, but that is driving efficiencies. Customer service is another area where we are definitely driving efficiencies. Also anything which is automated -- being able to automate certain data analytics kind of work -- what I would say stepping back, I'd say that we're actually using AI across all of our functions across all of our business units. You see it in operations, you see it in finance operations. You see it in marketing. And so I mean, this is an extraordinarily curious and driven organization and the ability to use AI to drive both top and bottom line growth is enormous.

I'll hand it off to Robert to talk about the second part.

Yes, Craig. Look, in terms of products, really right across the company. We are talking to each other, creating new experiences, new interfaces for our customers, for our clients. And if you look, for example, at digital real estate, AI is going to enhance the real estate experience, not undermine. And we'll ensure that we use our understanding of the market, our unique data sets. Our unique real estate at a trial to leverage AI to the benefit of the customers. And that's a guiding principle both real and REA. And those 2 companies are talking to each other virtually every day about the implementation of new AI applications. And just 1 other -- 1 of many other examples, AI and HarperCollins and audio books. Obviously, we're seeing Spotify innovate as is Audible and AI is going to really provide a role in helping to bring books to live through these vivid voices and the ability to generate a compelling audio experience that makes the book even more valuable. It really does transform audio books. So there's so many more choices in reading voices, sound effects and other techniques and tools and creativity that will bring words to life. And don't forget as well how AI will enable much more cost-effective translations. And the multiple languages, both in text and audio and thus, reach new audiences and generate new revenue.

Thank you, Craig. Mariana, we will take our next question, please.

Our next question comes from Douglas Wardlaw with JPMorgan.

Robert, we've heard from some publishers in Internet platforms this earnings season about the headwinds from search traffic and AI overlays. Your digital stayed at double digits. So maybe you're seeing something different. Can you speak to engagement trends generally or just a test of your digital advertising growth over the past few quarters?

Yes, Doug, we're very fortunate that our companies are destination sites. And at a couple, we've actually seen recent increases in traffic to some of the larger sites. And so our experience is rather different to those sites, which rely on what is called evergreen content, 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. Generic does not flourish as synthesis proliferates. So the Evergreen turned out to be rather seasonal and has been withering on the vine. For example, our larger sites, realtor, REA, Bible Gateway are different types of experiences in that we -- 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 realtor, for example. And so hard news specialist intelligence, unique expertise remain huge traffic drivers. And these really are our strengths.

And as I say, we do have a particularly potent network effect. So for example, realtor dot-com can drive traffic to viable gateway, which can drive traffic to WSJ.com and New York Post and vice versa. So we have our own circular system, which is particularly valuable at this time.

Yes. I'll just add on Robert in terms of ad revenue growth. we did see notable strength at the Wall Street Journal. And really, 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. And I'd also say that direct traffic at the Wall Street Journal is the -- it's a predominant source of traffic at the Wall Street is direct traffic.

Thank you Doug, Mariana, we'll take our next question.

At this time, we have no further questions. I will now hand over to Michael Florin for closing remarks.

Well, thank you, Mariana and thank you for participating. Have a great day and we'll talk to you all soon. Take care.

Stay on time here. Very pleased to have Lavanya Chandrashekar, CFO of News Corp, with us today. Lavanya, welcome.

Thank you, Jason.

So I really like News Corp. But I find sometimes investors, maybe some investors, even though you're a good-sized company are less familiar. So I want to start with just a very basic question. Just if you wouldn't mind just walking through the key segments that News Corp has very quickly just in terms of level setting for everyone, that would be a good place to start.

Thank you, Jason. And I really like News Corp too.

so still fast at least.

So I'll focus on the first 3, our core growth engine segments first and then talk about our 4 segments later. Our 3 growth engines are the Dow Jones business, the digital real estate business and HarperCollins, our Book Publishing business. And Dow Jones, the business is -- a part of it is the direct-to-consumer business. You'll be familiar with brand names such as Wall Street Journal, Barron's, IBD, MarketWatch. And then the second part of the Dow Jones business is our B2B business, which is Dow Jones Risk & Compliance and Dow Jones Energy.

And those are the 2 segments of the Dow Jones business that have been the outsized driver of growth for the Dow Jones business so far and expect it to be in the future. The digital real estate growth engine includes REA in Australia, our digital real estate portal in Australia and includes realtor.com. And realtor.com is, I believe, one of the most underappreciated parts of our portfolio. And Book Publishing is HarperCollins, that's a cash machine. And that, I think, all investors like cash machines.

The fourth pillar of our business is our traditional media business. This is where the company started from. And I can help people remember that a number of our brands in the news segment are centuries old. I mean the New York Post was founded by Hamilton. You should go check out the new Hamilton on the New York Post app, a very modern wearing glass -- dark glasses Hamilton. We have the Times of London, which goes back several centuries as well. And these are publications that have just an absolute wealth of historic content, but also current, reliable, dependable content.

And it's this content that is turning out to be an incredible asset in this age of AI and we're able to monetize this content with AI platform deals that really help us to add incremental value to our business.

Okay. That's a great overview. You just wrapped up your fiscal '26, and I thought the results were actually really good. I mean the top line was good. The margins were good. Earnings growth was great, free cash flow is great. How sustainable would you say the growth is? I mean, is this -- do you feel like -- because I mean, you correct me if I'm wrong, it feels like fiscal '26 was your best year in 4 years, 5 years?

It was our best year of the last 3 years, but by a small margin.

Okay.

Because this is a business that has grown 14% EBITDA growth in fiscal '24, 14% EBITDA growth in fiscal '25 and 15% EBITDA growth in fiscal '26. What was really special about fiscal '26 is also the fact that we grew cash flow by 40%, and that's on a revenue growth rate of 7%. So this is a business that has -- it's not a business that's just had one really great year. It's a business that has posted 3 consecutive years of really strong growth rates. And I think that's really a big driver of why I think we're such a special business.

And if you had to point to where investors should be most optimistic based on your earlier comments, do you think it's really going to be in the Dow Jones B2B part, that's where investors should be most excited?

Definitely the Dow Jones B2B part. But I think what makes News Corp special is really 3 things. So the first is our overall portfolio. And the strength of our portfolio comes from our 3 growth engines, the brilliant brands that we have within these growth engines. It comes from the global scale that we have. It comes from the results that we post. I mean we have been able to restructure our portfolio on a consistent basis, divesting assets such as Foxtel and adding on bolt-on acquisitions on a regular basis into our 3 growth engines, and this has helped to accelerate our growth. And it's not just that we've done big divestitures.

We've also, on a continuous basis, really helped to simplify the portfolio. In the last quarter of fiscal '26 alone, we divested REA India and Moving.com. These helped to concentrate our investments into our 3 growth engines.

And the investments that we are making in these 3 growth engines are turning into positive results. You see that in the numbers that I quoted. You see it in the fact that 61% of our revenue is recurring revenue. A very small portion of our revenue base is now advertising revenue. We are a digital -- 61% of our revenue is digital, and most of it is recurring revenue. And this is 3x what it was at the time that we spun out the company and separated from our bigger parent company.

Which was, what, 2014?

That was 2013. '12. '12 or '13. Yes. And then the other thing that makes News Corp special, which is, I think, something that I'm not sure how many investors appreciate it, but I worked in 3 companies before coming here, blue chip companies, consumer products companies. I was at P&G, I was at Mondelez, I was at Diageo. I have never seen an organization, and this is true across all of our businesses that is so curious with such high tenacity, restlessness. I mean, there's no complacency in this business. And I think that's a special -- the core ingredient of why I think investors should be optimistic about News Corp.

Can I tell you, this goes back even to the old News Corp before the split with Fox, but I remember one of the things I was always struck is that you would always have some businesses, and you have them today, some cash cows, some investments that were sort of in growth mode and you're constantly sort of just shifting the portfolio where today's growth driver may become tomorrow's cash cow, but you will find some new growth driver, right? You're constantly sort of just reinvesting the portfolio.

Absolutely. I mean like some of these AI licensing deals is an example of the -- kind of the curiosity and the desire to find value in our portfolio on a continuous basis. And I do think that for us, the pursuit of maximizing shareholder returns comes first and foremost. And I think that's what makes us such a valuable stock.

So I want to talk a little bit about AI because you've got a couple of deals in place. You said it earlier that you think AI may benefit you in the future. There are some investors that are a little bit nervous about the downside of AI, meaning they say, well, if I'm going to use this as an example, if Google Search migrates to AI overviews, then you're never going to get any of the referral traffic and therefore, there's sort of downside.

And so we may all look at the AI licensing money as good news, but there's a -- some investors think there's sort of a trade-off further downstream. Is that -- is that a fair characterization? Or you guys run through all this math and you say, well, look, when we do a licensing deal, it's true, but there's definitely more upside than downside. Does that make sense?

We definitely believe that there's more upside than downside from AI for the business. And we've seen it in our results. I mean AI has been around for a bit now, and you have been seeing some of the impact to Google traffic for a bit now, and you still see the consistent results that we've been able to post. And for us, I think I'd say 3 things on what the sources of value are from AI. The first is, and I mentioned this before, we just have this absolute wealth of content, and it's not just historic content, more importantly, it's current content.

And what we've seen even in the last couple of years that I've been at News Corp is the hyperscalers are recognizing the value of this content ever more than they did before. And why are they recognizing the value of the content? It's really very simple. It's because their consumers are getting increasingly skeptical of AI slop and are really looking for reliable sources, dependable sources of content. And that's what we have in our portfolio. And so we are able to monetize the value of that intellectual property in deals such as what we have with OpenAI and what we have with Meta.

And it's not just these big hyperscaler deals. We also have deals with -- on the Dow Jones business, we have a deal with Bloomberg as an example. At the investor briefing that we did for Dow Jones a few months ago, we talked about having 20 other such deals. And as Robert says, we are continuously in conversations with others as well. Now we would prefer to make deals. We do not believe that litigation is a preferred way of dealing with any issues. But at the same time, we have also been very clear that we will stand up for making sure that we get adequately compensated for our intellectual property.

And we have a couple of cases going on, on that front. That's what we call, Robert calls it, our Woo and Sue strategy. So that's one value driver of AI. I think the second value driver of AI is the benefits that we are seeing and that we are confident we'll see in terms of revenue growth and our ability to mitigate costs. And we're seeing that in terms of some of the innovations that we are bringing forth into our product portfolio on REA, on Realtor as 2 examples of it. I mentioned Hamilton on the New York Post. That's a really cool AI feature. Be careful, though, when you use Hamilton because I found myself one day like 25 minutes in conversation with Hamilton and almost missing my next meeting because it's so addictive. But that's definitely a source of growth for us as well.

And from a cost perspective, we are seeing the benefits of AI in terms of being able to reduce our cost of coding, our speed of bringing products into the marketplace, creating new designs for covers, for books on our HarperCollins business, simplifying our operations, whether it is from an HR perspective or a finance perspective. I mean we're definitely seeing AI as being a driver of value to us.

That's great. So I can't remember when the Analyst Day you had for Dow Jones, was that earlier this year?

March.

March. Okay. You laid out this $1 billion EBITDA target by 2030. And I think that was relative to about $660-ish million for the fiscal year you just ended, which seems like quite a bit of growth. What gives you confidence to sort of step out and look through fiscal '27, '28 because that's 4 years and sort of have that much growth? Well, especially in the wake of what investors would say is, oh, these information services businesses are the ones that are going to get hurt by AI, right? That's the bear case narrative.

Well, let me first -- let me answer that question in 2 parts. What are going to be the drivers of growth? And then I'll talk about why I think our business is different and protected and where AI is actually going to be beneficial to us and not this value drag as is being predicted. On the first part, what are the drivers of growth? Why do we believe in the kind of the ambition of $1 billion that we put out there? It really comes from the fact that we expect growth to come from our B2B part of our Dow Jones business. That's Risk & Compliance and that's energy. The energy market, the TAM of the energy market is $8 billion, and that's growing at 8% to 10%. The Risk & Compliance market is $3.7 billion, and that's growing at 11% to 13%.

These -- both of these markets, our business in these markets has much higher margins than what we have on our traditional consumer products within the Dow Jones portfolio. And so as growth accelerates and this is what has been happening. It's not a future forecast only. It's also what we have consistently seen here over the last several years. As that B2B business grows faster than the consumer side of the business, we have a built-in operating leverage. And so that's definitely one of the drivers of growth. We also see a strong path of growth on both enterprise subscriptions as well as direct-to-consumer subscriptions.

On direct-to-consumer subscriptions, I mean, we have world-class journalism. And this -- and our presence in international markets, as an example, is really small. And we know that there is a big market out there for us. AI will help with that in terms of translation and being able to expand to international markets. And on enterprise customers, I mean, that's everyone here in the room. And this is where our journalism is essential for business decision-making, also for personal decision-making, financial decision-making.

And we do believe that there is a strong opportunity for us to continue to grow our consumer subscription business as well and to grow yields on our consumer subscription business as well.

When you say yields, what does yields mean?

Well, through smarter pricing as an example. I mean, we've taken pricing on the Wall Street Journal full price up from $39.99 to $44.99. We're also doing more from a pricing perspective with introductory offers and for tenured subscribers. So there's definitely an opportunity for us to do more on that. I mean our journalism is so valuable. I think it's invaluable. I think $44.99 is still -- gives us plenty of room to continue to grow our revenue base. I don't want to forget the second part of your question, Jason, which is what -- why do we think we will not get overtaken by this AI wave, especially on the B2B side of our business.

Our B2B business is proprietary data. And it is proprietary data that plays in a very complex dynamic regulatory environment. So what do I mean by that? Let me break it down, and I'll break it down in the context of Risk & Compliance and then in the context of energy. On Risk & Compliance, the cost of getting it wrong for a financial institution, whether it is doing something around the sanctions list or any of the many things that we do on Risk & Compliance is disproportionate to how much these institutions pay for our product sets.

We have decades of reputation built in this space. And that proprietary data and that reliability of Dow Jones is what protects that business. I want to make a shameless plug here for our Investor Day was back in March, and Joel, who runs the Risk & Compliance business, presented some really good examples of both why this business is protected from a reputation perspective and some examples of what happens to organizations that get it wrong on Risk & Compliance, but also presented 3 very, very interesting bite-size case studies of how our data is proprietary, why is it proprietary and why is it protected. I'd encourage everybody to go watch that if you haven't or even just refresh your memory on that.

And then on the Energy side of the business, we have 150, at least at the time of the Investor Day, we had 150. I know we have a bit more now, 150 exchange-traded benchmarks on Energy. And these are built into contracts that organized companies need to have to be able to buy and sell these commodities. This is not something that you can scrape off the Internet using AI and replace with. And so the safeguards that we have around our business, we don't like the word moat because that's kind of goes back to medieval times. But it is indeed the protective moat that we have around our business.

That's great. You -- I think on your last earnings call, you talked a little bit about a tactical sort of pressure within Energy because of the Middle East conflict. Is that something -- can you just unpack that a bit and describe when or if that could come back to the extent that hostilities end in the Middle East?

Well, I'm glad to say it has come back. So it was a quarter 4 phenomenon, and it was really in terms of the sales cycle being delayed because of the uncertainty that existed in the Middle East. And what we're seeing now in quarter 1 is a strong pipeline of contracts. And we do expect Energy growth to be stronger in the quarter.

When you say sales cycle, you're talking about your sales cycle in terms of selling your product into your customers?

Exactly.

Okay. Nothing about the Energy market.

Exactly.

Okay. That's great. So I want to talk a little bit about Realtor. Sometimes I screw up when I call this Move, but you guys call it -- I know. I'll conform to Realtor.

You mentioned earlier in your remarks that you thought it was one of the most underappreciated or undervalued facets of the business. Why do you think it's underappreciated? And maybe if you can give us a little bit of history because I think there was a time, maybe I have this wrong, maybe 4 or 5 years ago, where someone offered you a lot of money for this asset. Can you remind us of that as well?

Yes. I think the assets actually worth more today than when someone offered us a lot of money for the asset. So the Realtor business...

Just for the audience, I mean can I say the number, you may want to say it? I think it was $3 billion. Was it not $3 billion?

That was what was reported -- yes. But -- so the Realtor business had several very, very good years and then did get impacted by the downturn in the housing market. But having said that, over the last several quarters, we have seen the Realtor business really come back to strong growth rates.

And sorry, when you say downturn in the housing market, you're just talking about the velocity of home sales.

Home sales, exactly.

Slowing because everyone has a 4% 30-year mortgage...

Exactly.

Okay.

So the average home sales in the country, if you go back through several years, it's around -- should be around 5 million homes. We're right now at around 4 million homes. And that's exactly for the reason that you mentioned, higher interest rates, people locked in at lower interest rates. Now we do expect that will turn, not just in terms of the interest rates, but also in terms of just pent-up demand. People have to move, downsize, upsize, -- these things will -- are parts of life cycle. And so that will come back. The Realtor business, specifically, why do I think it's so underappreciated?

It's because despite the muted housing market has done really well for several quarters now. And I think there's 3 things that the team have done on the Realtor business to turn it into such positive results. The first one is innovation of our products of the realtor.com site as well as the products that we offer our realtors. So RealPRO Plus is one example of that. RealAssist, which is a generative AI, which sits on the Realtor platform, and we're seeing consumers who are using RealAssist really engage significantly more on their home buying cycle, including with a lot of questions on prepurchase questions even.

My personal favorite may sound a little cheesy, this fly-around feature. And you can actually go take a look at the property from up above and see what's around it, which is hard to do on a static map. But all of these features have really helped to drive Realtor's visit share up. So realtor.com in the fourth quarter, our last quarter of results that we have posted had a visit share of 33%. That's up from 31% the previous quarter and 29% the quarter before that. Our visit share today is almost 7x that of Homes.com and 3x that of Redfin. And we're really catching up on Zillow, who we view as our key competitor. So a strong #2 who's getting stronger.

The second is that the team has done a really good job in adding adjacencies, revenue-generating profitable adjacencies to the business. And that is rentals, that is new homes, that is sellers. That's now up at around about 21%, 22% of revenue of Realtor. So that's been a strong source of growth as well. And then the third thing that I would say on the Realtor business is the team have done a really good job in cost discipline, investment discipline and in driving, again, I'll use the word yield, which is revenue per house sold. And if you actually look at Realtor's revenue per house sold in this last fiscal and compare it with 2022, which was when the housing market was at its peak, the revenue per house sold is 20% higher than where it was back in 2022. And so if you think back to when the housing market comes back, we're going to come back in a much stronger position than we were even in the past.

I think -- you can correct me if I'm wrong. I think there was a moment a couple -- or a point in time a few years ago where Realtor was losing EBITDA. Is that right? And now it's profitable. Is that fair to say?

Well, we don't comment on the profitability of the individual business. But I will say that this is a business that's definitely well underway to structural profitable growth.

Okay. That's great. That's great. So let's just say that interest rates -- I know the market is very -- the investors are very nervous about interest rates staying high. So let's just assume that the market is right that interest rates, the long end of the curve doesn't fall. If it does, that would be great for you. But let's just say that it sort of hangs out there. Do you think that there's continued sort of innovation and things within management's control that can keep the trajectory of this business continuing to move in the right direction?

That's our expectation. And it's an expectation based on what the team have been able to do here over the last -- I mean the housing market has been in its current situation for 2, 3 years now. I mean -- and Realtor has grown. And it is this innovation, it is the investments we continue to make in it. It's the adjacencies. It really does come back to that kind of restless culture that we have. I mean, always looking for new avenues of growth.

Okay. That's great. Anyone has a question for Lavanya you we're happy to do it. So just raise your hand. I want to ask a question about Harper. So this business always -- I mean, it's good, but it always confuses me because I look at all other businesses, and there's just a very clear trend towards digitization. And the book publishing business, we're deep into digitization. And I don't know what is it, 75 -- it's like 25% digital roughly, which strikes me as just interesting, right? It's very different than almost all other businesses and that it just doesn't want to naturally digitize as rapidly as a lot of other businesses. Can you just unpack that a bit and just explain what is going on? Is it just that book lovers love paper and it's that simple and we cannot make it more complicated?

It is to a large extent. I mean I think -- and I wasn't at News Corp, but 10 years ago as e-books started to come out and everybody had a Kindle and multiple Kindles actually in that household. I mean, the demise of the printed book was kind of what everyone expected would happen. I mentioned I was in Consumer Products before coming here. I find it absolutely fascinating when I started over here and started to get onboarded onto the business. Printed books in the U.S. has grown faster than population growth rate in the U.S.

I think there is just something special about the printed book. And consumers, whether it's on a summer vacation or whether it is getting into bed with your child to read to them before they go to bed, I mean, the printed book provides a level of like, I think, just old-fashioned comfort, which even in this digital age, I would say actually in this digital age is probably becoming even more valuable.

And so there's definitely a lot of room for continued growth of audiobooks and e-books. And we do see that in our performance as well. AI is definitely going to help with accelerating that, translations, text to voice recording. I mean these are definitely going to be accelerants of the digital media. But the printed book is just really, really strong. And that business is a fabulous cash generator.

My son who's 19 just bought a record player. I'm like, man, I swear. I'm like, what are we doing with a record player? So I think we're sort of through the peak of digitization. So if you have 75% of your business is not digital, I think you've been through the scary part, if there was a scary part. That's great. Can I shift to buybacks? So you bought back, I think, around $640 million of your stock in fiscal '26. That's about as much stock as the prior 4 years, if I did the math correctly. Why sort of a pickup in buybacks? Is this just a function of the cash that the business is generating, lack of M&A opportunities? Your sort of vote on how disconnected you see the prevailing stock price versus what you see as the underlying value? Why such a dramatic shift?

Yes, we did accelerate our buybacks, and it is 4x. It was $150 million in fiscal '25, $643 million, I think, in fiscal '26. And we do believe that there is a significant discount in our stock price to our NAV. And we are continuously looking for ways to return value to our shareholders, maximize shareholder returns. And so buybacks is definitely one part of that. We also mentioned at the beginning of the year that following the sale of Foxtel, we wanted to return the shareholder loans that we got back from Foxtel as part of our buyback program in '26. Since we're also listed on the ASX, you can see our buybacks on a daily basis. And we have a very strong balance sheet. We have strong cash flow, which has increased in the last fiscal, 40%, as I mentioned.

And so we will continuously look at ways to make sure that we are maximizing shareholder returns. Now we will also make sure that we maintain enough flexibility to be able to do smart value-accretive acquisitions as they may come up.

That's great. We only have about a minute left, but any closing thoughts you'd like to leave the audience, Lavanya?

I think it is -- I mean, look, News Corp, I did say that I'm a little biased. But when you think about it from a perspective of the value of the asset base that we have, just the 3 growth engines and where we play in those 3 growth engines, the global scale of those businesses, the significant TAM and I discussed the TAM of Risk & Compliance and Energy, the cash generation of HarperCollins, the vast majority of our profits -- of our revenues on HarperCollins comes from the backlist. We have an extraordinarily strong Christian publishing growth engine within HarperCollins that you don't have to pay any royalties to the Lord as yet.

And so I mean, there's -- it's a fabulous asset base. I think it is -- I mean -- and it's very, very different than the old News Corp from 13 -- 14 years ago. It is a digital company, recurring revenues, growth being driven by digital real estate, info services. I mean, if anyone were to step back and actually -- and it's a business that's generated reliable results. So nothing should be more attractive to investors than this combination. So if our investors were to take a good hard look at the stock, I think it will be a huge driver of value to everybody.

That's great. Lavanya, thank you for your time.

Thank you, Jason.

Thank you.

Welcome to News Corp's Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. Media will be allowed only listen only basis. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Michael Florin, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to News Corp's Fiscal Fourth Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. We issued our earnings press release about 30 minutes ago, and it's now posted on our website at newscorp.com. On the call today are Robert Thomson, Chief Executive; and Lavanya Chandrashekar, Chief Financial Officer. We'll open some prepared remarks, and we'll be happy to take questions from the investment community. This call may include certain forward-looking information with respect to News Corp's business and strategy. Actual results could differ materially from what is said. News Corp's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings identify risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ and contain cautionary statements regarding forward-looking information.

Additionally, this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measurements such as total segment EBITDA, adjusted segment EBITDA and adjusted EPS. The definitions and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations of such measures can be found in the earnings releases for the applicable periods posted on our website. With that, I'll pass it over to Robert Thomson for some opening comments.

Thank you, Mike. We are delighted to report record profitability for our fourth quarter with a sterling 11% increase in revenue to $2.3 billion, whilst we generated $423 million in total segment EBITDA, soaring 31% over last year. That is correct, a 31% increase. And our net income surged 167% on a continuing operations basis to $230 million. Reported EPS for the quarter was $0.33 compared to $0.09 in the prior year, and adjusted EPS was $0.35 compared to $0.19. These results mean that we have posted 12 consecutive quarters of year-on-year revenue growth and 13 consecutive quarters of year-on-year total segment EBITDA growth on a continuing operations basis. That positive trajectory reflects our transformation to a company that is majority digital and has vastly expanded its portfolio of premium recurring revenues.

The robustness of our strategy has allowed us to navigate tech and economic and political turbulence and given us a firm foundation for future growth. For the full year, annual revenues rose 7% to $9 billion and total segment EBITDA increased 15% to over $1.6 billion. It is particularly noteworthy that our margin for the fiscal year rose from 16.7% to 18%, and we are encouraged by the prospect of further margin expansion in the current fiscal year. A result of that enhanced profitability was a significant increase in our free cash flow, which rose 42% to $811 million, and our EPS surged 23% on a reported basis from $0.84 to $1.03 and 33% on an adjusted basis from $0.89 to $1.18.

That stronger cash position enabled us to aggressively return capital to shareholders with the buyback accelerating to well over 4x the prior year's rate at $643 million for the fiscal year. As ever, we are acutely conscious of the importance of maximizing value for our shareholders. Before delving into the details of the quarter, it is worth reflecting on the profound importance of the AI age. Much of the world is being reshaped by artificial intelligence, but artificial intelligence itself is only as useful, only as trustworthy as the quality and integrity of its inputs. We believe News Corp is an absolutely critical participant in the emerging information ecosystem. Without our journalists, our authors, our data, our brands and our professional expertise, users will be drowning in a slimy sea of AI slop, a quadrant of content crap. That is why we remain dedicated to cultivating partnerships with those who have shown integrity at a time of institutional infelicities.

We have trusted content relationships with OpenAI and Meta and are in advanced discussions with several other honorable companies. However, Under our woo and sue approach, we are also taking aggressive action against those who pilfer and profit from our work, whether that be the perplexing perplexity or Brave, a company Brave in name only, which has shamelessly stolen our content at scale. Our claims against Brave focus on their data for AI products, which illegally gormlessly sourced and repurposed copyrighted material for sale to third-party businesses. Their scheming started with masked web crawlers scanning our pages to ingest copyrighted articles and continued when they repackaged those stolen files and delivered near verbatim copies to enterprise customers, undermining legitimate content commerce and the very concept of creativity.

Companies who buy from these pirates should know that they are in possession of stolen goods, and we expect our lawsuits to highlight and halt the murky illegal behavior of AI companies who steal and flagrantly fence our precious IP. Unfortunately, some of the world's better known companies are clients of these crass kleptomaniacs and better known companies should know better. Dow Jones delivered impressive results to close the year with fourth quarter revenues rising 7% to $644 million and EBITDA growth of 20% to $181 million. For the full year, the business recorded nearly $2.5 billion in revenue, an increase of 7% and $663 million in EBITDA, an increase of 13%. As you are aware, we outlined a path to $1 billion in EBITDA at the recent Dow Jones investor briefing, and it is fair to say that Almar and the teams are well on the way to reaching that milestone.

Dow Jones B2B capabilities continue to flourish, accounting for 50% of segment EBITDA in Q4. Risk and Compliance revenues grew a healthy 11%, while Dow Jones Energy rose a modest 4% with the conflict in the Middle East, obviously having an impact on some clients and on potential clients. Nevertheless, the business has shown improved growth in the current quarter with a strong pipeline of new business as the need for our premium data, analysis and expertise remains robust. The expansion of enterprise subscriptions continued this quarter as the business benefited from deals with the likes of Bloomberg, Delta Air Lines and Charles Schwab. Our News business reported an increase in total subscriptions of 7% year-on-year to over 6.7 million, while circulation revenues improved and digital direct subscription ARPU accelerated.

Digital advertising was also buoyant in Q4, rising 10%. And significantly, there has been continued momentum thus far this fiscal. Among various projects, we have been bolstering the powerful platform that is the Wall Street Journal with the launch of a flagship event, WSJ Sports, the next sports economy. We intend to extend our expertise in high-end sports intelligence for which there is burgeoning demand given the flourishing professional interest in investment, marketing, sponsorship and broadcast rights. In digital real estate services, both realtor.com and REA demonstrated remarkable resilience despite challenges in the U.S. and Australian housing markets. Together, they posted an emphatic Q4 performance with revenues rising 19% to $553 million, while EBITDA expanded 46% to $222 million.

To repeat, EBITDA surged 46% compared to a year earlier. At realtor.com, revenues increased 13%, marking the third straight quarter of double-digit growth and the seventh consecutive quarter of year-on-year expansion, even though mortgage rates rose in recent months. Its success comes as premium offerings have expanded and yield has been increasingly optimized. The emphasis on high-quality leads combined with AI-inspired product innovation and assiduous assistance for buyers, sellers and realtors have transformed the business' fortunes, as has the team's emphasis on providing reliable real estate news and analysis, which has made realtor.com the largest site in America for residential property news.

If you want to comprehend trends, places and prices, you must read realtor.com. And so according to Comscore, realtor.com has become the clear industry leader in consumer engagement. Total average visits per month to the platform increased share to 33% with 297 million in Q4, while an average of 5.5 visits per unique user gave realtor.com a significant lead over Zillow and nearly 3x the engagement of Homes.com. In Australia, REA revenues rose 21%, reflecting a strong quarter for residential listings, which expanded by 11% with Sydney and Melbourne each finishing ahead of prior year by 8%. The quarter also benefited from favorable ForEx fluctuations. With the successful announced sale of REA's India business last month, Cam McIntyre and the team are focused on realizing the company's potential and driving growth in lucrative adjacencies, including mortgage broking and enhancing services for buyers, sellers and agents.

HarperCollins finished the fiscal year strongly with fourth quarter revenue of $566 million, exceeding the prior year by 15%, while EBITDA rose 14% to $57 million. The quarter hosted a strong front list, including Sarah A. Parker's rollicking romantasy, The Ballad of Falling Dragons, J.D. Vance's Communion and Ann Patchett's Whistler. As for the backlist, Shelby Van Pelt's enduring Remarkably Bright Creatures benefited from the success of the Netflix adaptation and the Pheromone Phenom Game Changer series was certainly searing and soaring both on and off the ice, thanks to the hot and bothered heated rivalry.

Digital demand was robust with revenues growing 12%, supported by a 16% audiobook boost and an e-book resurgence of 11%. And we have an eclectic lineup of looming releases, including works by Sylvester Stallone, Mr. Beast in collaboration with James Patterson, Cher and the already legendary R.F. Kuang. In addition, we will likely benefit in coming months from our share of the $1.5 billion settlement with Anthropic, which will be compensating authors and publishers for IP claims related to AI. And this will certainly not be the last litigation related to AI. And so we expect compelling cash-rich legal sequels.

In News Media, revenue grew in the quarter by 5% to $574 million, thanks to favorable ForEx fluctuations and higher circulation and subscription revenues. In the U.K., under Rebecca Brooks' leadership, the business benefited from the World Cup with news broadcasting posting a 40% increase in streaming hours to over 9 million hours for the fourth quarter, and bookings would have been even more lucrative had England prevailed. Our team is eagerly looking forward to the imminent relaunch of the Premier League and ideally more successfully preeminent London Club, Arsenal. The New York Post benefited from the triumph of the New York Knicks, while our audience in Region California continued to expand with the launch of an addition in San Francisco to complement the Los Angeles edition.

And editorial impact in the state and around the country under Keith Poole continued to burgeon. In Australia, we celebrated the official launch of the News24 brand last month, replacing the traditional Sky News moniker. It was certainly more than a change in name only as the new arrangement allows our team there to expand our editorial reach far beyond Australia's borders, where many of our presenters already have a significant profile and a resonant voice. We have already seen in recent days a tangible increase in audience reach. It was certainly a challenging year for many media companies, but News Corporation reported record revenues, record margins and record profits on a continuing operations basis. It was indeed a record year.

We believe that auspicious momentum will carry over to this fiscal year and early signs are certainly positive for the first quarter. The company cherishes its principles and traditions. But as is characteristic of our founding family, we will never be complacent. We are restless in the pursuit of principles and progress, and our teams have boundless energy and insatiable curiosity and creativity. In closing, I would like to pay sincere tribute to our teams around the world and express our collective gratitude to the shareholders who have been supportive on this auspicious journey.

I must highlight the acute, astute leadership of our Chair, Lachlan Murdoch and our august Board of Directors who play a crucial role in assisting us to navigate with nous, as does our Chairman Emeritus, Rupert Murdoch. And now I see to our Chief Financial Officer, Lavanya Chandrashekar, who will expound on our excellent results and propitious prospects.

Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon, everyone. Our fourth quarter full year results demonstrated the strength and resilience of our portfolio and the disciplined investment into our core growth engines. Fiscal 2026 marked another big step in the transformation of News Corp as we added new AI licensing revenues, accelerated the pace of product innovation, meaningfully improved profit margins and cash conversion while stepping up our capital returns program. We took steps to streamline and simplify our structure, including most recently with the announcement of the divestitures of REA India and Moving.com at realtor. We delivered record profitability in the fourth quarter, marking our 13th consecutive quarter of year-over-year total segment EBITDA growth on a continuing operations basis.

Our focus on operational efficiency has driven meaningful margin expansion, and we see substantial runway for further improvement. We have posted updated slides to the Investor Relations section of the News Corp website. The slides highlight how the company has been repositioned and transformed into a digital-first company with 61% of fiscal 2026 revenues now digital. We have delivered consistent total segment EBITDA growth underpinned by our core growth engines, including 3 consecutive years of mid-teens profit growth on a continuing operations basis. Importantly, we have accelerated the growth of free cash flow, which rose over 40% this year. While many analysts appreciate that News Corp has a very valuable portfolio of assets, with which we certainly agree, we are also now delivering EBITDA and free cash flow growth at a faster rate than most companies in our peer group.

We have demonstrated strong earnings and free cash flow power, built-in financial flexibility and a clear focus on maximizing value. We believe our stock is materially undervalued, and we will remain focused on levers to drive value. To that end, we made strong progress in returning value to our shareholders and have accelerated our share buyback program in fiscal 2026. In the fourth quarter, we repurchased $184 million in shares. The fiscal 2026 buyback was $643 million, which was over 4x that of fiscal 2025 at $150 million. As a reminder, share repurchases in fiscal 2026 benefited from the approximately $380 million repayment of Foxtel shareholder loans. For today's discussion, I will focus on the quarterly results.

Turning to the quarter. Revenues for the quarter were over $2.3 billion, up 11% year-over-year, and total segment EBITDA was $423 million, up 31%. Margins expanded by 280 basis points to 18.1%. This marked the highest fourth quarter profit on record, even when including contributions from Foxtel in prior year and our fastest quarterly growth in 4 years. Our core growth engines, Dow Jones, Digital Real Estate Services and Book Publishing continued to generate outsized performance and collectively, their segment EBITDA growth in the quarter was 30%, accelerating from the third quarter rate. On an adjusted basis, revenue increased 7% and total segment EBITDA grew 25%.

Earnings from continuing operations were $0.33 per share compared to $0.09 in the prior year. Adjusted EPS were $0.35, up from $0.19. Turning to Dow Jones. Dow Jones continued to execute against the strategic and financial objectives we outlined at our investor briefing in March. On a full year basis, our B2B products and services accounted for more than 50% of segment profitability, underscoring the ongoing successful transformation of the business. We remain on track to achieve our goal of generating $1 billion in segment EBITDA by fiscal '30. As a reminder, a replay of the investor briefing, along with the accompanying presentation materials is available in the Investor Relations section of the News Corp website.

Fourth quarter was another record quarter with revenues of $644 million, growing 7% year-over-year. Digital revenues represented 84% of total segment revenue, up from 83% in the prior year. Professional Information business revenue grew 5%, driven by Risk and Compliance, which increased 11% to $102 million, supported by customer growth, product expansion and improved pricing. The reported growth rate reflects robust demand and the lapping of the Oxford Analytica and Dragonfly acquisitions last year. At Dow Jones Energy, revenues grew 4% to $76 million, with revenue growth impacted by the conflict in the Middle East and timing of new contracts.

I want to emphasize what Robert said. The pipeline for new energy contracts is robust, and we expect improved growth in the first quarter. Customer retention remains very strong at approximately 90%. In the news business, circulation revenues grew 3%, while digital circulation increased 6%, an improvement from the third quarter. As mentioned at the investor briefing, we are actively working to optimize yield, including raising the full price rate for the Wall Street Journal digital subscription to $44.99 for new customers from $39.99, increasing the price of introductory offers and continuing the rollout of higher prices for tenured subscribers. While it's still very early, we continue to see benefits from these initiatives, delivering accelerated year-over-year growth in digital direct subscription ARPU and expect further improvements in fiscal 2027.

Digital circulation represented 76% of total circulation revenue compared to 75% in the prior year. Digital-only subscriptions grew 9% year-over-year to nearly 6.3 million with sequential net adds of approximately 194,000 driven by the growth of enterprise new subscriptions, marking the highest sequential adds in over 2 years. Advertising revenue increased 5% to $109 million, driven by 10% growth in digital advertising, which more than offset a 6% decline in print advertising. Growth was led by strong performance in the finance and technology categories. Digital advertising represented 69% of total advertising revenue, up 4 percentage points from the prior year.

It's worth pointing out that Dow Jones posted its first full year of ad growth in 4 years, and the start to fiscal 2027 has been encouraging. Dow Jones segment EBITDA for the quarter grew a healthy 20% to $181 million, with margins increasing to 28.1%, up 310 basis points. Turning to Digital Real Estate. Segment revenues were $553 million, up 19% reported and 10% on an adjusted basis. Segment EBITDA was $222 million, up 46% reported and 33% on an adjusted basis, benefiting from strong profit contributions at both REA and at realtor.com. REA revenue grew 21% and 9% in constant currency. Growth was driven by the Australian residential business, led by price increases, growth in add-on products and strong listing growth.

National new buy listing in the quarter grew 11%, with Sydney and Melbourne both up 8%. Residential yields this quarter grew 11%. REA announced the sale of its Indian operations for an increased ownership stake in Aurum last month. From a News Corp modeling perspective, in contrast to REA, we will not be treating REA India as a discontinued operation, given its lack of materiality relative to News Corp's total revenue and EBITDA. Please refer to REA's earnings release and their conference call for more details. Realtor.com continued to make very strong progress this quarter with revenues rising 13% to $167 million, and the team remains focused on scaling profitably.

Realtor has now grown revenues 7 straight quarters and posted at least 10% growth for the past 3, an impressive trend given the still challenging housing environment. This quarter, revenue growth was driven by the continued strength across realtor.com's core real estate products, particularly Real Pro Select, its premium marketing solution for top-performing agents and teams. Strong demand for and increased penetration of Real Pro Select continued to drive higher yields, complemented by a strategic focus on higher-priced listings, which offer greater monetization potential.

Additionally, our adjacencies comprising new homes, rentals and sellers continues to expand and represented 22% of revenue in the quarter. Lead volume rose 1% with average monthly users at 68 million, down 6%, which is reflective of both the broader market trends and the repositioning of consumer acquisitions to higher quality and higher-value leads. Realtor.com continues to grow market share, driven by innovations to enhance consumer experience and industry-leading news and insights content. According to Comscore data, realtor.com averaged 33% of total real estate portal visits in quarter 4, up from 31% in quarter 3, narrowing the gap to Zillow. This is nearly 7x the visit share of homes.com, almost triple that of Redfin.

On product innovation, recent initiatives include the launch of conversational search powered by RealAssist, expanded data-driven hyperlocal news and insights and ongoing enhancement to the suite of agent tools. In addition, realtor.com+, the company's recently launched platform for MLSs, continues to gain traction with growing adoption across the industry and very positive feedback from MLS partners. One statistic I provided last quarter, which underscores yield improvement and a more diverse revenue base is revenue per existing home sales, which rose again by over 20% compared to quarter 4 fiscal 2022.

This further strengthens our confidence in Realtor's revenue upside and earnings power once the market recovers. Turning to Book Publishing. HarperCollins posted another strong quarter. Revenues grew 15% to $566 million, outperforming recent industry trends. Segment EBITDA was $57 million, up 14% year-over-year and represents the highest fourth quarter segment EBITDA since fiscal 2018. Costs increased 15% this quarter, driven by higher sales volume from a stronger front list, mix of titles and demand for higher-priced deluxe editions. On an adjusted basis, revenue and EBITDA increased 13% and 12%, respectively. These robust results were driven by strong demand for new releases in general trade, U.K. and children's, combined with higher backlist sales.

Digital revenues at HarperCollins grew 12%, including 16% in audiobooks, exiting with the highest quarterly growth rate this year, driven by strong growth at both Spotify and Audible. This quarter, the backlist contributed 60% of consumer revenues compared to 65% last year, driven by strength in the front list. At News Media, revenues increased 5% to $574 million, driven by currency favorability, while adjusted revenues were essentially flat and included a modest benefit from the World Cup. Segment EBITDA was $24 million, down $4 million year-over-year, reflecting disciplined reinvestment support for the launch of the California Post. Finally, free cash flow, defined as cash from operations less CapEx, improved in fiscal 2026 to $811 million, up 42% year-over-year and represented approximately 50% conversion from EBITDA.

The strong growth was driven by increases in EBITDA and improvements to working capital, notably in the fourth quarter. Turning to our outlook. We continue to closely monitor events in the Middle East and the impact of the broader economy. That said, we are confident in the strength and resilience of our business. Some themes by segment. At Dow Jones, we expect continued strong revenue performance and anticipate B2B revenues, notably at Dow Jones Energy to improve in the first quarter. We will continue to support this growth with disciplined reinvestment and expect continued margin expansion.

At Digital Real Estate Services, Australian residential new buy listings for July declined 2%. At Realtor, we hope to see continued revenue improvements, albeit the overall housing recovery could be impacted in the shorter term by rising mortgage rates. At Book Publishing, we expect to benefit from a strong frontlist program and an easier comparison versus the prior year. At News Media, we expect to incur some incremental costs compared to the prior year related to the continued rollout of the California Post, but should also see some benefit from new content licensing revenues. Also note, we faced a particularly difficult prior year comparison in the first quarter. On free cash flow, we continue to be focused on driving strong free cash flow. And as a reminder, our free cash flow generation tends to be second half weighted due to seasonality. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from David Karnovsky with JPMorgan.

Robert, we've seen some reporting of publishers kind of broadly questioning their AI licensing agreements given the impacts on traffic. And if we look at you over the last 2 years, you have the OpenAI agreement, you added another with Meta. And so I'm curious what you've observed so far that's given you confidence that these deals aren't a negative from an engagement or traffic standpoint. And then if I can ask one for Lavanya. We saw the repurchase of REA shares in the quarter in addition to the News Corp shares. Maybe you could just speak to the strategy there.

David, we obviously can't discuss the precise details of confidential AI agreements, but let me emphasize that there are significant deals in the pipeline, and these deals will be a mix of the horizontal with the large digital or AI players and deals with sector-specific verticals where our content is crucial for a new AI-based business, for example. We are working closely with OpenAI and Meta as their products evolve. And each company has different needs. But these are not merely transactional arrangements. These are partnerships. We know how to create peerless content, and these companies know how interaction with content is evolving, as you suggest.

We are creators, they are savvy distributors. Our inputs are crucial components of their outputs. And as for the litigation, it's far from over. But you can see from my earlier statement, we are focusing not just on companies that have scraped and stolen our content, but on their clients who knowingly or unknowingly have purchased stolen goods.

David, I'll take the second question that you had. I obviously cannot comment on REA's repurchases. But on our own repurchases, I mean, we did increase our repurchases by over 4x to $643 million. And our objective is to continue to stay in the market and to maximize TSR. We have a great balance sheet. We have great cash flow, and you can track the number of shares that we buy back on a daily basis.

Our next question comes from David Joyce with Seaport Research.

A lot of great growth here. I was wondering about the book publishing side of things. What would you attribute such strong physical and digital growth towards? Obviously, you do have some new titles coming out. Is there some secular trend that helps to explain it? And I was wondering what sort of data on usage that you're getting from your digital partners.

Well, David, I think the enduring trend is that we have a talented team at HarperCollins who are excellent at spotting new authors and in cultivating them and ensuring that the products that are produced and published are of the highest quality and the highest originality. And as you've seen, we've experienced particularly rapid audio book growth in recent years. And our partnership with Spotify is leading to an expansion of premium audio, which including to family members. And that itself has prompted Audible to bring much more experimentation to audiobooks.

And it's fair to say, by the way, that AI will certainly provide a role in helping bring books to life through the use of vivid voices and the ability to generate a compelling audio experience that makes the IP that much more valuable. I mean for Q4 -- overall, digital revenues rose 12% and audio books expanded 16%. When you think about it, AI can really transform audiobooks as there will be so much more choice in the voices, the sound effects and other techniques and tools that will bring words to life. And don't forget how AI will enable much more cost-effective translations into multiple languages, both in text and audio.

Our next question comes from Ailsa Lei with UBS.

My question is with free cash flow ending on such a strong note. As you look into FY '27, can you help us think about where you're prioritizing incremental CapEx spend across the portfolio, please?

Sure, Al. Thank you for your question. Again, I just want to reiterate how pleased we are with the 42% increase in free cash flow for the year up to $811 million. I mean what drove it was really a combination of EBITDA growth, obviously, which has been very strong as well as working capital improvements. And we've seen those improvements on inventories and on days payable. We've only had a very modest increase in CapEx for the year, which was just about $19 million, and that went towards supporting both investments in technology, but also investments in upgrading our supply chain logistics for the Harper business, which is posting great growth and which will come with its own efficiencies. Looking forward into fiscal '27, I would just say that free cash flow improvement remains a key focus for us, and we do expect it to be a source of value expansion.

Our next question comes from Craig Huber with Huber Research.

I got 2 questions, if I could. One, on simplifying the company, Robert, is there any additional thoughts you can give us there? These are obviously very strong numbers you guys posted here, but investors over the many, many years here have been just frustrated, as you know, with the complexity of the company. Has anything changed in your mind in your Board of Directors' mind here in the last 6-plus months, we might see some further simplifying of the company? That's my first question. And my other question I want to ask you is on the ad revenue front for Dow Jones and News Media in the current quarter, how things are trending there? Is that any materially better or worse than you saw last quarter?

Craig, thank you. Look, as you're well aware of somebody who's familiar with the company, more familiar than most, we certainly have been simplifying with the sale of Foxtel, among other things, News America Marketing. And clearly, there's a lot of focus at different times, for example, on Realtor. I would like to focus, in fact, on the emerging success of Realtor where revenues rose 13%, marking the seventh consecutive quarter of growth and the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth despite a real estate market that's definitely in the doldrums.

And every time the mortgage rate dips, even marginally, there's a surge in property activity, and that's a logical response because a significant proportion of Americans are locked into low fixed interest rates that are -- but they would actually like to move for work reasons or family reasons for life choice reasons, for existential reasons. And we're poised to prosper when rates eventually do decline even marginally. But we're also poised to see a significant change in valuation when the U.S. market returns to near normalcy. So we do have obvious optionality when it comes to structure, but optionality means maximizing moments and maximizing value for our investors.

Craig, on your second question, I would just reiterate what we've said. I mean, as we start at the end of July, we can say that we've had a particularly encouraging start for digital advertising in Dow Jones. But I'd also reiterate that ad revenue for us is not a very significant portion of our business. We are not -- we don't face quite the same kind of cyclical risks that a lot of other companies do.

Sorry, if I could just ask, I'm sorry, the realtor.com, if you can hear me. Can you just explain a little bit further about this really strong 13% revenue growth there? I mean it's been going on for several quarters you guys have talked about, and we can see on the outside. But what have you guys been doing differently at realtor.com to help explain that really strong growth there in this lousy market?

Well, it's a tribute to Damian Eales and the team at Realtor, in particular, in the way that the site is being developed. I mean when people talk about moats in the AI age, moats is substantially medieval concept. What Realtor has been creating is a chasm between itself and other companies because of the way that they've been building proprietary IP that no AI engine can legally scrape. It's trusted truthful information that's crucial for customers. No buyer or seller or agent wants housing hallucinations. And that's why the visitors spend far more time and view more pages at Realtor than any other competitor, including Zillow or Redfin or homes.com. And these are independent Comscore numbers, not home brewed metrics. We have 5.5 visits per unique visitor, 1.5x that of Zillow and almost 3x out of homes. That underpins the success.

If I could just add, Robert, I think we've been investing in the brand and what we've really seen is the benefits of the innovations that have been launched, such as RealAssist, which is our latest conversational search product feature. I mean you've heard me talk about this in the past, Craig, about the fly around feature. I mean there's just a lot of really great innovation that has happened that keeps getting consumers to come back to the site and stay on the site.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Entcho Raykovski with Evans & Partners.

My question sort of touches on the AI licensing deals. And I appreciate that you're a little bit restricted in what you can say, but I think there's a lot of interest in the market around those deals. So I guess to the extent you can talk about this, the Dow Jones and News Media, can you provide some color around the margin profile of those deals? I mean it's particularly stark that Dow Jones EBITDA margin was up over 300 basis points in the quarter. So is there any cost associated with those deals? Is that a key contributor to the Dow Jones margins? And I wonder if as part of that answer, can you confirm whether the Meta deal, which you announced in March is now contributing to the Q4 numbers or whether it starts ramping over the course of FY '27.

Obviously, I can't go into detail regarding confidential deals. These deals are important. There are more deals on the way. The Meta deal is now part of the business, not just at Dow Jones, but also for News Media, as you'll see over successive quarters. And look, it's a tribute to OpenAI and Meta that they have taken a principled approach in valuing our important content, our IP. But it's also true that there are more deals to come and hopefully, not too much litigation because essentially, those 2 companies have established benchmarks that other principled companies should follow.

Yes. And I'd add to that to just say that the Dow Jones business generates very healthy margins. And especially on the B2B side of the business, that's where we have our strongest margin, and as the mix of B2B increases, that's a driver of margins. But I'd also say that the team at Dow Jones have been extraordinarily disciplined in terms of how they manage their costs. In the quarter, costs were up only 2%. On a full year basis, it tends to be closer to like around 4% to 5%. But it is that very disciplined reinvestment and cost management that also helps to contribute to margin growth.

At this time, we have no further questions. I will now hand the call over to Michael Foran for closing remarks.

Great. Well, thank you, Mariana, and thank you all for participating. Have a great day, and we will talk to you soon. Take care.

Welcome to News Corp's Third Quarter Fiscal 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. Media will be allowed on a listen-only basis. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Michael Florin, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to News Corp's Fiscal Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. We issued our earnings press release about 30 s ago, and it's now posted on our website at newscorp.com. On the call today are Robert Thomson, Chief Executive; and Lavanya Chanje Shaker, Chief Financial Officer. We all have in some prepared remarks, and I'll be happy to hit questions from the investment community. .

This call may include certain forward-looking information with respect to News Corp's business and strategy. Actual results could differ materially from what is said. News Corp's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings identify risks and uncertainties and that could cause actual results to differ and contain cautionary statements regarding forward-looking information.

Additionally, this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measurements such as total segment EBITDA, adjusted segment EBITDA and adjusted EPS. The definitions and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations of such measures can be found in the earnings releases for the applicable periods posted on our website. With that, I'll pass it over to Robert Thomson for some opening comments.

Thank you, Mike. News Corp has again delivered resounding results this quarter, indeed marking the 12th straight quarter of profitability growth on a continuing operations basis. For the third quarter of fiscal 2026, our total revenue rose 9% to $2.2 billion, while total segment EBITDA increased a handsome 18% to $343 million and the overall margin expanded from 14.4% to 15.7%.

Net income from continuing operations rose 13%, whilst both EPS and adjusted EPS were notably higher. Our third quarter results reflect a continuation of the positive trends that emerged in the first half and we remain on track for another record fiscal year of profitability given the strength seen thus far in the fourth quarter. The robust free cash flow and strong cash position have provided much optionality in maximizing long-term shareholder value.

Given our firm belief that the current share price does not reflect the intrinsic value of the company or its prospects, we have continued to execute our enhanced buyback program at an accelerated rate. In assessing our overall performance, the results reflect the ongoing transformation of the company and its ability to prosper in circumstances which are not particularly auspicious.

Interest rates remain rather high and the conflict in the Middle East has exacerbated uncertainty. And yet that conflict has also highlighted the importance of our news and intelligence businesses, both socially and commercially. The increased profits are driven by the 3 sectors on which we have focused our strategic investment. Dow Jones, Digital Real Estate Services and Book Publishing all of which reported double-digit increases in profit this quarter, and we believe they have much positive momentum.

Our confidence comes as the world is grappling with the potential impact of AI. We are an AI inputs company, and that fact was reflected in our recent deal with Meta, which complements our partnership with Open AI. We are negotiating several further deals with companies who recognize the preciousness of our provenance and which should have a positive impact on our revenue and profitability.

We also expect to receive our fair share of the proceeds of the $1.5 billion settlement with Anthoropic, starting later this calendar year. an outcome, which asserts the integrity of intellectual property and benefits authors and book publishers. Importantly, the decisions to partner with us by global AI leaders reinforce that status as an input company. Semiconductors are inputs, energy is an input, and editorial is an absolutely essential input.

AI engines require information, and they need constant updates to remain relevant. Otherwise, they are merely retrospective. Few companies on the planet have the depth of archive and the immediacy of contemporary content that we can offer across borders and across segments. We are also seeing a rapid proliferation of vertical specialist AR companies focusing on specific segments. We believe this is a whole new generation of opportunity for our companies, whether our mastheads, Harper Collins or digital real estate, which generates a vast amount of unique repurposeable data.

Separately, we are tracking a number of Dodge digital firms scrapping illicitly, illegally our precious content and shamelessly reselling this per-line property. We have these bayou Bad Boy bots in our sites and intend to pursue them vigorously. And it should be noted carefully -- we believe companies which willingly buy the stolen content from these nefarious fences are also comparable. There is a clear distinction between the ones and the ads.

Now let's turn to our segments. Dow Jones delivered yet another superb quarter. Revenues rose 8% and to $619 million, and segment EBITDA expanded by 11% to $147 million, with our margin expanding by 70 basis points compared to a year earlier to 23.7%. Significantly, this marks 13 consecutive quarters of year-over-year EBITDA growth for Dow Jones, bolstered by continuing strength across Risk and Compliance and our burgeoning energy business. As we shared during our Investor Day in March, we see a clear path for Dow Jones to reach $1 billion in annual segment EBITDA within the next 5 years.

Not only does Data Jones world-class journalism and extensive data and intelligence serve as the lifeblood of AI. They are indispensable resources for thoughtful readers and for knowing executives seeking to lead enlightened enterprises. In the third quarter, revenues at Risk & Compliance surged 19% as demand expanded from corporate customers in a volatile world seeking to minimize risk and maximize compliance. We continue to see solid demand in our energy business, where revenues rose 12%, and the boost in U.S. energy exports is clearly a positive emerging trend for our business. which has unique data from and insights into the U.S. industry.

On the consumer side, digital direct subscription ARPU continued to improve, while digital-only subscriptions run 9% on the previous year. Remember, these are core new subscriptions, not recipes, which like much evergreen content are indeed susceptible in the AI age. Meanwhile, digital advertising revenue rose 13%, improving on the increase in Q2, led by stronger demand from the technology and finance sectors.

Our Digital Real Estate Services segment continued to show strength, even though the housing markets in Australia and the U.S. are being buffeted by crosswinds. Reported profit increased with EBITDA surging 25% year-over-year. while the margin widened from 30.5% to 32.8%. Revenues at realtor.com in the U.S. rose 10%, even though the 30-year mortgage rate has generally remained above 6%, and existing house sales were near historic lows.

The realtor.com team has done a splendid job retooling the business and we should be primed to prosper when rates decline and liquidity in the housing market returns. realtor.com has also just partnered with our friends that open AI to take advantage of their AI expertise in improving the experience for sellers, buyers and realtors. Milton.com already has far greater engagement in the competitor set according to independent comScore metrics.

In Q3, realtor.com averaged 5.3 visits per unique user. -- compared to only 3.5 visits at Zillow, 2.9 visits at Redfin and 1.9 visits at homes.com. The team's strenuous efforts to make the site a holistic property experience are clearly paying dividends. At REA, revenue grew 20%, thanks in part to felicitous ForEx fluctuations, but also because the team's determination to provide enhanced services to our customers led to a 14% increase in yield.

The potential upside at REA remains exciting, given the focus on product development and the success in sensible adjacencies, such as mortgages, where we are able to leverage our knowledge of customers and their needs. At HarperCollins, we had a particularly strong quarter with EBITDA rising 14%, while revenue increased a healthy 8%, well ahead of the overall industry trends.

Our margin broadened from 12.5% to 13.2% as we benefited from higher digital sales with e-books surging 17% and audio books increasing 7%. We continue to see feverish interest in Rachel Reads heated rivalry, in print and digital. And even in countries in which ice-hockey is not a mainstream sport. Rachel is adding 2 more viluxtuous volumes to the steamyaga, which has already become a Coke Classic.

Now as we approach the summer months in the northern hemisphere, we look forward to fascinating fourth quarter releases. That include Vice President, J.D. Vances Communion which tells his personal spiritual journey as well as releases from NPA Alex Aster and Laurie Gilbert. We are also heartened by the release of the remarkably bright creatures movie on Netflix this week and by releases from the gifted CERA Parker and the inimitable Dana Perino.

In News Media, we saw a 5% increase in revenue to $538 million, though reported a decline in profits, in part due to investment in new projects, including the successful launch of the California post which has already attracted much attention from readers and advertisers with its first coverage of an important but underreported region. While still early days, we are encouraged by traffic trends and have seen meaningful increases in daily active users and engagement across the New York Post Media Group from California-based users.

News U.K. closed the quarter with 676,000 subscribers for the Times and -- the Sunday Times, a 7% gain on the prior year, while digital advertising for the Sun rebounded and in fact, increased by double digits. We are looking forward to the positive benefits of the World Cup for our talented team at TalkSport, which like our other London-based media will certainly benefit if England wins the ultimate prize. At News Corp Australia, digital subscription revenue benefited from improved ARPU and an increase in total digital subscribers to 1.2 million, while digital advertising showed improvement year-on-year.

In conclusion, the third quarter was compelling evidence of the transformation of our business and demonstrated the robustness of our core growth engines, which we expect will propel us towards a strong fiscal finish. None of this would be possible without the thoughtful leadership of our Chair, Lachlan Murdoch, the wisdom of our engaged Board and the sterling efforts of our employees around the world.

And now our Chief Financial Officer; Lavanya Chandra Shaker will enlighten you further.

Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon, everyone. Our third quarter results demonstrate the continued strength and resilience of our portfolio and the benefits of disciplined strategic diversification. Despite the uneven economic backdrop, we posted accelerated top and bottom line growth led by our core pillars, Dow Jones, Digital Real Estate Services and Book Publishing which collectively generated 17% segment EBITDA growth in the quarter, accelerating from the second quarter rate.

The third quarter marks our 12th consecutive quarter of year-over-year total segment EBITDA growth on a continuing operations basis. These consistent results are the outcome of strong operational discipline and reflect the repositioning of our portfolio. Our focus on operational efficiency has successfully driven margin expansion and I believe there is significant opportunity for this trend to continue.

Newscorp has evolved well beyond the scope of a traditional media company. We are now a digital first company with strong and recurring revenue base complemented by high-margin content licensing revenues. We continue to make strong progress in returning value to our shareholders and have accelerated our share buyback program. In the third quarter, we repurchased $193 million in shares, up from $172 million in the second quarter, bringing fiscal year-to-date repurchases to $459 million.

We believe our stock remains materially undervalued relative to its net asset value. And as a reminder, share repurchases in fiscal 2026 are benefiting from the approximately $380 million repayment of Foxtel shareholder loans and our robust free cash flow. Turning to the quarter. Revenues were approximately $2.2 billion, up 9% year-over-year, and total segment EBITDA was $343 million, up 18%. Margins expanded by 130 basis points to 15.7%. On an adjusted basis, revenues increased 4%, and total segment EBITDA grew 13%. The Earnings from continuing operations were $0.16 per share compared to $0.14 in the prior year.

Adjusted EPS was $0.21, up from $0.17. Turning to Dow Jones. As highlighted during our investor briefing in March, Dow Jones has strategically pivoted into a news and digital intelligence platform, driven by strong organic growth and supported in part by the value-enhancing M&A we have successfully completed and integrated. This transformation has been fueled by exceptional growth in Risk and Compliance and Dow Jones Energy supporting our target for $1 billion in annual segment EBITDA within 5 years.

All the compelling materials and the video replay of that investor briefing are available on the Investor Relations section of the News Corp website. As for the quarter, revenues were $619 million, growing a robust 8% year-over-year consistent with our second quarter performance. Digital revenues represented 84% of total segment revenue, up from 82% in the prior year. Professional Information business revenue grew 11% and driven by risk and compliance, which increased 19% to $100 million, supported by customer growth, product expansion and improved pricing.

The acquisition and seamless integration of Dragonfly and Oxford Analytica which have been invaluable during the Iran conflict contributed to this growth. At Dow Jones Energy, revenues grew 12% to $77 million, with customer retention remaining very strong at approximately 90%. Growth was driven by improving yields new price assessments and a modest benefit from the recent acquisition of ECO Movement. The upheaval in energy markets is certainly more an opportunity than a challenge.

In the consumer business, circulation revenue grew 1%, while digital circulation increased 3%, a result tempered by the absence of a licensing revenue timing benefit in the prior year. As mentioned at the investor briefing, we are actively working to optimize yield, including raising the full price rate for the Wall Street Journal Digital subscription to $44.99 for new customers, increasing the price of introductory offers and continuing the rollout of higher prices for a portion of tenured subscribers.

While it's still very early, we are already seeing benefits from these initiatives, delivering improving year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter growth in digital direct subscription ARPU, and we expect further improvements in the fourth quarter. Digital circulation represented 76% of total circulation revenue compared to 75% in the prior year. Digital-only subscriptions grew 9% year-over-year with sequential net adds of approximately 53,000. We anticipate that net additions will be notably higher in the fourth quarter driven by growth in enterprise partnerships.

Advertising revenues increased 6% to $91 million, the highest third quarter revenue since fiscal 2022, with digital advertising growing 13% while print fell 6%. Growth was driven by the finance and tech categories. Digital represented 67% of total advertising revenue, up from 63% in the prior year. Dow Jones segment EBITDA for the quarter grew a healthy 11% to $147 million, with margins increasing to 23.7%, up 70 basis points compared to the prior year.

Turning to digital real estate. Segment revenues were $473 million, up 17% reported and 8% on an adjusted basis. Segment EBITDA was $155 million, up 25% reported and 16% on an adjusted basis. REA revenues grew 20% and 8% in constant currency. Growth of the Australian residential business was driven by pricing, contract upgrades and geographic mix. National new buy listings in the quarter grew 1% and with Sydney up 4% and Melbourne up 7%.

The Financial Services business grew double digit, driven by a 21% increase in settlements. Australian revenue grew low double digits partially offset by declines at REA India due to the sale of PropTiger and the closure of the housing edge business as communicated previously. Please refer to the REA earnings release and the conference call for more details. Realtor.com continued to make strong progress this quarter with revenues rising 10% to $148 million and contributing to segment EBITDA growth despite the normalized marketing expenses lapping the pullback of marketing spend in the same period last year.

We continue to accelerate the pace of innovation including the launch of the realtor.com app in chat GPT as Robert mentioned, and the expansion of its newly launched platform, realtor.com, which is receiving favorable industry feedback. This quarter, revenue growth was driven by strength in core real estate products benefiting from 6% higher lead volume, improved yields and increased annual contract values.

We continue to see strong demand for Real Pro Select, our premium program for high-performing agents and teams which has supported further yield expansion. Additionally, our growth adjacencies, comprising new homes, rentals and sellers continue to perform well and represented 22% of revenues in the quarter. It's worth noting that as of quarter 3, on a trailing 12-month basis, the ratio of realtor.com's revenue to existing home sales, a proxy for yield is over 20% higher compared to quarter 3, 2022 underscoring the upside potential for the business when the market recovers.

According to comScore data, realtor.com continued to gain visit share averaging 31% of total real estate total visits in quarter 3, improving from 29% in quarter 2, nearly 6x Homes.com and almost triple that of Redfin while narrowing the gap to Zillow. Turning to Book Publishing. Revenues grew 8% to $555 million despite mixed industry performance. Segment EBITDA was $73 million up 14% year-over-year, with margins expanding 70 basis points to 13.2%. This represents the highest third quarter segment EBITDA since fiscal 2021. On an adjusted basis, revenue and EBITDA increased 4% and 14%, respectively. These robust results were driven by the strong demand for the game changers series due to the TV adaptation of heated driver.

Digital revenues at Hopper Collins grew 11%, with both e-books and audio books increasing year-over-year. This quarter, the backlist contributed 64% of consumer revenues compared to 65% last year. At News Media, revenue increased 5% to $538 million due to currency favorability, while adjusted revenues declined 2%, reflecting continued declines in print revenue. Segment EBITDA was $15 million, down $18 million year-over-year reflecting lower contribution from News U.K., coupled with disciplined investment associated with the launch of the California Post.

Turning to our outlook. Needless to say, we are closely monitoring events in the Middle East. While we are not immune to certain cyclical and supply chain issues, we remain confident in our strategy underpinned by recurring revenues and expect to report strong results in the fourth quarter. Some things by segment. At Dow Jones, we expect continued strong revenue performance and improved margins. At Digital Real Estate Services, Australian residential new buy listings for April rose 19%. Please refer to REA for a more detailed outlook commentary, which now assumes lower operating cost growth. At Realtor we hope to see continued revenue improvement, albeit the overall housing recovery could be impacted in the shorter term by rising market rates. At Book Publishing, Overall, hopecolin trends remain favorable, and we expect to benefit from a stronger frontlist program.

At News Media, we expect to incur some incremental costs compared to the prior year related to the rollout of the California Post, but should also see some benefits from new content licensing revenues. While third quarter cash flows were impacted by the timing of working capital, we expect strong free cash flow growth for the fiscal year despite moderately higher capital expenditures as we had communicated earlier this year. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Ailsa Lei with UBS.

I've just got 1 on Joint Energy and the investment required to build out new energy trucks. How are you thinking about the balance between continued investment into building these new benchmarks versus the return profile? And are you able to potentially quantify any investments required?

Also, I think you can see in the way that we have developed that business in recent years that we do, as you suggest, balance very carefully, both in investment and returns. Overall, the professional information business accounted for about 40% of revenues in Q3, but a significantly larger percent of EBITDA as it is a higher-margin business. And that is 1 reason for the record profitability margin at Dow Jones itself. And there are certainly positive trends at Risk & Compliance, where revenues rose 19% and a 12% increase at Dow Jones Energy. .

Your next question will come from David Karnovsky with JPMorgan. .

Robert, you continue to report a nice upturn in realtor growth this quarter, and this is happening even to made still high mortgage rates. I guess assuming you did see a kind of better macro environment, how are you thinking about the potential uplift from that? And assuming you get that revenue, how do you think about flowing through that to EBITDA versus sort of leaning into investment either into adjacencies or AI functionality?

It's a very thoughtful question. The Renaissance Realtor has really preceded the recovery of the overall U.S. housing market, which remains subject to the institutes of mortgage rates. And in fact, at Real, our core real estate revenues rose by 15% and represented 77% of total revenues despite the sluggishness of the market. Now we and obviously aspiring property owners are subject to a certain extent, to the whims and wisdom of the FMC and their rulings. But what this accelerating revenue increase real turn, and we've had successive quarters of double-digit increases in revenue tells you is that the team has done an extraordinary job in building the base, sorting out the software.

And is also benefiting from targeting higher premium homes, which of themselves bring higher premiums and building on a successful expansion into adjacencies, including seller, new homes and rentals. And so when you look at March existing home sales, which are a poultry 3.98 million homes, well below the historical average, so the stat suppressed demand will, at some stage, be emancipated -- and Damian Heels and the team have ensured that a realtor is prime to take full advantage of any upturn.

I'd just add, Robert, that I think the team has, as you said, Damian, and team have done an absolutely brilliant job and visit shares are up at 31%, which is that Homes.com and 3x that of Redfin. We continue to invest in the brands, and you can see the benefit of that flowing through. I think I mentioned in my prepared remarks that revenue per existing home sales are now at a 20% higher level than they were in 2022. And the reason I'm calling out 2022 is because -- that was kind of the high mark from a housing perspective. But you can imagine that with this much higher revenue per house now as the real estate market comes PAC, as Robert mentioned, we are positioned to take -- to really take full advantage of it.

Your next question will come from David Joyce with Seaport Research. .

And thinking about your risk and compliance and energy offerings, you think that you've really got accelerating demand these days. Are there areas that your clients are asking for more products that you can develop internally organically or where you might have opportunities to do some more tuck-ins?

David, we're constantly reevaluating the portfolio. But I think you're right to suggest that the product extensions are possible and the team at Dow Jones is very vigilant in taking advantage of opportunity, which is why the businesses are prospering at the moment. But at the moment, given the volatility in macroeconomic circumstances and also the continuing regulatory vigilance of governments around the world, the imperative for companies and their boards to minimize risk and maximize compliance, remains real. And secondly, the changing patterns in energy markets, in particular, the surge of U.S. exports to the rest of the world is of itself creating a new customer base, which we can take advantage of without necessarily increasing investment. .

Yes. Robert, if I could add mean during the Danes Investor Day, we did point out that the risk and combine market is indeed an enormous $3.7 billion, and it's growing at 11% to 13%. We believe there are several opportunities to continue to grow the business, both organically and organically, inorganically, we recently completed, and we are getting to the anniversary of the of the integration of Driven flight and Oxford Analytica which have played an enormously big role during the Iran war gathering a lot of attention and interest -- and organically, I mean, we talked about it at the investor briefing, but we have a big white space, both from an international perspective, as well as we've done really well with corporates versus financial institutions, and there's plenty of room for us to continue to drive growth in those areas as well.

Your next question will come from Entcho Raykovski with Evanson Partners. .

Lavina. So my question is also around potential AI opportunities, I suppose. Are you able to talk about the broad quantum of additional revenue from partnerships with AI platforms. you could receive? And if you can't give us specific numbers, perhaps how does it compare with what you contracted what you've contracted to date with Meta and open AI. And again, maybe just drilling on into that. how much will the matter open AI partnership still live on a combined basis? I know you can't talk about individual contracts, but if you can talk about it on a combined basis, that would be useful.

And so, we obviously can't discuss the precise details of confidential deals, but the Meta agreement is an important partnership as is our agreement with Open AI. And both agreements are more than purely transactional. We'll be exchanging insights as the use of AI evolves exponentially. And you will be able to see the impact in our accounts over the next few years. There's no doubt about that. As for AR itself, we are in the midst of advanced negotiations with several companies.

And it is clear that many have come to recognize that the purchase of is as important as the acquisition of semiconductors or the securing of stable energy sources. IP, powers, AI, IP is an input imperative. And as always, there is a mix of wiring and seeing. We would prefer the former, but we will never shy away from protecting our property rights. The integrity of creativity must be safeguarded. And for example, as for the perplexing complexity, we are now not the only media company that is in action. And that's because we would argue that the IP accesses have been so egregiously egregious. -- that even certain other media companies have noticed.

Now we're looking very much forward to the discovery process because we have full confidence that fascinating illuminating material or surface -- we will always be open to a settlement, but the figure needs to be meaningful. And the deals do keep rolling. Bloomberg, for example, buying Dow Jones AI rights, the $1.5 billion anthoopic settlement the Ankai partnership, the meta agreement and various other negotiations.

Now the way to think about these negotiations is that there will be substantial deals with the larger horizontal AI companies and then multiple meaningful agreements with specialist verticals who require both archive and updates in their areas of specialist expertise. So these are indeed prepicious times for IP.

Your next question will come from Craig Huber with Huber Research. .

Can you speak, if you would, about the benefit you guys have an internally from the use of AI. And is there any way of quantifying what the annual cost savings is at this stage use AI here to save costs, except to make a company more efficient. Anything on that front you could help us live. .

Sure. Maybe I can start. Craig, thank you for your question. I divide up the benefits that we're getting from AI into a few different areas. The first I'd say is in helping to make our products better, more accessible to consumers and including new revenue streams. Obviously, the most obvious 1 is the licensing agreements that we have with the big platforms, but Outside of that, we have seen significant benefits that we've been able to build AI into making Captiva more user-friendly and more widely usable. We're seeing that in our book publishing business where we are able to use AI, we're testing AI for both translation as well as for the creation of audio books, There's numerous examples of where on both Rite and on REA using conversational search I can go on.

There's a long list of things that are in play that can help us to drive revenue growth. In terms of efficiencies, the most obvious ones is right now is in like coding and using AI to be able to develop some of our product features faster to be able to test them using AI versus using people. So there's a whole efficiency play over there. Also just being able to assist our people in getting work done, whether it's in the newsroom, or whether it is in back office operations. There's tremendous opportunities for us to be able to get work done more efficiently. -- and effectively and every 1 of our businesses are pursuing every 1 of these opportunities.

[Operator Instructions] For our next question, we'll go to Brian Han with Morningstar.

A question for Lavinia. Can you please talk about the drivers of the big reduction in losses in the other division? -- and whether you think there's a sustainable step down in those other losses? .

Yes. Other segment represents kind of our -- the cost of running the total corporation outside of the business units. And what we saw is in quarter 3 was reduced expenses that reduced losses necessarily, and that was related most particularly towards our stock compensation calculations. For a full year, I would expect that the other segment will be similar to the prior year and potentially slightly lower. .

Your next question will come from David Fabris with Macquarie. .

I'm curious how we should think about the earnings profile for the News Media segment. Are you able to talk about the start-up costs from the California post or the impact from the News U.K. in the quarter? And then just thinking about these 2 pieces, do we annualize them going forward? Or how do we think about them over the next 3 quarters?

David, you can see in the News Media segment that revenue avenue was 5% higher. So the decline in EBITDA reflected modestly tougher trading conditions in Australia and the U.K. and more significantly, the launch cost of the California post. which is certainly not an extravagant investment, but an investment nonetheless.

We've -- for context, we've launched the California post on the back of the rebounding profitability of the New York Post and look forward to expanding our revenue and profits over time. But we should be very clear about the broader context of the News Media segment. That segment reported a net decline in EBITDA of $18 million, including those launch and marketing costs. For the company overall, our EBITDA rose 18%, and our profit margins rose from 14.4% to 15.7%. So I think that does give you a sense of the contemporary context of the News Media segment.

I think just to add a couple of things. One is this segment has had a strong track record of being able to drive cost efficiencies year-on-year. We've seen this in the early part of this year and last year with the work that the News U.K. team and building out a partnership with DMG, which has significantly helped to drive efficiencies and operating costs. on the print side of things, and that partnership has -- they're actually expanding it, which should deliver further efficiencies going forward.

In Australia, I would call out the team as well. in streamlining operations and helping to drive year-on-year cost reductions. The kind of looking at how do we think about it going forward, quarter 4, we'll see some benefits from some content licensing revenues, while we continue to invest in the California post, which as Robert said, we're being very disciplined about.

At this time, we have no further questions. I'll now hand over to Michael Florin for closing remarks.

Well, thank you, Leila, and thank you all for participating today. Have a wonderful day, and we will talk to you soon. Take care.

Please welcome Senior Vice President and Global Head of Investor Relations at News Corp, Michael Florin.

Well, good afternoon, and welcome to today's investor briefing on Dow Jones. Thank you all for coming and to those watching on the webcast. I'm Michael Florin, the Global Head of Investor Relations at News Corp.

Before I start, safe harbor. Please note that this presentation contains certain forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. Please refer to our cautionary statements regarding these items on the slide.

We have a great afternoon for you. We're going to start with some opening remarks from News Corp Chair, Lachlan Murdoch; and our Chief Executive, Robert Thomson. And then I'm going to turn it over to Dow Jones team starting with Almar Latour, the Chief Executive Officer of Dow Jones. The briefing should last about 2 hours, including a question-and-answer session. Following the Q&A session, we invite you to reception and we'll also be demoing several Dow Jones products.

Before I turn it over to our Chair, Lachlan Murdoch, please enjoy this video.

[Presentation]

Please welcome News Corp Chair, Lachlan Murdoch.

Thank you very much, and thank you, Mike. Good afternoon. Thank you all for joining us today, whether you're in the room or here with us in New York or tuning in via the podcast, thank you. I know that many of you have flown in from across the country and from around the world. And it's our pleasure to host you over the next few hours and give you some insights into the Dow Jones business. It's a business that we are very proud of, but we're not just sitting on our laurels here. We are just getting started.

When News Corp and Fox separated over a decade ago, our thesis was that we would create shareholder value by applying a disciplined focus on building a digital-first news and information services powerhouse. That thesis has been proven right, thanks to the leadership of Robert and our management team and to the incredible work of our journalists and employees across the world.

We have spent the last 13 years executing a strategy that has made us less subject to the vicissitudes of the traditional media world. Our focus on strengthening our core drivers: Dow Jones, which we will examine today, and book publishing and digital real estate services has fueled our transformation. You will see how Dow Jones embodies and exemplifies this strategy.

The business is well positioned to endure and to thrive as we meet the AI moment, backed by great journalism, expert analysis, thoughtful investment and deeply moated products. But ultimately, any business is only as good as those who run it. And our people are one of our key advantages. I'm very happy you will hear from many of our leaders this afternoon and get to know them and their businesses a little bit better.

With that, I'll hand you over to Robert Thomson.

Thank you, Lachlan for that introduction and for your astute and for your principled leadership. And thank you all for joining us this afternoon. We are indeed gathered at a tumultuous moment, both in the political and the commercial sense. And it is a moment that brings clarity to the profound importance of News Corp and Dow Jones.

We are deep in the age of AI, which is positively transforming the value of our assets, whilst News Corp itself has been fundamentally transformed over the past decade. We have sold low-yielding properties and acquired highly profitable assets. We have become a majority digital company. We had a deep reliance on advertising, but are now replete with recurring revenues and expanding margins. We had record profitability last year on a continuing operations basis and are on track for record profitability this year.

We have reported 11 successive quarters of year-on-year EBITDA growth. And at the very heart of that success has been Dow Jones. And of course, as Lachlan mentioned, Dow Jones is but 1 of our 3 growth engines, which also include Digital Real Estate and HarperCollins, all of which generate handsome profits and strong free cash flow. That free cash flow rose to $571 million in fiscal '25. And our bolstered cash position has prompted ratings agencies to upgrade our status. And Moody's have already put us on positive notice for a possible further upgrade. One other consequence of that robust cash position is that we've been able to sharply increase our buyback, which has been running at a level 4x that of a year ago, while we have maintained our dividend.

Now a few specific metrics for context. We were 62% digital in fiscal '25 compared to 22% in 2014. And obviously, at HarperCollins, we will always have hit hard backs and profitable paperbacks along with e-books and audio. So putting HarperCollins to one side, we were 72% digital as of fiscal '25. Meanwhile, our total segment EBITDA margin in 2014 was 11%. And last fiscal was nearly 17%. And we are entering a new age of opportunity, the AI age. Earlier this month, news broke of our landmark deal with Meta for AI, which follows our pioneering partnership with OpenAI. Now these deals are not just transactional, but they are fundamental in that we are learning from each other, getting priceless insights into contemporary content creation and consumption.

We firmly believe AI is dramatically enhancing the value of our news, data, intelligence, insights and other IP. And we are using AI to improve subscription management, to introduce true dynamic pricing, to transform audio to text and text to audio, to translate into multiple languages and to bring Manga alive. And we expect to deploy AI to intelligently cut costs and improve efficiency and enhance creativity.

To understand how the value of our content has increased markedly, is actually worth studying how the AI world is evolving. There are the large horizontal platforms, OpenAI and Meta, with whom we are partnering, then the perplexing Perplexity, whom we are suing or Anthropic, which has agreed to pay publishers and authors $1.5 billion to settle a suit over illicit usage of IP. Now we look forward to receiving our share of that hefty settlement starting later this calendar year.

So we have a very clear strategy, wooing and suing. We would much prefer to woo these companies, but if there are IP violations, we will certainly sue them. So you have the large horizontal platforms, and they are increasingly recognizing the value of our content. But we are also seeing a rapid proliferation of vertical specialist AI companies who are focusing on specific segments. We believe this is a whole new generation of opportunity for our companies, whether our mastheads, HarperCollins or Digital Real Estate, which generates a vast amount of repurposeable data.

Now we're already tracking a rising number of these companies attempting to scrape illicitly, illegally our precious content. We are identifying these bad boy bots, and we will pursue them. But we are also receiving increasing calls from honorable companies who want to acquire copy content in the proper way, the right way in building their AI-based products. Why is that? And why is that trend just beginning? We are an input company. Semiconductors are inputs, energy is an input, and editorial is an essential input itself.

AI engines require information and they need constant updates to remain relevant. Otherwise, they are merely retrospective. There are a few companies on the planet that have the range of archive and the immediacy of contribute content that we can offer across borders and across segments. Now we are confident that this will be a large and additive revenue stream. However, at the output end, there will be intense competition with emerging companies and a plethora of new products. That is AI downstream.

So for us, we have our existing, highly profitable, growing businesses, plus a potentially lucrative monetization opportunity upstream. That is our compelling AI advantage in an age in which Dow Jones should be uniquely positioned to prosper. And now to tell that story, to outline that profound potential, we have Almar Latour, the Dow Jones Chief Executive and his talented team, but first, a scintillating [ caesural. ]

[Presentation].

Please welcome the Chief Executive Officer of Dow Jones and Publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Almar Latour.

Hi, everyone. Thank you, Lachlan, Robert, and welcome, everybody, and thank you for spending this afternoon in our company. My colleagues and I will use this time to demonstrate why we relish this moment.

Now with so much change happening all around this, and you know this, geopolitics, global trade, energy, technology, of course, AI. The need for reliable news and intelligence is greater than ever. And as someone who personally has deep experience in both the new side and the data side and technology of our business, I believe unequivocally that this is the moment for Dow Jones. This is, in fact, why we exist.

Now there are 3 key takeaways to focus on over the arc of this presentation. One, Dow Jones is a news, data and business intelligence powerhouse. Two, we expect outsized growth in our B2B properties in risk and energy, and that growth will be underpinned by the value creation in consumer and enterprise news, especially in the age of AI. And three, we believe we have a clear path to hit $1 billion in EBITDA within 5 years. That's a 70% increase from fiscal 2025.

Now let's start by taking a look at how Dow Jones is built today. So Dow Jones is organized into the 3 units that you see here, news, risk and energy. And the former has 2 key parts: consumer and enterprise news. Dow Jones is built to inform the business world. It's built to inform you. And we anticipate and respond to shifting needs of our clients and consumers in this era of great change, which also is an era of misinformation. We all know this.

Now just to bring that to life, let's take a look at world events over the past few weeks. We've all seen a lot, which put news, geopolitical risk and energy at the forefront of the global stage. So February 2026. Our Dow Jones risk experts told an audience of CEOs in a closed setting that they expected a U.S. attack on Iran 2 days later on Saturday morning. Now by that Saturday, February 28, the attack indeed took place, and our news team was providing live coverage of the unfolding military action.

The next day, Dow Jones Risks Dragonfly unit sent out an alert that Khamenei had been killed and that was ahead of many news reports. The Dow Jones Energy team sprang into action immediately preparing impact reports for the global energy market on pricing of crude oil and other commodities. We all have seen what's happened since. And meanwhile, our Dow Jones risk analysts worked with Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch and Dow Jones Energy to provide geopolitical commentary, guidance and insights to our corporate clients.

Now our customers as well as global media turned to Dow Jones experts around the clock during that time. I'm sure you've seen it on TV. Now some of the stats here show our early impact. Increased customer engagement, increased audience engagement, increased client consultations, lots of incoming calls, increased subscription registrations, increased orders. And this is just one showcase for how each of our individual assets create value for our customers and how in concert, they actually offer even more value. This is the Dow Jones flywheel effect. It's incredibly powerful.

Now on any given day, our news, data and intelligence, convening power, they ripple through the business world. And this is how we create premium value for customers. And that's what today is about, driving that value. Now as you could just see Dow Jones is a news and information -- our news and information is essential in this age of vast change. And that's even more the case in the era of AI which, of course, is only just getting started. Indeed, we believe AI is an accelerant to our business, an accelerant for our growth.

Now AI helps our business with greater efficiency. It allows us to create new products and new ways to deliver our news and data, and it is fueling even more demand for reliable information. Our clients, they range from hyperscalers. You heard Robert talk about them, to financial institutions, large corporations, hedge funds, startups. They know that their AI models outputs are only as good as their inputs.

Our AI models need to be updated constantly to stay relevant. And our news does just that. But there's more. Just like our news is exclusive and reliable, so too is our Dow Jones proprietary data, and there's a lot of it. That news data and intelligence is gathered by thousands of reporters, researchers, analysts, data scientists in ways that simply cannot be replicated by AI models.

Our proprietary data, news and services are also tethered to regulatory requirements around the world. You may not know this, governments set their own very specific immovable standards for the information that guides the worlds of finance and geopolitics, and we play a role in this. And at the root of all of this, everything that I just told you is trust. Trust that our colleagues and I have to earn every day. Trust that has been built over decades. And we are collectively agnostic to which tools and delivery channels are used to deploy or news data and intelligence, whether our customers use legacy systems or new AI models, they will require reliable and trusted data either way. And we believe that the need for Dow Jones, therefore will only increase.

Now today, we are a global company that excels in both media and information services, and that's fundamentally different from who we were 5 years ago when we became a separate segment of News Corp. Back then, we promised we would become a digital-first company by a wide margin, part of the company-wide transformation that you heard Robert just talk about, and we delivered. For example, we more than tripled our digital subscription since 2018 and doubled them since we resegmented in 2020. And back then, we also made a goal for ourselves internally that we would sharply increase our focus on B2B. And we delivered and [ win some ].

Now for fiscal '25, over 80% of our total revenue was recurring, and that compares to 69% in fiscal '18. The majority of our EBITDA was driven by B2B and the result of this transformation speaks for itself. Since 2018, we have nearly doubled our EBITDA margin and more than tripled EBITDA overall. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the support of Rupert, Lachlan, Robert, our colleagues at News Corp. So thank you. Clearly, we win by serving news, data and analytics and convening power to our audience, whether they are a consumer of The Wall Street Journal, an enterprise customer or users of risk and energy.

So what allows us to do this so well? And where are we going to invest in order to win on our road to the $1 billion in EBITDA in 5 years. Now these are 2 questions, that needless to say, I obsess over. And these are the 5 pillars that are integral to delivering our plan. The first one is tech. Core technology is world class at Dow Jones. Data we've built, a data platform that's perennially updating and upgrading itself and the data connections, they are all important data connections amongst them. In the age of AI, this will allow us to help our customers better, more specific to their needs. And we are going to continue to invest in modern and scalable infrastructure that connects our data and our assets, including an AI.

And we're not just deepening and connecting data and technology. We have created a high-value client sales group that spans all of our products. This facilitates upselling, cross-selling as well as providing a methodical feedback loop for our biggest clients. So that's critical. We're standing up adjacent verticals. We call them multiplier of verticals that are connected to our existing verticals. For example, geopolitics, very dynamic. It is deeply intertwined with risk and energy. And we're pushing relentlessly for efficiency to free up resources to invest in our growth areas.

Everyday productivity contributes to increasing and improving our margin and fueling our capital expenditure options. And AI is an accelerant to all of this. It makes it easier to create new data sets, start new verticals, improve our customer experience through customization and new discovery tools, while at the same time, improving productivity and efficiency. Now we're in the early stages with AI as an industry, but we are fully embracing the opportunities.

And last, there is M&A activity since we completed several transactions since 2020. Now our approach to M&A has been a critical part of our scale transformation. And we have strategically focused on 2 areas. You see them right here, adding proprietary data and adding capabilities. Examples of capabilities that have been added include the acquisition of A2i. It's an AI technology company. And while the addition of proprietary data includes the acquisitions of OPIS, CMA, Oxford Analytica and Dragonfly. And we've become adept at integration at a rapid clip, and we're successfully growing the business as we bring into the Dow Jones fold. They're not just sitting there. For example, OPIS acquired 4 years ago, has nearly doubled its revenue growth since before joining Dow Jones.

And that brings us back to Dow Jones again as it is today. On this slide, I showed earlier, and it shows our 3 units and first news, you're familiar with it. News is delivered to our consumer and to our enterprise audiences, and I'm going to talk in greater depth in a moment about that. You'll soon hear from Emma Tucker, the Editor-in-Chief of her flagship Wall Street Journal, and she's going to be followed by Scott Havens who has responsibility for driving the revenue from our consumer -- customer base. And then Lisa Fitzpatrick, who's responsible for enterprise news.

Now across the board. I'm excited about a lot, but I particularly like the progress that we have made and continue to make in terms of the B2B-ification of news. And that's feeding information in customizable forms to large corporations and hyperscalers and other clients. Second and third are risk and energy verticals. They are our pure-play B2B engines, and they're adding to our growth. The financial contribution that Joel Lange at Risk and Sarah Cottle at Energy oversee, and we'll talk about is emblematic of the scale at pace, on display and our ability to outpace the market. You'll hear them shortly.

Now let's unpack consumer news, where as an aside, I once worked as a reporter and editor. As you know, our consumer brands are unrivaled in quality and reputation and a quick thank you to you here because I know so many of you are customers. Survey after survey and shows that our brands are trusted more than any other business publication. And we are the #1 global news source for C-suite executives and we're a dominant force in the business and professional world. An average of 67 million monthly users reached us digitally every month in fiscal 2025. And our bright future predicts a further expansion of our subscription base, geographic expansion, greater video presence, presence in more languages and more coverage areas, just to name a few.

Now let's move to enterprise subscriptions. In the past, enterprise subscriptions might have meant dropping off a stack of Wall Street Journal and Barron's at the lobby of your headquarters. You might still remember that. That today, this has turned into a sophisticated B2B information streamer. Not only do we deliver WSJ subscriptions, but a customized combination of our news assets tailored to the clients' needs. And this is what I mean by the B2B-ification of news. Our reliable news has become the equivalent of proprietary data, news is data, flowing into the systems of our clients and that can be deployed by them in multiple ways. So let's break this down.

Our clients include hyperscalers, like Meta, large corporations, large financial institutions, hedge funds, companies really of any size in any industry. And each of them is able to get the best version of what we do tailored to their needs. And the value of our services is evidenced by our high retention rates. And by the way, our acquisition costs for this are low and our margins are enviable. And we have a vast trove of data that we can slice and customize in any way that our clients and customers want. Even more so with the help of AI, which is after all this accelerant for us.

And here comes the kicker, in the age of AI, demand for our type of reliable information has only been increasing. And we're seeing more demand, not less. For example, customers are coming back multiple times to drive their GenAI products with Dow Jones Factiva, just one example.

All right. Let's take a look at our risk pillar. If you're not familiar with this product, let me highlight a few ways in which our products and services manifest in the real world. So big questions like how do you know that the people that you're doing business with or your clients are, in fact, legitimate. How do you verify the identities behind financial transactions. How do you avoid running a file of a sanctions regime. But these are questions that financial institutions and large corporations spend significant resources on and our trusted data and intelligence helps them answer these questions and make sure that they are in compliance with complex and, frankly, ever-changing regulations. This is a market that we believe will grow over time, it will only grow over time.

And as AI puts pressure on existing SaaS models, our trusted data and intelligence gathered by countless researchers, countless data scientists, countless reporters, our data is agnostic to which models our clients use. New tools, old tools, they will require trusted data just the same if they want to be successful, if they want to see good outcomes. Industry forecast points to low double-digit average annual growth rates across the risk market, and we believe that we are well placed to grow faster than the underlying market. You'll hear our team talk about this.

Now let's turn to a look at our energy pillar. Dow Jones Energy straddles real-time wholesale and pricing from the port to the pump for every type of refined fuels and also for retail fuel pricing. And that means that all of you, in some way, you're actually using our Dow Jones Energy product. Dow Jones researchers and reporters inform the price you see at the gas pump. And we're likely to be part of the price as cited in the contract of any company or trading floor that buys or sells energy assets. Our pricing and data go beyond fuels also to environmental commodities, renewable energy, EV data and also fuel management.

So for example, if you are searching for an EV charger, while you're driving, chances are that Dow Jones data is helping you find one. And so what does that mean in practice? More than 5,000 businesses are using our news, data and intelligence every day, every week, every month in Dow Jones Energy alone. And they are subscribing to detailed data and pay us annual fees, and this information is invaluable to their business and operations.

Both the data collection and the intelligence are proprietary. And furthermore, we have 60 industry-adopted benchmarks and one of a handful of price reporting agencies or PRAs. Sarah will tell you more about that in a moment. Again, and this is where trust is at a premium and not likely to be eaten by AI.

In many jurisdictions, PRAs are even on top of all of this, formally regulated and supervised. And again, this is where trust is at a premium. You see the theme. Our retention rate is linked to this trust, around 90% strong yields, and we've earned the right to price our premium products in line with the value they provide to our customers. Now this is a dynamic business, which is only just scratching the surface of the possible. The energy market is slated to grow up to 10% per annum, and we believe that we are well positioned to exceed that growth rate. So when the world is volatile, people need Dow Jones more than ever, and our assets play to win.

In concert, our assets create a powerful flywheel effect. Think about how our portfolio comes together for an executive facing a crisis. They read the agenda setting journalism of The Wall Street Journal to understand the macro trends. Their company uses Dow Jones Risk and Compliance, bolstered by our experts at Dragonfly and Oxford Analytica to screen supply chains and anticipate geopolitical security threats. They rely on Dow Jones Energy and OPIS to understand how those threats impact global energy pricing. And finally, they may join peers at The Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute and our CEO Council network to share insights and learn how to lead through disruption, working with their peers and my colleagues. And we are building a full stack of services across news, data, analytics and convening and that is the flywheel effect in action.

In a world that is changing so rapidly, the true power of Dow Jones is how all of our assets and our amazing teams of reporters, researchers, experts, data scientists, engineers or commercial teams, how they all play together. And the ability to offer reliable news, data, intelligence and convening power in key areas of the business world is what makes us truly indispensable and more vital in an age where reliable news and reliable data is in short supply, especially in the era of AI where your outputs are only as good as your inputs. Truly trusted information is the key value that we offer to customers. So this is our moment.

Now speaking of our amazing teams, we have a world-class management team to walk you through each part of Dow Jones. The ones you see right here behind me, will help me present the business today. Each of them are exceptional leaders in their field, and I'm proud to be a colleague of those presenting, and I'm proud to be CEO from our wider team.

To that wider team, if you're watching on the stream, let me just take a moment to thank you for your absolute commitment to maintaining that level of trust, which is the bedrock of our business. Lachlan, Robert and I remain grateful to you for your important and hard work. Thank you.

In a moment, we will be joined by Emma Tucker, Editor-in-Chief of The Wall Street Journal. Emma has led a remarkable transformation at The Wall Street Journal and is guiding the newsroom into an exciting new era. So here now is The Wall Street Journal. Thank you all.

[Presentation]

Join me in welcoming the Editor-in-Chief of The Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker.

Thank you, Almar, and good afternoon, everyone. As we've been hearing, our journalism is the core of the global information powerhouse that is Dow Jones. It provides the integrity that drives every part of our business. I'll be honest, it is both a privilege and a great responsibility to be at the helm of the Wall Street Journal at what feels like a very pivotal moment in our history. In a world defined by geopolitical volatility, economic shifts, huge uncertainty, demand for clarity has never been higher.

Now at the journal, we don't just report change. We provide the definitive record that global leaders rely on to navigate it. Editorial rigor is what earns us our place as the most trusted name in business news. And as Scott and Lisa are going to tell you, this clear strategy and commitment to quality is translating directly into commercial growth.

Now what's true for Dow Jones is also true for The Wall Street Journal. We are the most trusted brand in business news. That's because we offer unbiased journalism that's always rooted in fearless expert reporting. Now high stakes financial news demands discipline and our entire newsroom works to the highest standards. We pay the world's foremost talent with a stringent code of conduct and vigilant editing. And you don't just have to take my word for it, survey after survey says that we are the #1 news brand when it comes to trust.

That trust very much underpins our growth. At the Wall Street Journal and Barron's Group, we've expanded our premium audience and more than half of our subscribers have a net worth of over $1 million. And perhaps most importantly, we are the #1 source for C-suite executives, a position that directly fulfills our mission to empower leaders with the clarity they need to make critical decisions. And I'm happy to report The Wall Street Journal, our audiences are becoming younger. We're actively capturing the next wave of decision-makers through an audience segment that we refer to as the pre suites.

Now these early career professionals make up 22% of our subscribers and they are our most engaged audience. They're driven by a first to know mindset as they climb the corporate ladder. We've also seen significant growth in direct subscribers under 40 as well as reaching an even younger audience across our offerings. And when it comes to AI, just like any industry, we're using AI tools for greater efficiency.

Our teams have built a variety of tools in-house. One of my favorites is called [ Orca ]. And [ Orca ] was designed to help our journalists pass through information from podcasts with greater depth, speed and efficiency. As you know, there are countless shows with dozens of new episodes every day. No one person can listen to all of that. So we built something that does.

Our news offering is distinct and unique. In a world of instant commoditized information, we emphasize the importance of standing out by doubling down on exclusivity and delivering the truly new in a market saturated with the already known. And it's this unwavering focus that has driven a tremendous rise in engagement as well as direct visits to The Wall Street Journal. We believe you simply cannot run a high-performing LLM without our data. While AI models are trained on the past, we are reporting the present in real time.

In an automated world, human triangulation is the ultimate premium, and that's why our direct traffic is growing. When the world is flooded with AI-generated noise, audiences have come straight to us for the signal they can trust. Now this commitment to delivering reliable, trusted news to our audience has been a differentiator for the journal and for the broader collection of Dow Jones newsrooms. And together, we've more than tripled digital subscriptions to our consumer news publications since 2018.

Of course, our newsrooms are one part of our holistic Dow Jones offering that includes everything from the WSJ Leadership Institute to the many experts across all our verticals, an offering that is more than the sum of its parts. We have a strategy. The strategy is working, and we have a clear plan for the path ahead, both for our journalism and our commercial success.

Now Scott Havens, our Chief Growth Officer and Global Head of Consumer, will take you through the growth we have seen across our consumer news business, how we continue to innovate for our customers and our growth strategy. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Emma. If you've opened The Wall Street Journal app recently, you've seen it changing. This isn't a redesign. It's a continuous upgrade cycle. Consumer subscriptions and advertising represent the majority of Dow Jones revenue and the product experience is what protects and grows that base. We're adding features and formats as consumption patterns shift and the data confirms it's working. Video engagement is up, connected devices are up and search, historically underutilized, is growing fast.

We're embedding AI where it actually changes behavior. Servicing relevant stories faster, personalizing the experience by portfolio or beat and giving subscribers tools that make the product more engaging. We're also investing in a video as a platform, not just a format. The way people consume business information is shifting towards social and streaming and we intend to meet that demand with a video experience worthy of The Wall Street Journal brand. The goal across all of this is the same, build a product that's indispensable to daily habit because frequency and retention and engagement, and it drives long-term value.

We have a premium product with real pricing opportunity, and we're getting smarter about how we use it. In the last 2 years, we have systematically moved pricing up across both digital and print without sacrificing volume. Wall Street Journal U.S. digital list price has gone from $30.99 per month in fiscal '24 to $44.99 just last week in fiscal '26. Wall Street General Print has moved from $54.99 to $64.99 over that very same period. But pricing is only part of the story.

We've also shortened some promotional offers to less than a year, and we've replaced standard step-ups with a data-driven retention and pricing strategy, meaning each subscriber gets priced based on their engagement and value they receive, it's not simply a blanket increase. The result is a smarter, more dynamic approach to ARPU, one that captures more value per subscriber without sacrificing retention. It's still early, but as our pricing strategy sharpens and the product gets more engaging, we believe there's meaningful room to keep improving.

That discipline is possible because of what underpins it, trust, depth, any product experience that justifies this premium positioning. At nearly $600 a year, The Wall Street Journal of U.S. Digital is priced among the top business news leaders in the space. And just this week, we are launching our super bundle, a collection of our -- all of our digital consumer products for super users priced at $7,499 per year. The market is validating our position. As of Q2 fiscal '26, digital subscriptions have grown 12% per year to $6 million. Digital direct subscription ARPU is up 6%, and digital circulation revenue grew 7%.

We're growing subscriptions, pricing and ARPU simultaneously because the model is reinforcing itself. This product depth is driving frequency. That frequency is driving retention and engagement and that retention and engagement is enabling pricing. But we're not just at a premium price, we're earning the right to raise them through the proprietary journalism, deeper product utility, and engagement that compounds over time. And we believe there's a long runway ahead.

Robust subscription growth is not the only driver of our revenue. Ad revenue has held steady, while we shifted our mix towards higher-value formats with 65% of fiscal '25 ad revenue now coming from digital under the leadership of Josh Stinchcomb, right over here. Last quarter was our best quarter ever for digital ad revenue. Custom, video and audio revenue has tripled since fiscal year '18 and CPMs are up 1.5x over the same period. In addition, the team hosted 179 events in fiscal '25 and event revenue nearly doubled since '18. Importantly, open programmatic -- open market programmatic advertising now represents less than 3%, certainly a fiscal year '25 ad revenue.

We are deliberately leaning in to direct multi-platform premium formats that insulate us from the decline in open market CPMs. Our advertisers are buying a premium audience, not simply impressions. That same premium positioning extends across the portfolio, the Barron's Group, Barron's and MarketWatch plus Investor's Business Daily is focused wealth and investing portfolio and it has become a real growth engine for us since the acquisition of IBD in 2021. And of course, collaborating across our business units creates more value. We are building beyond our core, launching products like the Barron's Investor Circle, Energy Insider and relaunching Barron's Global Signals which is going to be a collaboration with Oxford Analytica.

These are targeted, high-intent offerings for audiences willing to pay for differentiated insight. And the demand is there. Subscriptions to Barron's have grown nearly 200% since June 2018 to almost 1.5 million. Digital subscriptions, up around 600% over that same period. And perhaps the clearest proof point is MarketSurge, recently rebranded, replatformed, relaunched, our highest ARPU product before the super bundle at $1,411 per year. Again, clear evidence sophisticated investors will pay for advanced tools and proprietary data.

Growth from here is about expanding where we already have credibility and demand across 3 primary vectors. International. We're underpenetrated relative to our brand strength. Less than 20% of total digital subscriptions are international today, giving us significant room to grow. Regional products, automated local language support, partnerships, selective localization will let us scale internationally without rebuilding the newsroom market by market. Verticals, we're working closely with editorial to extend into new coverage areas. Wealth and leadership have been natural move so far with more to be released in the coming months. Formats, video, audio events. This is how we deepen frequency, deepen habit, meeting our audience in more moments of their day.

Across all 3 vectors, the principle is the same. Build on what we do brilliant, extend new platforms, new audiences and new markets. That's our growth model. And with that, let's turn to the exciting growth in our enterprise news business. Please welcome, the General Manager of Industries, Lisa Fitzpatrick.

Thank you, Scott. Hello, everyone. As Almar said earlier, Dow Jones is a news, data and intelligence powerhouse. The Wall Street Journal, combined with other Dow Jones news coverage and practitioner commentary gives professionals insights and context they need. Dow Jones Newswires capture real-time developments that are powering professional trading and investing decisions. And our Factiva team provides company and market intelligence from tens of thousands of sources globally. In aggregate, these 3 product lines contributed $352 million to Dow Jones revenue in fiscal '25, and they are growing. Jointly, we call them the enterprise news business, because each of these product lines delivers news and must-have intelligence to a wide range of corporate clients.

A key driver for growth is our ability to tailor our news, data and information to the exact needs of the end user and deliver it in any way that a client prefers, whether that be through APIs, AI connectors or through new products we create in partnership with our clients. And we currently have a good foundation of corporations that license one or more of our enterprise news products. And in this age of constant change, demand for reliable information has been increasing, and we see an opportunity to take enterprise news into thousands of corporations as we target the Russell 3000. Additionally, only about 10% of our current revenue comes from outside the United States. So we see tremendous growth potential in international markets in the years ahead.

Our belief is strengthened by the widespread adoption of generative AI, which has created greater demand for our trusted news and data. Our existing and prospective corporate clients need reliable information and data for their models in order to achieve reliable outcomes. Not only do we see this as an opportunity to win new clients, but it's an opening to build deeper, more lucrative relationships with our existing customer base. And we believe AI is making our growth opportunities in the corporate market even greater than before. While companies are spending less on developing tools, they're spending more on targeted information they can trust. And ultimately, we are agnostic to which models and work tools our customers choose to use. And AI is a driver for us. It is enabling deeper integration across 3 categories of enterprise news products.

The first is bespoke news products. And a great example of that is our partnership with Yomiuri Shimbun. Here, we deliver our news and intelligence on a custom-built tech stack that gives their clients context around developments. Based on their needs, we combine our intelligence with Yomiuri's reporting in Japan. We leverage AI to translate our content into Japanese, and we tailor the presentation.

The second category is custom news feeds. We are seeing strong demand for these news feeds in the financial services market, where Factiva and Newswires are leveraging AI to power deals across hedge funds, financial platforms and institutions. These businesses rely on high-quality trusted sources for investment decision-making. And our combination of news, analysis and market information helps them mitigate risk and identify new opportunities. Firms are building their own internal research and trading systems that leverage Dow Jones data and AI is enabling and delivering data sets that are tailored for specific funds and strategies.

And finally, our third category is AI connectors, which bring our products and our data into LLM platforms. For example, we just launched the Factiva ChatGPT connector in collaboration with OpenAI. Factiva's trusted licensed content is integrated for Factiva subscribers directly into the enterprise ChatGPT environment. This allows Factiva enterprise customers to leverage ChatGPT to access licensed, reliable and trusted detail and insight, all of which link insight back to our owned and operated Dow Jones Factiva platform. Customers are required to have a Factiva subscription in order to unlock its data and content on ChatGPT. And the Factiva Connector is featured in the ChatGPT App Store and serves as a funnel to Factiva itself.

As I said earlier, the corporate market needs and wants the news, data and intelligence we provide. They want it tailored, curated and delivered for their own needs in increasingly focused ways for different categories of end users. We will continue to deliver and seize on this opportunity to expand our footprint in the corporate market. So what you've heard and seen from Emma, Scott and me is a comprehensive growth story built on 3 interconnected pillars. Trust. It's the foundation that enables everything we do. It gives us permission to charge premium prices and win enterprise and direct consumer relationships. Growth in subscriptions and revenue, proves the market values what we deliver, and we're improving the quality of that revenue with higher ARPU, better margins and more predictable streams. And unlocking new value and opportunities through AI, international expansion and enterprise embedding means we believe we're just scratching the surface of what's possible.

The principle across all 3 pillars is the same: Build on what we already do brilliantly, connect our news data and intelligence in relevant and impactful ways for our clients and then extend it into new formats for new audiences and new markets. That's our growth model for news. In a moment, we'll be joined by Joel Lange, the General Manager of Dow Jones Risk, to share the incredible work our teams are doing to provide proprietary data and intelligence to customers as they navigate an increasingly complex risk environment. But first, here's a look at Dow Jones Risk. Thank you.

[Presentation]

Please welcome the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Dow Jones Risk, Joel Lange.

Good afternoon, everyone. Before delving into the details of our business, let me share a story that shows why what we do matters. Let me take you back to the 24th of February 2022. You may remember where you were when tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border and missiles rained down on airports and cities across the Ukraine. Hours later, the U.S. government unleashed a sanctions package it had been preparing with G7 countries for months. And over the coming days and weeks, the names of banks, oligarchs and Vladimir Putin himself were placed on lists to block them from the global financial system.

At the same time, our world-class data team were ready. Using both technology and people, we processed this data, transferred it into proprietary formats. We researched any company that was owned or controlled by those listed oligarchs and banks in any country in the world. And the same data gathering process has been used in relation to Iran, Venezuela and any other terrorist or money launderers listed on major sanctions lists. This proprietary data now numbers over 50,000 companies around the world. And to get this right and to the satisfaction of the world's leading banks and corporations and their regulators, we need the right people.

The best and brightest experts interact daily with customers and regulators anticipating the next geopolitical rupture. Our people are unsurpassed. They take high-quality data, align it with exact regulatory expectations and deliver it to our customers. This is the skill set of what powers a high-margin recurring subscription business.

So let's delve into the risk business, where we are providing this market-leading data in a growing industry delivered directly into critical workflows. Our customers face a myriad of risks. And Dow Jones Risk provides the proprietary human intelligence needed to power efficient results. The bedrock of our business is premium proprietary risk data created and curated by a global team of subject matter experts. We do this through our frequent communication with regulators and close relationships with the world's largest regulated companies. As risks and detailed regulations increase, so does our customers' demand for solutions to keep their names out of the headlines, prevent fines and prevent business loss.

Dow Jones is a data solutions provider. We integrate our data into whichever tools our customers choose to use. And the acceleration of AI and agentic frameworks offer a unique opportunity and sales channel for us to deliver. The stakes are so high for our customers. Lives are saved, fines are avoided. And this works in 2 ways. So first, imagine if a risk is missed and a terrorist or money launderer accesses a bank. At best, this could mean a fine. At worst, the bank can be used in a financial crime or even a terrorist act. Second, if a customer or supplier is mismatched with bad data, it could lead to a wrongful debanking lawsuit or a data privacy inquiry. We take great care. When we label a person or a company as having been involved in criminal activity, the sources are reliable, protected by copyright and compliant with data privacy laws.

We combine our deep customer relationships with our journalistic intelligence gathering. This allows us to both identify both risks and regulations before they are published in any open source documentation. Take the Department of Commerce's affiliates rule from last September. It blocks any company owned by someone on their watch list. And we saw this coming, and we acted. We provided a solution to customers before the legislation kicked in. Now this involved researching 3,000 companies across multiple jurisdictions, companies that are often obscured and complex using non-Latin scripts. We have the contextual and cultural understanding to do this. We created a database of 24,000 exclusively research companies, which we delivered directly into customer systems. And this drove over $1 million of new subscription revenue in just 2 weeks.

Our customer base is diversified over regions and sectors. The common denominator is trusted data built not just around written regulation, but around how regulators actually interpret and enforce the rules. Many of our top customers make regular trips to our Barcelona hub to discuss data sets and review our intelligence gathering processes. Our relationship with banks using our data for anti-money laundering checks goes back over 25 years. And our corporate customers go back over 15 years and use our data to comply with a myriad of risks and regulations.

So if you saw us in 2011, we worked primarily with banks, but now corporates make up 44% of our revenue, driven by demand for data to comply with anticorruption and sanctions legislation. We deliver our data and intelligence for specific regulatory compliance needs. Global banks are required to understand their exposure to politicians and criminality to ensure that their organizations aren't used for money laundering. Both banks and corporations are required to check customers and suppliers against sanctions and export control data. And again, not just the names on the list, they must also find the companies owned by listed people and by listed companies. And when doing supplier checks, corporations need to check for any signals in the news that may be red flags. Now with our acquisitions of Oxford Analytica and Dragonfly, we help customers anticipate risk and keep their people safe by tracking key risk indicators in 25 country -- categories in nearly every country in the world.

So let's unpack what makes our data proprietary and how we build it. Data requirements mandated by regulators are sometimes clearly laid out, but often, they're based on loose guidance and definitions communicated in audits, sometimes even verbally. Our risk data ranges from the aggregation, consolidation and enrichment of government lists to deep research on ownership. We do access open source registrars, but we also access registrars that are opaque, protected and offline. This is constantly changing complex data. By tracking global elections and political changes, we navigate the complexity of different global politically exposed person legislation. And this creates a proprietary Dow Jones definition that customers can hang their hat on and meets regulatory expectations. Where global media is required for negative signals on people and companies, we have unique access to Factiva and its thousands of licensed media sources. This data is structured in an adverse media taxonomy, which is, again, unique to Dow Jones.

So let me give you 3 quick case studies out of the thousands that we have. The first relates to our human intelligence. So we had a customer trying to identify Russian connections with 2 separate companies. Our thorough data analysis did not yield any initial connections to Russia, but when evaluating the English translations of both passport copies of the company's CEOs, our team identified that both have been certified based on a translator stamp on the same day by the same sworn -- translator based in Moscow. This highlighted a Russian connection, which the customer had not previously seen. In another report, we had a subject where there was an ongoing blog post -- there was a blog post on an ongoing investigation. However, that post was taken down. Our proprietary archive meant we retained that information, and we were able to help our customer identify this ongoing investigation. And then there are our proprietary Dow Jones watch list.

Now I mentioned earlier our work on the Department of Commerce affiliate rule. Some of those 24,000 companies we found for that data set were found in corporate registrars, but many of them come from our expert digging into news sources. In this example, we were able to verify a subsidiary of a listed Chinese company not available in corporate registrars. It is these data sets that drive our recurring revenue, which I'll take you through next.

So our revenue performance has been powered by a recurring subscription model, leading to an 18% CAGR. We have approximately 90% retention rates, responsible price increases, and we're regularly adding new data sets and products through organic and inorganic investment. As the market for this data has increased, so have the use cases. Our customers use our data in on-premise software and cloud applications to screen their clients, but we now offer direct API connections into the enterprise. And we believe the rise of new AI algorithms and plug-ins offer yet another opportunity and sales channel for our data to drive increasingly effective and efficient outcomes.

Now our market is large at nearly $4 billion and growing as we have seen with increased complexity in global regulations and compliance needs. Our suite of products provide structured, contextualized and proprietary data. And we've stayed true to our core Dow Jones mission, providing high-quality data for critical business decisions and constantly improving the delivery of our data to customers. And we recently signed one of the top 5 Australian banks who are using our generative AI due diligence solution, Dow Jones Integrity Check, get a demo in the hall after. They're using that in their financial intelligence unit, where they're accelerating the process of due diligence reporting from 5 days down to 15 minutes.

We also have an opportunity to capitalize on trends in the market, which I'll unpack next. So first is the growth of the corporate market. Now while banks are more mature than corporates, Dow Jones Risk has taken a relatively stronger market share with corporate customers. We have built data specifically for this market. Now yes, it helps them comply with sanctions and anticorruption legislation. But beyond that, it protects their reputations and their supply chains with adverse media signals on suppliers. This corporate risk is no longer siloed. From sanctions exposure to physical security threats, companies need integrated intelligence. And with our acquisition of Dragonfly and their focus on enterprise risk, we are uniquely positioned to serve that convergence. We expect significant upside in the use of our data for trade, export control, supply chain and corporate security.

And next is the growth of the market for our services outside the United States. We have customers in over 160 countries, and the majority of our people and revenue are outside the United States. Our team of almost 400 subject matter experts natively speak 54 languages. Our globalized news bureau infrastructure and localized research teams have enabled us to expand into new markets. In these countries, we have deep relationships with global customers and regulators, and I'm confident that we are well positioned to grow in these markets.

So a few takeaways to leave you with. We are set up to capitalize on market dynamics and differentiate. We have continued to grab market share through the trusted proprietary data I've described today. Almar mentioned our world-class competing power with risk summits and Chief Compliance Officer Councils. And also, we have our news and expert interactions. Together, this means we offer a unique ability to anticipate regulations, interact with regulators and build the valuable data sets of the future. And this data is delivered flexibly for high-volume screening in any new or existing technologies that customers choose. The workflows we wire into are critical for our customers, and they're under constant regulatory audit.

And finally, our trusted brand. When Chief Compliance Officers say to regulators that they use Dow Jones, it fills them with confidence. Or put another way, no compliance officer has ever been fired for buying Dow Jones data. Threats are growing from reputational damage to large fines, loss of funds due to onboarded fraudsters, we give our customers the peace of mind that their businesses are safe, that our data is best-in-class, unique and proprietary. As complexity increases, trusted data becomes the foundation and Dow Jones risk delivers.

Now another area where trusted intelligence is absolutely critical is the energy market, where billions of dollars of transactions depend on reliable pricing and market data. That's exactly what our energy business provides, as you'll hear from Executive Vice President and General Manager of Dow Jones Energy, Sarah Cottle. But first, a video. Thank you.

[Presentation]

Join me in welcoming the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Dow Jones Energy, Sarah Cottle.

Hello, everyone. Dow Jones Energy is a trusted price reporting agency, fortified by deep research, proprietary data, world-class news and influential events. We are on a mission to grow market share by leveraging a rare combination, heritage authority and disruptor agility. And we're designed to thrive in today's era of overwhelming data choices, transparency and reliable pricing are essential to well-functioning commodities markets. And for almost 50 years, we've been providing it.

Our relationships are strong. We are a trusted provider to virtually all of the top oil, gas and chemical companies in the world, and our reach extends beyond energy from auto to technology to governments and professional services, our data is deeply embedded. And the price data we provide is key information for markets to function effectively. In fact, it's part of the market infrastructure. Because of that, our customer relationships endure for the long term, and that's reflected in our retention rate, which is approximately 90%.

One of our customers recently explained why we're so critical to their business. And he said, you provide real-time hyper-local competitive intelligence. He said that Dow Jones Energy helps him optimize margins and understand elasticity of demand. Our capabilities help him perform disciplined data-driven decisions. But it isn't just about the data he told us. It's about the partnership. The Dow Jones Energy team and I quote "operates as a true strategic partner, engaged, responsive and invested in our success."

So with that better understanding of the value we bring here is Dow Jones Energy's definitive growth story built on 3 solid pillars. First, the products. Energy and commodity benchmarks support a complex ecosystem. They're integral to the daily operations of thousands of companies around the world. Markets just don't function without them. And that means pricing data is the very definition of proprietary data.

Second, the people. Our people are true experts. Their judgment is a powerful differentiator for our business, giving our customers a tremendous advantage, irreplaceable human judgment shields us from disintermediation by emerging technologies. So let's be very clear. AI is a channel and tool for us, not a competitor.

And then thirdly, the sector. The energy information sector is large and growing. And at Dow Jones, we have all the right ingredients to take full advantage of this expansion. In the world of the price reporting agency or PRA achieving benchmark status means that our price assessment is used by buyers and sellers to settle their contracts. And once the industry aligns around a price, and adopts it for regular use, it gets written into legal agreements. Usage of that price then facilitates a long-term relationship with the market. We have won so far 60 of these benchmarks which underpin billions of dollars in trade annually.

When an exchange decides to list a benchmark, that's a further endorsement of its value to the market, a seal of approval for its trustworthiness, if you will. And when this happens, market participants use that listed contract to manage risk through trading financial derivatives. And we've secured 150 such exchange listings, and that number continues to grow. So for us, winning benchmarks is the ultimate prize. Benchmarks drive more subscriptions, which drive more revenue. And every day, our team comes to work unified around the single purpose of doing just that by providing numbers that will win the trust of the market.

So how do we provide this powerful data. Our pricing team spans the globe living and working close to the markets they serve and they truly understand the intricacies of everything from the impact of low water levels on the Rhine in Germany to unscheduled refinery outages in the U.S. Gulf Coast, rail track allocation in Australia or even the ash fusion temperature of a cargo of coal, niche perhaps to the outsider, but information that's critical in the fiercely competitive world of commodities trading.

Our people do an outstanding job of collecting information that's really, really hard to find anywhere else. From South African coal deliveries to Chinese solar module production we're connecting with countless market participants every day. That's how we discover bids, offers and real traded prices in commodities. We then take for the data we gathered, apply a transparent methodology and overlay that with our expert judgment. And we invest in this expertise, which helps us to attract and retain talent that are leaders in their fields. The output is market-reflective prices and breaking news that moves markets. To be without this news is to lack the competitive edge.

We publish price assessments every day. And then every year, we undergo a thorough audit which maintains compliance with the highest industry standards. That further reassures the market of our trusted status. And Dow Jones has been rewarded for all this hard work. We've become a leader in fuels pricing. We supply the price benchmarks and data for every stage in the fuel journey from the refinery where the gasoline is produced to the pipelines carrying that fuel across North America to the trucks delivering it to your local gas station.

Our routes in fuels date back to the founding of the Oil Price Information Service, or OPIS in 1977. Since then, we've only strengthened our position by adding A2i systems in 2024, bringing AI technology capabilities to Dow Jones. But our strength is not just in fuels. We're a leading voice for what will happen next in chemicals, supply and demand.

Food manufacturers and candy makers have to plan their costs for packaging. Makers of toys and sporting goods need to decide when and where to ramp up manufacturing for the holiday season. These are the types of decisions that we inform. They turn to our outlook for hundreds of chemical prices. And for more than 40 years, our chemical markets analytics business has enabled thousands of clients to navigate these complex decisions through providing powerful proprietary data.

Of course, chemicals are the building block for modern life alongside electricity where coal continues to be a vital input. Contrary perhaps to public perception, the world still relies heavily on coal. The International Energy Agency estimates that coal demand hit an all-time record just last year. Global coal trade relies on Dow Jones. Since the 1990s, the McCloskey coal business has provided transparent prices for coal delivered to Europe. Our learning in coal is helping us work with our global mining customers to shape the future of metals pricing. And prices for metals are a critical input in the energy transition where we're a leader in price data as well.

Now however, energy demand develops in the future, we believe we're positioned to cover it. We serve markets for carbon, biofuels and renewable energy. And our recent acquisition of Eco-Movement cements our leadership role in energy transition. Eco-Movement is the leading platform for EV charging station data. So OPIS, CMA, McCloskey, A2i and Eco-Movement, we're uniting these powerful businesses under the Dow Jones Energy umbrella. Each has brought either new capabilities to Dow Jones or expanded the proprietary data we're able to offer our customers. And this creates new opportunities to combine insights end-to-end across the value chain.

This, alongside the power of the Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal names is unlocking new customer segments across the globe. You can see how these capabilities come together when faced with global events. Take the war in Iran. As we are all aware, the conflict across the Middle East is having a significant impact on energy prices, and we've been closely monitoring the rapidly fluctuating fuel prices. RackPro built by Dow Jones monitors the fuels pipeline network across the United States that is used to ship fuel from the refinery to the storage terminal tanks located around major metropolitan areas. This product is used by gas retailers to buy truckloads of fuel. And this map shows where the difference between unbranded and branded prices is most extreme, indicating possible supply concern.

Before the conflict, the fuel supply network across the United States was functioning normally and there were minimal price impacts related to supply and demand. Now look at this. This is how the same map looked last Monday. As oil supply concerns shook markets, gasoline prices spiked. As you can see, the fuel infrastructure grid was covered with deep red circles which indicate pricing impacts due to supply and demand factors. These accurate real-time prices helped thousands of gas retailers navigate extreme volatility to make informed purchasing decisions.

Our customers can rely on our data in a crisis, and that has helped our strong financial performance. We're very proud of our track record of delivering high-quality subscription revenue to Dow Jones. The energy business has been growing by double digits at faster rate than the energy information market as a whole. And that growth has been accelerated organically through the development of new price assessments that our customers need and inorganically through key acquisitions like Eco-Movement. This performance in a fast-growing market gives us confidence that this business should deliver on its promise to gain market share. So we've talked about our benchmarks and our experts.

Let's turn now to that third pillar that will underpin accelerated growth for Dow Jones Energy, the large and growing energy information sector. We operate in an $8 billion market, and that's projected to expand at 8% to 10% annually over the medium term. And why is it expanding? Because every company is an energy company. In technology, data centers demand vast power resources. Airline profits swing mightily based on the price of fuel, and retailers are selling gas outside their storefronts. At the same time, wars, trade disputes and diverging climate mandates are creating uncertainty in supply.

Consider the geopolitical shocks just this year, Venezuela, Greenland and Iran, as we've already demonstrated, have all shaken energy markets. Supply chain shocks and volatility are the new normal. Our customers whether trading or transporting, planning or procuring are telling us that they need more data flexibly delivered and adapted to their needs. That way, they say they can more effectively navigate complex decisions in an uncertain world.

I'll finish by telling you why I'm confident that Dow Jones Energy is positioned to win significant market share. We currently have just 3% of the $8 billion market in Energy Information and an exceptional opportunity ahead of us. And we believe we'll win because we are unique. Our data is foundational. In fact, almost all of it is proprietary. We're differentiated. We alone can leverage the Dow Jones network effect of world-leading news and unparalleled reach. And we're integrated. We recognize our customers' changing needs and adapt to them.

A large industrial segment customer recently told me that the integration of our API into their cloud environment was "seamless" and a huge game changer. And lastly, most importantly, we are a trusted partner to our widening universe of customers. Our flexible approach is a cornerstone of our philosophy and the reason for decades of trust that our customers have invested in us and we will never take it for granted. In a world of misinformation and distrust, thousands of customers turn to us for clear, accurate and actionable information. And when we partner, we drive increased value by putting our proprietary data together with other Dow Jones products. We launched Barron's Energy Insider. And risk and energy colleagues work together on current affairs webinars, and that's just 2 of many, many examples.

A financial services customer said it best. The information we get from Dow Jones Energy is "indispensable when market disruptions occur." They said Dow Jones understands the relationships between markets and breaking news.

So with that, I'm delighted to hand over to Jared DiPalma, outgoing Dow Jones CFO, and now News Corp's Deputy CFO, who will take you through the numbers. Please welcome, Jared. Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah. Let me begin by reinforcing what you've heard today. We have a strong and consistent financial track record. It reflects deliberate portfolio shaping as a structural shift toward higher quality revenue streams. As we look ahead, we believe we are well positioned to continue this strong financial performance. Let's begin with our progress since our earliest public financials as a separate segment in fiscal year '18.

Dow Jones has delivered and since fiscal '18, we have grown revenue $2.3 billion, representing a 6.5% annualized top line growth over the period and digital revenue grew 11%. But equally important is the improvement in revenue quality. In fiscal '25, 82% of our revenue was digital versus print. 80% was reoccurring in nature, and advertising represented just 17% of total revenue. Each of these metrics has materially improved since fiscal '18. What this means is we're less cyclical, we're more subscription-driven, and we're more predictable. This mix shift underpins the durability of our improved growth profile.

Over the same period, EBITDA has expanded to $588 million. That's more than 3x our fiscal '18 level. And margins have increased 2x from 12.9% to 25.2%. Equally important is our cash generation. In fiscal '25, we converted approximately 70% of our EBITDA into cash flow. Strong cash generation provides flexibility for reinvestment and/or strategic M&A.

This next slide highlights something fundamental to our model, sustained operating leverage. Since fiscal '18, our costs have, on average, just grown 4%. Every day, we are deliberate about balancing investment with efficiency. And over the years, we've implemented multiple cost initiatives. These include outsourcing, simplifying organizational structures or scaled centralization with News Corp. All of these are designed to streamline our operations and align resources with our highest growth opportunities.

At the same time, we continue to invest in areas that drive long-term value, particularly product and technology, new proprietary data sets, and AI tools to enhance our team's productivity. The result is a business where revenue is growing faster than expenses, and we're seeing steady margin expansion every single year.

Now let me turn to how we think about growth going forward. Our risk and energy businesses remain core growth drivers. Both operate in large, growing addressable markets and we expect to deliver strong performance in each market in 3 areas: one, product innovation powered by proprietary data; two, thoughtful price focused on our yield optimization and three, maintaining high retention rates through customer loyalty. Industry forecast through 2028-point to growth rates in the low double digits across the risk market and high single to low double-digit growth rates across the energy market. Given our track record, our market positioning, we believe we are well placed to continue to grow faster than the underlying market.

Next up, digital circulation. This remains a key driver of our performance. Since fiscal '18, digital circulation has grown 11%, and this is inclusive of a 2-point benefit from M&A and from partnerships. We have delivered sustained organic growth through a variety of measures, such as focused pricing strategies, complemented by disciplined partnership, strategic M&A. At Dow Jones, we see our continued digital circulation growth driven by 2 primary drivers. One is expanding our enterprise new strategy; and two, it's our direct-to-consumer growth with new products, pricing and international expansion. Let me unpack these 2 in a bit more detail.

Our ARPU strategy is deliberate, it's data-driven, and it's focused on long-term subscriber value, not just subscription growth, but high-quality revenue per subscriber. On the left-hand side of the page, there are 4 primary drivers of our digital direct ARPU expansion. First is product mix. We continue to see strong uptake of higher-priced offerings, including WSJ+ and MarketSurge. These premium tiers deepen engagement and increased monetization per subscriber.

Higher list prices and data-driven pricing are also helping us better align price to the value subscribers receive while maintaining strong conversion and retention metrics and testing. We're currently testing shorter-term offers that enable us to accelerate the step up to those higher price points. As we continue to roll out these initiatives, we are seeing encouraging traction with most recent second quarter ARPU increasing 6% versus prior year. Collectively, we expect these initiatives will continue this digital direct subscription ARPU growth.

When we look at the monetization of our news content to enterprises, it still represents a relatively small portion of total revenue, about 15% in fiscal year '25. That said, we believe this is a meaningful opportunity. Dow Jones' premier business news and information content gives us a clear authority to expand penetration with corporate clients. We are already seeing success in early days and the granting of AI rights, for example, has become a true incremental revenue driver, creating new ways for the enterprise clients to engage with our content.

Equally important, the economics of our enterprise news products are very attractive. While ARPU is lower than our direct-to-consumer products, churn is lower, marketing costs are minimal and the incremental content spend is negligible. This is a high-margin product.

Finally, as Almar mentioned, we are aligned around a clear financial goal within the next 5 years, $1 billion of EBITDA and continued margin expansion. This is grounded in 4 key areas: Risk and energy's expansion and delivering margin growth direct-to-consumer growth accelerated with new products and pricing, a renewed focus on enterprise news as a high-margin product offering and continued cost discipline and operating leverage. With our trajectory, our portfolio mix and the structural tailwinds, we believe the $1 billion in 5 years is ambitious, but very much achievable.

And with that, I hand it back to Almar to bring everything together.

Thank you. All right. Well, thank you, Jared. Each of our leaders today provided an overview of the businesses that they oversee. I hope you enjoy that. Dow Jones is even stronger when our teams work together, offering our clients and our customers a full suite of services where the sum is greater than the parts. We see a clear path ahead of us as we focus on our road map to $1 billion in EBITDA within the next 5 years. What we hope you take away from today, aside from this goal is that Dow Jones is a news, data and intelligence powerhouse. And that we see tremendous potential in our risk and energy businesses underpinned and intertwined with our world-class journalism.

So thank you all for spending your time with us today. We really appreciate your interest in Dow Jones and News Corp, and we're happy to take your questions, right now on stage and then over drinks. So please welcome back, Global Head of Investor Relations at News Corp, Michael Florin. Michael?

Thank you. Almar and the team. Thank you, Lachlan and to Robert. So we're going to transition to the Q&A portion of the time this evening. And as the management makes the way back on stage, just a couple of reminders. We'll be taking questions from the guests in the room. If you have a question, just raise your hand, wait for the event staff and they'll come by with the mic. Please state your name and your firm that you represent and to ensure that we get to as many questions as possible, we ask that you try to keep it to 1 question.

So with that, I think we are ready for first -- well, we're waiting for management. It will come momentarily, I promise. But we do hope today, we've been able to give you a little bit more information about Dow Jones and to show why we're so excited by Dow Jones on this wonderful team of executives. So I think [ Brent ], your first question?

This is [ Brent Pinter ] with Raymond James. One theme that seemed to keep coming up was the opportunities that you've been able to take advantage with inorganic growth. So I'm just hoping you could talk a little bit more about what else is out there in terms of inorganic growth. You talked about data capabilities and within which of your segments, energy, risk, news do you see the most opportunity out there?

Yes. Good. I'll start with that, and Jared will double-click and some of the general managers will as well. So first off, you saw there are really 2 pillars of focus, adding capabilities, which is important and adding proprietary data. It's important to underscore that sort of on this path to $1 billion, we were talking about bolt-on M&A, so nonmaterial. And so this is separate from material M&A, where you've seen us acquire OPIS and CMA. We are constantly evaluating the landscape as some of the philosophy came through in the presentation that I want to point to.

The sweet spot for us is to look at areas that are nestled between 2 verticals where you can have a multiplier effect by adding new data. We can do that organically, but certainly, something like that can be boosted inorganically as well. A sort of bolt-on effort on that was geopolitics, Oxford Analytica and Dragonfly. And so why is that a sweet spot because it not only establishes that new very well-fitting area for our existing customer base. In this case, this example, geopolitics, but that also lifts energy and it lifts risk, and it creates this network effect of creativity and creating new products, et cetera.

So I think keep that in mind as we look at different areas that are important to us. And so without specifically saying, we can't obviously make forward-looking statements about M&A. But the areas that are really interesting that are sitting between those inorganically as well as supply chain is really interesting. Defense is really interesting. These are areas that bring together energy and risk in different ways.

And so Jared, do you want to just overlay a little bit of financials?

Yes, I'll just add 2 things. We have many filters when we look at our inorganic opportunities. The biggest one, though, is shareholder value and return. And that's always top of mind with the leadership team with our Board as we go through opportunities. Each of these operators on this stage, keep a robust pipeline. They know their industry is the best. And we're constantly reviewing it and excited about many opportunities out there.

Okay. We'll take our next question, please? David?

David Buttenshaw from Aitken Mount. I heard many times through the presentation, you guys talking about the AI being an accelerator and an enabler of your business, are you finding things to do with your data and finding data you didn't even know that you had probably. And how is -- can you give us a couple of examples of just how you're delivering things to clients that you just wouldn't have been able to do 12 months ago or even 6 months ago?

Good. I'll start and then I think Lisa, Joel can double-click on that. So we see accelerated demand, growing demand on the client side for reliable information. And so one of the ways in which AI manifests for us is we can deliver a pipeline of news as data, and that's in Lisa's business. And we -- there was a reference in the presentation on to 20 recent GenAI deals. So you should elaborate on that a little bit. Let's start there, and I'll come back to some other areas.

Okay. And so with our enterprise relationships, there are a number of those where with these great partnerships with our clients, we've learned more about their needs. And then Dow Jones, we already have this incredible corpus of content, data intelligence, combined with our news. And with AI, we've been able to really deliver that and tailor that for specific use cases within these organizations. And I liken the use of AI here, what would have taken teams of people to bring this content together in a meaningful way. And so we've learned a lot about that from those clients. And we're also very -- that makes us also very optimistic about what we can do in terms of winning more corporate clients in those manners.

And so we also are finding new ways to deploy our data. And one great example is integrity check and the Dow Jones Risk business, maybe unpack that, Joel.

Yes, absolutely. And I mentioned in the presentation, but just double clicking on it. So we've been working on that for over 5 years now, precedes the hype cycle around generative AI, and that was really around due diligence reporting and doing that faster, bringing together data and delivering a report in a faster time frame, really accelerating and supercharging that diligence process. And so I mentioned top 5 Australian banks that are using that within their FIU and their financial intelligence unit, taking the report time from 5 days down to 15 minutes.

Another example, Almar mentioned the partnership we have with RipJar, on adverse media. And so that's where we can extract from Factiva and create these adverse media profiles and we've cut down alert times by 50%. So we've really embraced AI at Dow Jones.

Yes. I think your question goes to the heart of the matter really. This is why we're excited about this moment. So Joel's business, and some of you who followed it for a while may know this, but really emerged out of data that we had setting in Factiva and then they started building, building, building over time. And so what happened there in that microcosm of Dow Jones risk, lucrative, fast-growing business, is really happening underneath of all of Dow Jones where we've brought together all of our data and are making connections that we couldn't make before.

And so one, we're delivering that in customized form to those corporate customers that we mentioned in the presentation. There's a wide range of them, and then deploying it for Sarah's business for Joel's business, and across the board for everyone really sitting on stage. So that's one part of the AI equation.

The other one is cost and efficiency, allowing us to just do things much, much faster or just with much greater productivity. You see that is an example for the newsroom that's not inconsequential, but you're seeing that across the board. And where we see savings at the moment, we're actually deploying them into generating greater productivity. Anything to add...

Yes, when you think about investment in AI for Dow Jones. It's the investment we spent over the past 24 months on bringing all of our data and content together. So we could quickly deploy to new products or when we do these landmark deals like with OpenAI, we're able to bring that content over to those platforms, relatively seamlessly, and that was a lot of the investment we've seen in the space.

Bringing together the first question and the second question, really, so AI also was part of a bolt-on acquisition. AI was a company that Sarah referenced, which brought in forecasting technology and AI-based. Sarah, do you want to unpack a little bit of what they're doing?

Sure. A2i is an opportunity to power our fuel pricing with generative AI. And the team there is hugely optimistic, not just about the capabilities that are housed in that specific product, but the scalability of that capability within and across the whole of Dow Jones. There's just a lot more opportunity for us to leverage their skills, their experience much more widely.

So all those -- all that IP is shared across Dow Jones. Scott's business is not untouched by this. I mean you're doing data-driven pricing.

Yes, yes. We're leveraging AI to make sure, as I talked a little bit about that all our offers for acquisition and retention are customized based on your engagement levels. We're not simply raising prices indiscriminately. And I think that gives us real upside. Frankly, we just rolled that out across the entire funnel. And so we expect to see some upside. Also on the product side, we're just scratching the surface. I think from the newsroom, Emma and team's use of AI. We've got some developers working on the front end, using the AI technology. We're embedding into search. We're going to embed into more products, summarization of articles to speed up the consumption. So we're super bullish on where we can take it on the consumer side.

Good. And we could continue to talk about this, but I want to give other people a chance to ask a question. Sorry, do you want to...

Just make a plug for -- we also have the AI connector for Factiva and Yomiuri. So we have demos for you to see during the session after this. So -- and just -- I'm so excited about what we're doing with Yomiuri because we're leveraging AI to do the translation into other languages, which helps us differentiate product. And also, our engineering folks and product over here, [indiscernible] like what they've built, we can then scale it for other types of clients based on their different needs. So it's really smart.

Why don't we take -- I think that David all the way in the back.

David Karnovsky from JPMorgan. On the Wall Street Journal price increase, it's a bit larger than what you've executed in the past. So I'd be interested to know kind of what underpins your confidence there? How much of the sub base actually sees that. And just on the video format, new coverage verticals, maybe you could speak to the opportunity in terms of engagement in advertising.

Scott, why don't you start with that?

Sure. I'll take it. The sheer fact is we've got the most premium product and have it for business executives. And what underpins our confidence are a few things in raising the price a little bit further than we have in the past. One, churn rate has been going down. So it's at a recent low. Two, as you saw subs, ARPU and surf revenue were going up at the same time. So think we've hit that threshold. We've looked at some data. Again, this is list price too, right? So we're using technology both on acquisition step-up and retention to customize the pricing. But we don't think necessarily we've pushed the limits because we're not seeing the negative reaction to the price increases.

Jared, do you want to add.

Yes, I think Scott summarized it perfectly. So we have the tools and the science now also that gives us that extra level of confidence to go harder, and we are.

Yes. You see premium news, premium data has premium value. We've really seen a fundamental shift across all of our businesses, that fact is reflected. And so Scott's business is no exception. This is happening across the board. Thanks for your question.

We'll take our next question. [ Mario Gabelli ]?

Almar, you basically have and your team has done a fantastic job of better than I've seen in a lot of roadshows recently for IPOs. Your $1 billion, is that all organic?

Yes. It's -- you saw there the bolt-on M&A on that schematic and that is nonmaterial. So material M&A would be on top of this. So it would make us go faster.

The balance sheet of Dow Jones itself, you just have -- you upstreamed the cash flow up to the holdco.

Jared, do you want to overlay?

Yes. I mean Almar is spot on. There's no material M&A like an OPIS or CMA part of our $1 billion estimate. News Corp's balance sheet is in a great position right now with cash balances.

So the question for me today, parachuting in, I was hoping that we would see some other discussions about spin-off because with regards to the values and so on. So thank you. Well done.

All right. We'll take our next question, please. Any other questions? Okay. Well, I think we'll start reception sooner than we had expected. Guys, thank you all for coming today. And those on the webcast, thank you for joining. We look forward to talking to you soon. Thank you to all the insight and time from Almar and team and Lachlan and Robert. This is great to be able to do this. So thank you all.

Thank you.

Okay. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the next session at the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference. Firstly, some official disclosures for further information on the relevant disclosures to this presentation. Please refer to the Morgan Stanley website at www.morganstanley.com/disclosures.

My name is Andrew McLeod, Head of TMT Research at Morgan Stanley's Australian research team. I'm joined on stage by my colleague, Mr. Sean Diffley over there recently assuming the role of Head of Media and Entertainment research for U.S. It takes two of us to talk to Robert, assess all the bits and pieces of the News Corp business.

So Robert, thank you for joining us again at the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference. We've got a good sequence of years here, and it's always a fascinating discussion.

Actually, I was at the U.S. Business Council on Friday. And they've got new research showing that CEOs longevity is increasingly sure. So the fact that one goes to successive Morgan Stanley conferences are really a sign of strength and uniqueness.

I'd like to think the same about research analysts as well. timing set is valuable. So thank you for joining us. I thought, just to kick this off, Robert, a big picture question. You've been since the separation into Fox and News Corp, it's been a journey of refining the portfolio of businesses. You've been active on that front in the sort of 10 years plus that I followed that journey.

Just to start with, how do you feel about the portfolio of businesses you've got now? You must be pleased with the earnings momentum you've had in the last couple of quarters. How do you feel about the portfolio of businesses you've got now? And where are you spending the most time at the moment and looking for how you want more refinement out of that portfolio of businesses?

Yes. Obviously, it's a very different company now to that which was in existence at the time of the split. And it's been a conscious policy with [ Rit ] and Lachlan support to really, as you say, refine the assets, focus on digital growth, focus on growth engines, in particular, Dow Jones, Digital Real estate and publishing, HarperCollins, that is. And that has borne fruit as we had hoped. And we've got great businesses with great teams leading them.

So we've had 11 successive quarters of EBITDA growth year-on-year. We had on continuing operations, a record year last fiscal earnings up 14% to $1.4 billion. I said on the recent earnings call this year, particularly the second half of this year is looking auspicious and the third quarter feels particularly strong as we indicated. And so that trajectory is very positive into the future. And that refinement is not stopping and nor can it because clearly, the business environment is changing, the global macro environment is changing.

And unless a company is responsive to those changes and not only reactive but creative in dealing with those changes, then you'll not only putting yourself at risk but you're failing to identify emerging opportunities. And one of the benefits we have is the ability of our leaders in our businesses to compare and contrast experiences.

On one hand, we're a complicated company. On the other hand, we have that unique advantage that we can see what's happening with digital media in Australia relative to U.K. to here. And we can see what's happening in digital real estate across jurisdictions and with Dow Jones itself, an international company, we can very quickly identify emerging opportunity. And so we're a different company.

We've changed. We'll continue to change, and we're doing so in a way that's increasingly profitable. We had record profits last fiscal. We're frankly on track for record profits this fiscal. And we're very conscious of our obligation to the investors that have stayed with us on the journey. And over time, they have indeed been rewarded, but we feel that, that journey is far from over.

Great. So the key takeaway I took from there is that continued refinement of the portfolio and continued growth from existing portfolio of assets.

Particularly in the age of AI.

Yes. New opportunities. Sean?

Perfect segue. Thank you, Robert. So we wanted to talk about both the risks and opportunities that you see as it relates to AI. Obviously, the market is very concerned about businesses like risk and compliance and marketplaces broadly. At the same time, you have a number of partnerships and deals with big LOM companies. So maybe you could walk us through the puts and takes both as you see it, the risks and opportunities from AI as it relates to News Corp?

There is a bit of a misconception generally about the company. The opportunities far exceed the risks. But you have to look at what is AI, get back to basics, that almost existential question. And we're essentially an input company. And the great threat in the age of AI is going to be to what might call output companies. We're an input in the way that semiconductors are an input in the way that data centers are an input in the way that energy is an input. And so you look at breaking news, you look at unique real estate information

Listings yes, they're public, but it's what you do with those listings. You look at books. There are so many elements of the company that increasingly are being recognized as valuable as an input. As you said, we already have a significant deal with Open AI. We have a deal with Bloomberg and what you're going to see are two types of deals where people are acquiring our content to heighten the value of their own operations.

You'll have the horizontal LLMs. And now what people are obviously focused on are the verticals and the threat that verticals might pose to financial services or legal research or whatever. Now as I say, we have one very public horizontal deal. It's fair to say we're at an advanced stage with other negotiations, and you won't have too long stay tuned, but you won't have too long to wait. And what we are also finding is that more of these vertical specialists are coming to us because the data and the information and the news that they input has to be reliable. And it's hard to beat the Times of London or the Australian or Dow Jones, obviously, as an input.

And it might be agricultural information. We own the weekly Times in Australia, the best known agricultural masthead. And if you're interested in creating an agricultural vertical of some kind, you need reliable information. And there's another concept that people need to bear in mind, which is what you might call passive content and active content. So as a reader, it's passive content. I mean, you may be an engaged reader, but essentially, it's a passive relationship.

What these companies now recognize as they productize content, essentially, that's active content. And so the value of active content requires a premium in the purchase of it. So I think you actually see a dramatic change in the appreciation of the value of our assets over time, simply because more and more people will be coming to us in the financial sector, in energy, in rural services, in general news, in business generally related services because they've come up with an idea for a product. They want a reliable base of data, but also what do we have updates because that's the third thing that people misunderstand about data and news analysis in the age of AI. AI is essentially retrospective. It's based on preexisting patents. If you want to be contemporary, you have to have immediacy. And as we are a company that's minute after minute, hour after hour, generating fresh immediacy, we have something that these companies not only want but need.

I like the way you framed it. I haven't quite heard that expression before in terms of that news content being a critical input for a lot of the AI platforms. That's an interesting way to think about it.

And we're feeling it already in the sense that people are now coming to us. There are -- the other thing that we've obviously noticed is we have what you might call a Woo and a strategy. Well, you, we'd like you to be our partner. But if you're stealing our stuff, we are going to see you. And if you look at a lot of the -- and we track them, you have to track them.

If you look at a lot of the bots coming in scraping our stuff, they're already -- and they're using our material in new AI verticals. Well, we're coming for you. I mean we can see you doing it. We'll get around to you eventually. So there will be a discount for those who hand themselves in -- and there'll be a penalty for those that resist.

But it is interesting that the sentiment we see at the front end is already changing. And the fact that people either legitimately or illicitly are already using our content tells us that there's an emerging market that is not yet fully appreciated.

Maybe just a final follow-on point to Sean's question on AI. Because you struck one of the earlier agreements with your one partner, I'm sure you don't want to talk in detail about specific agreements. But because it was so early, I imagine it's one of those partnerships that evolves over time, right? You're probably doing different things than perhaps you first envisaged when you struck that agreement. Can you maybe provide a little bit of color as to how those relationships have grown versus your expectations over time?

Yes. That's a really good question because it was a relatively early deal and essentially it was agreed in principle between Sam and I. And then as you must, you allow the lawyers to work out the details. But that principle and agreement was kept to, and that's a sign of the honor of that company and Sam personally because the world had changed so much, you could have -- either of us could have gone back and wanted to renegotiate it. It didn't happen.

But at that time, we were both trying to visualize products that hadn't been created, which I think speaks to your point. And each of us was looking for opportunity, and each of us was concerned about potential threat that hadn't properly been perceived at that time. And so for us, for example, one of the key core asks was that we didn't want to create a cannibalization engine.

And that was understood across news, across books and across digital real estate. And at the same time, there's always this debate among news companies about, well, how quickly do you allow a partner to use your content? Does it undermine the core integrity of your own content set. And so I think we had a very good internal debate about not holding things back because in a way, you want OpenAI to have the opportunity to highlight your content, create links, which OpenAI does and therefore, have the confidence that your content is better than somebody else's content

So it has evolved, is evolving. We're planning to take advantage of the ad opportunities that OpenAI and so our teams are talking about -- and obviously, we have some experience in advertising, and we will be a proud launch partner there. But at the same time, we'll be providing them with feedback about that works, that doesn't work. Have you thought of this front? Are you making enough distinction between the answer and the ad? Are those lines too blurred? How do you -- what is the long-term impact of displaying modules in a certain way? We've obviously got centuries of experience of that, and we're happy to share that experience with OpenAI.

It sounds like a genuine partnership.

I'm seeing Sam tonight, if there are any disagreements, I'll let you know.

Thank you. If we need to issue an update, that would be helpful. And you mentioned earlier that you are in discussions or with other partners as well. So I guess what people should take away is that you've got almost like a cornerstone relationship with one party and OpenAI, but there's room for many others in other capacities, I imagine as well.

I think ultimately, what you might call the big horizontal ones, whether it be Anthropic or Perplexity or OpenAI, I mean we'll need to partner with us in one form or another. We're part of the Anthropic book settlement, which is $1.5 billion. We will -- at HarperCollins being the size that it is. And on behalf of our authors, we expect to get a sizable chunk of that. That may come late this fiscal. It will almost certainly come this calendar.

Great. I wanted to delve into one of your major investments, REA Group, which is something I follow closely in Australia as well. I'd love to get your perspective, Robert, as someone who knows that business intimately as well and have owned it through many years.

How do you feel that business is positioned? It's been one of the stocks we cover in Australia that's been a derating. The market has taken a view that there's a higher risk to medium and longer-term earnings. I think from my perspective, it's a very well positioned and unique business, but people are more interested in your view than my view. What do you think maybe people misunderstand or may not fully appreciate about the strength of that business? And how do you think it navigates this environment?

Well, you won't be surprised to hear that I agree with you that it is really a fundamental misunderstanding. And I'll talk more generally about digital real estate because it also involves realtor. And we have a great team at REA with Cam McIntyre, the new Chief Executive.

And I've been very impressed by the way that he's showing leadership, his approach to business culture and his competitive instinct. Cam wants to win, and I wouldn't bet against him. It comes back to that question around inputs, outputs. There's a perception that REA conceptually is an output company and that other people can create alternatives very quickly.

But when you look at both REA and realtor, what we've done is to try to create and successfully so, may I say, a holistic real estate experience. And so for example, at realtor, we're now the largest residential news site in the country. What does that mean? It means that you have much more engagement. You also had -- you're creating inputs. We could resell some of that content to somebody who we wouldn't perceive to be a threat, but wants to get into property services generally, not so much property news or property listings, but there are so many adjacencies that we may or may not be interested in.

So that's actually creating a store of value of itself. And REA is learning the lesson of Realtor in that case. Realtor has learned a lot from REA. And you see, for example, with the REALTOR metrics that the average unique user comes to Realtor 4.8x a month. At Zillow, it's around 3.5, 3.6 at Homes.com around 2.5. And the other thing you note, not only do they come more frequently as a unique user, they view more pages because there is more to view. And that comes down in part to that real estate use section.

So it's a much greater level of engagement. And then it's not just what is the threat of AI. It's how you use AI intelligently to enhance our services, both for somebody trying to buy or sell a house or for one of our agent customers, our realtor customers. And it's important that we be ultracompetitive in that regard because are there going to be more services offered?

Yes. But can we provide with our array of content and data and analytics and expertise, can we provide a much more holistic experience. That's what we're aiming to do, and that's what we will do.

And I guess just another angle on REA, which is CoStar's appearance in the Australian market, buying the #2 site down there domain. you've got experience with combat with CoStar and Homes.com in the U.S. market. How do you feel with the experience you've got now having seen in the U.S. Firstly, how has that played out versus expectations a year or 2 ago? And secondly, is that helpful for REA as well in Australia, do you think?

Well, look, I don't really want to comment too much on a competitor. You can see that CoStar has spent a lot of money on marketing here without much impact. And you look at how well Realtor is doing revenue was up 10% last quarter year-on-year in a real estate market that is nearing historic lows still in terms of turnover.

So existing home sales in 2021 were above $6 million. Existing home sales since then annually have been -- have hovered around $4 million. That's a 50% reduction. Now what's normal? Is 6 million normal? -- is $5.5 million normal? The upside for Realtor is going to be phenomenal as interest rates come down. And as people in this room being specialists well know, last week, the 30-year fixed, dipped below 6% for the first time in a long time.

And we were just talking to those who specialize in the mortgage market, they already see a refinance activity increase every time that rate dips. And what -- as long as potential buyers, potential sellers feel confident in the trajectory of that number, inevitably, you are going to see a lot more turnover, a lot more liquidity and a lot more revenue at real time.

So you feel confident about the business...

I do. And CoStar obviously has some internal contradictions that they will need to resolve with their Board, for example.

So we want to spend a couple of minutes on Dow Jones. And Mike reminds us that you have an Investor Day coming up. So maybe you want to provide us with a teaser on what we could expect there. I would argue some investors think that your Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal business is very undervalued versus some other news assets out there. We obviously just heard from Lachlan on the Fox Side, obviously, this blistering news cycle is helping some news properties. Just walk us through some of the things you're most excited about within Dow Jones at the moment.

You're exactly right about the news cycle and this will probably be quite a long new cycle and already we see it in terms of traffic over the last couple of days, a dramatic increase. People want to know what's going on. This is -- this particular conflict is very much in the wheelhouse of Dow Jones with Energy at Opus with global expertise with a vast array of talented correspondence around the world, which is what you need to make -- to make sense of what's going on.

And these are very brave journalists who are in harm's way. There's a lot of focus as there should be really on the professional information business at Dow Jones, Risk and compliance. So risk and compliance revenue last quarter was up 20% year-on-year. We've recently acquired 2 companies there called Oxford Analytica and Drafly. And the value of that acquisition was proven at the weekend when Dragonfly put out an alert to subscribers more than 2 hours before the confirmation of the death of the IFL Human that he was there.

And it tells you that they have deep intelligence links. They have deep insight and they are a welcome addition to the suite of Intel-related products. And will we make more acquisitions. We're not necessarily going to talk about that on Investor Day, but what we will be talking about and explaining is not only how much that company has changed over time. And for example, even digital advertising at Dow Jones was a record in Q2. It was up 12% year-on-year. Not only how much it's changed, but how much it will change and the potential of it.

And I think to your point, that potential is sometimes not understood or misunderstood. But it, in particular, is likely to benefit from the emerging AI input culture, what you might call the raising of content consciousness and the realization that there are only a few companies really that can provide the essential ingredients in the age of AI, and Dow Jones is certainly one of them.

And I think to your point, you mentioned how well risk and compliance has been doing double-digit growth. I think the fear is on a go-forward basis, things like cloud cowork and other emerging tools could diminish the moat that you might have there. Maybe just spend a moment talking about why you feel so confident about the growth trajectory from here.

Yes. Well, we have a -- it has crocodiles, it has piranha, it has stingrays in it. it's a powerful mode in the sense that these are unique content sense that they are refreshed immediately, instantaneously in a way that a non-news organization can't the minute something happens and you're getting some generic general reply to something through your AI engine, -- you're at a day, right?

And if you want to pay money to be out of date, feel free. If you want to pay money to be properly immediately briefed about important developments in the world, you are going to have to come to us. Now you do have lists, right? -- know your client-related list. That's -- you can find that list now. You've always been able to find that list. The crucial thing about those sorts of lists is the value add, the unique proprietary data that you've built around names, companies, China-related trade, Iran-related sanctions because you're going to get an incomplete picture. Now if you -- again, if you want to pay for an incomplete picture, fine. But risk and compliance is about minimizing risk and maximizing compliance. And to do that, you have to subscribe to DowJones.

Great. And maybe you could talk a moment about the Wall Street Journal, how you think about trade-off between price and subscribers?

Yes. Look, it's an interesting question. you look at ARPU at the Wall Street Journal, and it has come down slightly. And it's a good question. I ask why is that? And it's essentially because the team has done more enterprise deals. What does that mean?

That means you have a larger number of subscribers. The cost of acquisition is much lower. The turnover rate is much lower. And so over time, that will show up in your margins, even though in the shorter term, you see a slight decline in ARPU. And the other thing about journal subscribers, and it's true of Barron's and Investors Business Daily and MarketWatch is we've always talked about dynamic pricing. it's never really been full dynamic pricing. And the whole concept of dynamic pricing, not just for us, but I think for many businesses is going to change in the age of AI because we can really track now how much people read, what they read.

Are they business readers for whom the Journal is essential professional tool? Are they general readers who are interested in Jason Gay as much as they are in Japanese commodity prices. The former, very sticky. We have price elasticity. The latter, a little bit less elasticity to be honest. But that's the advantage we have over time. And the other area you can target is when somebody is not quite reading enough.

Now we may not be the right service for them. But often, it's because we've made it difficult for people to find things that they're interested in, whether it be discretionary or required reading. And what we will find over time is that different cohorts will be paying different prices, not that you're exploiting people who are reading more but you're actually reflecting the real value of that rating experience then. And they'll be fine with that.

And secondly, that you'll have a longer tale of readers who are focusing on different content sets, which you could argue in the hierarchy of content have a less premium value. So the ability of Dow Jones of actually all of our news media properties to take advantage of the sort of tools that we're working on now. And have we perfected them yet? Absolutely not. But in the age of AI, can you see how that individualization, not only of the reading experience but what you might call a subscriber mechanic, is that realizable? Absolutely.

And can you also talk about how your content interacts with social platforms like Facebook Meta and Twitter X, I know that's been an area of focus for you in the past. How do you think about how that evolves over time?

Yes. Look, it's different from company to company. I think we have a good relationship with Meta. Mark and I converse on a pretty regular basis across WhatsApp, obviously, most of the time. And Twitter, I think Elon's view of content and who is who what is, I think, evolving over time. He knows that he needs reliable news, that his users need reliable news.

But I think more generally, platform aside, there will be a realization about this dichotomy of inputs and outputs. And if you look closely at the sorts of sectors that have been most bruised without understanding that it's what you might call an output sector, that's what people are focused on, right? And then -- but if you, as an output company, want to improve the quality of that output, what do you need in terms of inputs to ensure the integrity, the reliability, the uniqueness of that output experience. And that relates obviously to the LLMs, but to a certain extent, it also relates to the social media platforms.

Robert, can I ask a question on DAZN? I think as part of your simplification process, I think the market thought that was a good outcome, the exit from Foxtel at an attractive price. In return, you've got some equity in DAZN, which is I feel an asset that doesn't necessarily get discussed much. But maybe you can share -- probably it's because we don't as an investment community know a lot about DAZN. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you find interesting about that collection of assets and what your medium- to long-term strategy may be for that investment.

Yes. Well, look, we're happy to partner with DAZN. I was with Len Blavatnik on Saturday, teaching him the rules of Rugby League in Las Vegas. course.

How did that conversation go?

He claims to understand. But I'm not sure I understand the problem. But the -- that is a very good relation. I think Len is clearly proud of the Foxtel team. Our part of papers in Australia are still great partners with DAZN and with Foxtel. We received $380 million in cash back from the sale. We have 6.5% of DAZN. And clearly, we will help DAZN build up its profile. And I think you're right. In this country, it's not particularly well known.

That is -- I can assure you that's something that Len and his team are very focused on. But what we saw in them is the ability to make a good company, Foxtel, a great company and that they better than anyone on a global level, have been able to understand the value of sports rights, which is a complicated art and maximize the monetization of those sports rights while using a common tech platform, common software.

And so it has truly created a company that when a sports right comes up for auction here or in Europe or in Asia or in Africa for that matter, they have a real ability very quickly to judge what that's worth, what it will cost them, not only to buy the right but to exploit the right and the potential in monetization. And so I think it's up to the design Board to decide what they want to do, obviously. But I think they're poised with poise.

So in the last few minutes here, we want to hit on a couple of quick topics. So we didn't talk about HarperCollins, your books business. We also want to talk about capital allocation. So maybe first on Harper, the business is becoming more and more digital. You also have a partnership with Spotify that's driving kind of audiobooks adoption. How has that tracked relative to your expectations?

Yes. Look, the Spotify partnership is a great one. And the good thing about Spotify is that -- they're constantly innovating in audio books that you're not seeing now the 25%, 30% surge in audio book revenues year-on-year that you did a couple of years ago, but that's not unusual. What you are seeing at Spotify is constant innovation and experimentation with types of subscription offerings, enhancing the audio experience and who's reading the books, what more can you add to an audio book so that it becomes of itself a real entertainment experience and we'll be working with them on that.

You see with the heated rivalry books, the Rachel Read, a Game changer is the series, but the Heated Rivalry is the TV series. The ability still of our IP to generate huge social interest and particularly in that Heated Rivalry, but to [ guide ] ice hockey players, it's had not only a literary impact, but a social impact and the commercial impact. And so that of itself is a lesson to us about the value of our IP and how to make the most of it. It's interesting also that e-books have come back to a certain extent after having tailed off.

And look, people are just making up their mind still in the contemporary world, how they're going to consume content. What is best for them? How many paperbacks do they want piling up on the bedside table versus the convenience of the e-book. And e-books themselves are becoming more of an event. So this is -- none of these things is really a frozen frame of evolution. It's continual evolution of the experience.

Great. And we wanted to close on the last minute on capital allocation. You've obviously stepped up the pace of your buyback. I think that's clear signaling that you think your shares are undervalued. How do you think about capital allocation going forward and strategic permutations in the industry broadly?

Yes, we added another $1 billion to the buyback. The rate of buyback is last quarter, 4x higher than a year ago. We agree with you about the share price that it is somewhat undervalued and the company underappreciated. But I think it's up to us to explain in the age of AI, what the company will become and what is the actual residual revenue value there, what is our resource.

Then we look at our -- when we -- you can easily overpay for assets, right? That is the easiest thing in the world. We've been pretty careful with OPUS with CMA with Dragonfly with Oxford Analytica at Dow Jones and the impact there has been profound. So we have -- Dow Jones Energy is growing double digit virtually every quarter, year-on-year, year after year, and we certainly didn't overpay for those assets at HarperCollins -- we've just acquired some of the Munger, Rights of Crunchyroll. We can see there with AI and our own existing Manga business in Japan, where we're quite large through the Harlequin brand, our ability to turn that into multimedia experiences is it's just much cheaper to do it now with AI, but you have to have the initial IP, which we do.

So we're quite excited about the Munger market. And then whether it be Zenlist at Realtor, which enhances the relationship between agents and buyers and sellers or whether it be the mortgage business acquisitions at REA, we look for intelligent adjacencies that are intelligently priced. But overall, what we're focused on is ensuring that both short and longer term that we're looking out for our investors because we're very conscious of our role as custodians of their money.

And do you want to give a quick plug for the California post given that we're in San Francisco?

Yes. Well, if you haven't been reading the California post, you're out of touch, you're out of date. So download the app. It's -- I mean the app downloads are twice what we thought they would be. We'll be able to release the metrics in the next earnings call. But look, the California post captures the spirit of California in a new sense, it was a desert, but we're now the desert flower. So please download the app.

Perfect place then. Thank you so much, Robert.

Thank you.

Welcome to News Corp's Second Quarter Fiscal 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. Media will be allowed on a listen-only basis. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Michael Florin, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to News Corp's Fiscal Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. We issued our earnings press release about 30 minutes ago, and it's now posted on our website at newscorp.com. On the call today are Robert Thomson, Chief Executive; and Lavanya Chandrashekar, Chief Financial Officer. We'll open with some prepared remarks, and then we'll be happy to take questions from the investment community.

This call may include certain forward-looking information with respect to News Corp's business and strategy. Actual results could differ materially from what is said. News Corp's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings identify risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ and contain cautionary statements regarding forward-looking information.

Additionally, this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measurements such as total segment EBITDA, adjusted segment EBITDA and adjusted EPS. The definitions and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations of such measures can be found in the earnings releases for the applicable periods posted on our website.

With that, I'll pass over to Robert Thomson for some opening comments.

Thank you, Mike. We are delighted to report excellent second quarter results with both revenue and profitability growth accelerating from the prior quarter, and we see favorable signs for the second half of our fiscal year.

Revenues increased 6% to $2.4 billion for the quarter, and total segment EBITDA of $521 million expanded 9% despite a onetime inventory-related charge at HarperCollins. Net income from continuing operations was $242 million, a 21% decrease from the prior year, but that was due to the absence of a rather favorable $87 million gain on REA Group sale of PropertyGuru last year. Our adjusted EPS for the quarter was $0.40 compared to $0.33 in the prior quarter, and our profitability margin rose from 21.4% to 22.1%.

These results were driven by sustained growth at Dow Jones and Digital Real Estate Services, which both reported double-digit profit growth and both have started the calendar year strongly. Given the current trajectory of our core drivers, we believe prospects for the third quarter are auspicious. The results are indicative of our ongoing transformation, both digitally and commercially, as we continue to increase recurring revenues and reduce our dependence on advertising, which has a certain cyclicality.

Our consistently strong cash position has allowed us to enhance our buyback program, which has been running at 4x the prior year pace, whilst preserving our financial flexibility and allowing us to focus on maximizing shareholder value. We also note that Moody's, which only recently upgraded our rating, has put our outlook on positive, reflecting the sturdiness of our balance sheet and our strong operating performance.

Speaking of the future, it is clear that expectations of AI's impact are evolving and that the more perceptive players have come to realize that provenance is paramount and that our proprietary content is valuable. Let us be clear. Anthropic has already agreed to pay $1.5 billion for using pirated books. We and our authors at HarperCollins naturally expect to receive our fair share of that payout starting later this calendar year.

What is the point of acquiring cutting-edge semiconductors if they are being deployed to repurpose gormless, factless, feckless content sets? What is the point of spending billions on energy generation when that energy is powering the prosaic, not the profound? We do believe an increasing number of insightful AI creators understand this content contradiction and will indeed pay a premium for our premium content. AI companies must provide meaningful services with reliable, relevant contemporary information, not biased bilge or retrospective rubbish. Ignoring the obvious need to fund fecundity will mean that AI stands for artificial intransigence.

Turning to our segments. Dow Jones delivered robust results for the quarter with revenue rising 8% and segment EBITDA increasing 10% compared to the prior year. It was a record quarter for the business on multiple fronts, including a 29.5% profit margin, an improvement of almost 50 basis points versus the prior year. It also marked the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit EBITDA growth for the segment. Digital advertising reached a record level of $87 million for the quarter, rising 12%, supported by the strength of demand, in particular from the financial services sector.

The Dow Jones Professional Information business continued to provide crucial intelligence for customers this quarter, with revenues increasing 12% overall, thanks to a 20% surge at Risk and Compliance. All of our B2B verticals made positive contributions with Dow Jones Energy posting double-digit growth and Factiva and Newswires both growing modestly during the period. Intelligence, insight, meaningful metrics and astute analysis remain nonnegotiables for global corporations and their executives, especially against a backdrop replete with uncertainty and volatility.

On the consumer side, digital volumes increased 12% to over 6 million subscriptions, led by our continued push into enterprise partnerships, embedding our content in corporate work streams, while the Dow Jones team is intensely focused on increasing yield and conscious of the responsibility to deliver reliable news at a moment when much journalism is mere activism. We recently announced a partnership with Polymarket that will selectively bring data to users across the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch and Investor's Business Daily. Fresh investment in the Wall Street Journal's influential opinion pages saw the launch of Free Expression, an expansion of the vertical that introduced fresh writers to the editorial board's august audience.

We are establishing new AI partnerships, which we expect to generate additional revenues, including an expanded deal with Bloomberg for AI rights for our peerless Dow Jones content. We also bolstered Factiva's Gen AI capabilities with expanded licensing rights for more than 8,000 premium news and business information sources. To highlight the vast potential of Dow Jones, we will be holding an investor briefing next month in New York. I have no doubt that you will find the Dow Jones proposition to be commercially compelling in the age of AI.

In Digital Real Estate Services, we have seen signs of strong growth in our U.S. business, even though the housing market remains far from normal. Despite the lingering challenges, realtor.com's revenues grew by 10% in the quarter, building upon its performance in the first quarter, led by premium products and notable improvement in lead volume, which posted double-digit gains. The quarter also benefited from gains in audience share and continued expansion across realtor.com's adjacencies. We firmly established our position as the leading publisher of residential real estate news and are striving to expand unique features that support sellers, buyers and realtors.

Realtor.com's share of visits among the real estate portals continued to grow in the second quarter based on Comscore, while unique visits per user for the same period continued to surpass the industry at 4.8x, almost double that of homes.com and far superior to Zillow.

In Australia, revenue growth at REA of 7% benefited from continued double-digit yield growth and an improvement in listing volumes in Sydney and Melbourne, coupled with strong growth in financial services. Competition is bringing out the best in REA, which posted record audience numbers in November with unique users of over 13 million, an increase of 9% versus prior year. The team in Australia is savvily adopting AI applications that enhance the service for our customers and prove that AI is certainly more friend than foe. No one wants housing hallucinations.

HarperCollins revenues grew a healthy 6%, a significant recovery after a sluggish first quarter, and we have mounting optimism for the second half of the year. We benefited from a strong front list in general books as well as particularly strong growth in our faith segment as readers searched for meaning amidst the contemporary chaos. The core creative value of our books was highlighted by the continuing success of our Wicked collection and the stunning sales of heated rivalry, which inspired the Steamy streaming series. Ice hockey stereotypes are melting away as players pursue each other and a puck.

Other notable releases included Mitch Albam's Twice, Senator John Kennedy's How to Test Negative for Stupid, and Jasmine Mas' Bonds of Hercules. And the third quarter is off to a strong start with Peter Schweizer's The Invisible Coup, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's memoir, Where We Keep the Light. In the months ahead, we anticipate a Bridgerton boost with the recent premiere of Season 4 on Netflix and are honored to publish the first book by Pope Leo XIV, Peace Be With You. As the Pope has sagely observed, we cannot let the algorithms write our stories, and we remain passionately committed to protecting the IP of our authors in the age of AI.

Across the News Media segment, revenues for the quarter were flat despite a challenging print advertising market and EBITDA fell 5% compared to the prior year. In the U.K., -- The Times and The Sunday Times continued to build on Q1 performance with digital subscribers rising 7% to total 659,000. While advertising trends were mixed overall, The Times achieved a record second quarter with digital advertising revenue up mid-teens.

News Corp Australia reached nearly 1.2 million total subscribers, surpassing the prior year by 4%, and there was an improvement in ad trends compared to the first quarter and a modest increase in circulation revenue. Last week, we celebrated the launch of the California Post, which is bringing editorial enlightenment to the West Coast and is built on the renewed profitability of the New York Post. The early audience numbers are impressive, and we will update you on our progress in the next earnings call. The launch itself highlighted the potency of and comparative advantage of our network effect as the WSJ, Realtor and Bible Gateway, our HarperCollins faith site, all contributed to generating traffic for the new website and app.

In conclusion, we are pleased with the strength displayed across the business throughout the second quarter and the signs so far are patently positive for the second half of the year. We have a robust balance sheet, particularly strong free cash flow and have continued to execute on our expanded buyback program with a keen focus on maximizing shareholder value. As AI angst afflicts some sectors, we believe the company is well positioned to profit over the coming quarters and years. We are poised with poise. We remain grateful for the thoughtful leadership of our Chair, Lachlan Murdoch, the enduring support of our Board and the sterling efforts of our teams around the world.

And now for deeper insight, I cede to our Chief Financial Officer, Lavanya Chandrashekar.

Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon, everyone. Our second quarter results demonstrate the continued strength and resilience of our portfolio and the benefits of disciplined strategic diversification. Despite the continued uneven economic backdrop, we posted accelerated top and bottom line growth led by our core pillars. Now that I have been in this role for over a year, I will start off by saying that I'm even more confident in News Corp's growth opportunities and our ability to maximize shareholder value.

The second quarter marks our 11th consecutive quarter of year-over-year total segment EBITDA growth on a continuing operations basis. These consistent results are the outcome of strong operational discipline and reflect the repositioning of our portfolio. Our focus on operational efficiency has successfully driven margin expansion and increased free cash flow, and I believe there is significant opportunity for this to continue. We remain disciplined in our focus on the 3 core growth pillars: Dow Jones, Digital Real Estate and Book Publishing, which collectively accounted for 95% of our profitability in the second quarter.

News Corp has evolved well beyond the scope of a traditional media company. We are now a digital-first company with a strong and growing recurring revenue base, complemented by high-margin content licensing revenues. Disciplined investment and value-accretive M&A have increased our exposure to the large and fast-growing data and information services market. We believe the B2B business of Dow Jones has a significant runway for growth, and it is highly profitable. And as Robert mentioned, we are very excited to be able to showcase Dow Jones on March 16 in New York at the NASDAQ market site.

We continue to make strong progress in returning value to our shareholders and have accelerated our share buyback program. In the second quarter, we repurchased $172 million in shares, up $132 million from the previous year period. We believe our stock remains materially undervalued relative to its net asset value. And as a reminder, share repurchases in fiscal 2026 are expected to benefit from the approximately $380 million repayment of Foxtel shareholder loans.

Turning to the results. News Corp reported fiscal second quarter revenue of almost $2.4 billion, up 6% from the prior year and total segment EBITDA of $521 million, up 9% year-over-year. Margins improved from the prior year by 70 basis points to 22.1% Second quarter adjusted revenue rose 3%, while adjusted total segment EBITDA increased 7% versus the prior year. For the quarter, we reported earnings from continuing operations per share of $0.34 compared to $0.40 in the prior year as last year included a gain related to REA sale of PropertyGuru. Adjusted earnings from continuing operations per share were $0.40 in the quarter compared to $0.33 in the prior year.

Moving to the individual segments, starting with Dow Jones. Dow Jones delivered another very strong quarter with reported revenues of $648 million, increasing 8% versus the prior year period and the highest quarterly revenue growth in nearly 3 years. Digital revenues accounted for 82% of Dow Jones segment revenues this quarter, improving by 1 percentage point from last year. Professional Information Business revenues, which reflect our B2B products and services, rose 12% year-over-year, a rate 200 basis points faster than quarter 1. Within that, Risk and Compliance revenues grew 20% to $96 million, driven by new customers, new products and higher yields.

We saw continued momentum from risk feeds and API solutions and increased penetration of advanced screening and monitoring products. We also benefited from the integration of Dragonfly and Oxford Analytica as we extend our breadth of products to include geopolitical monitoring and surveillance. At Dow Jones Energy, revenue grew 10% to $75 million with customer retention remaining very strong at approximately 90% in addition to improving yields. Results include a modest benefit from the recent acquisition of Eco-Movement. Factiva again posted revenue improvement, benefiting from new customer acquisition with a focus on Gen AI.

Within the Dow Jones consumer business, circulation revenues increased 3% versus the prior year with digital circulation revenues rising 7%. As I mentioned last quarter, we raised the full price rate for the Wall Street Journal digital subscription for new customers and continue to increase prices for a portion of tenured customers.

We are also implementing changes to our promotional offerings, including shorter duration offers and higher introductory pricing, which we expect will have a positive impact on ARPU. I should reiterate that overall digital ARPU has been impacted by the expansion of enterprise and corporate partnerships. Those deals extend our B2B footprint and are margin accretive with low subscriber acquisition costs and very high retention rates. Direct subscription ARPU, which excludes the impact from enterprise, has been improving at a healthy rate.

Digital circulation revenues accounted for 76% of circulation revenues for the quarter, improving from 73% in the prior year. Digital-only subscription improved 12% year-over-year and by 133,000 sequentially, driven by enterprise customers. Advertising revenue rose 10% to $133 million, a very strong improvement from quarter 1, including record digital performance of $87 million, up 12%, led by financial services. Print advertising revenue rose 7%, also benefiting from higher financial services spend. Digital represented 65% of advertising revenues, up 1 point from the prior year.

Dow Jones segment EBITDA for the quarter grew a robust 10% to $191 million with margins increasing to a record high of almost 30%, an increase of nearly 50 basis points year-over-year despite a higher rate of cost growth as we had flagged on last quarter's earnings call.

Moving on to Digital Real Estate. Digital Real Estate had another solid quarter despite lower national listing volumes in Australia due to a tough prior year comparison and still uncertain macro conditions. Segment revenues of $511 million rose 8% versus the prior year, an improvement to the growth rate in the prior quarter and were up 7% on an adjusted basis. Segment EBITDA was $206 million, up 11% and up 12% on an adjusted basis. REA revenues grew 7% year-over-year to $368 million. Growth was driven by a combination of residential yield increases, favorable customer contract upgrades and geographical mix.

National new buy listings in the quarter declined 3% overall, but improved in Sydney, up 7%; and Melbourne, up 4%. Results also benefited from strong growth in financial services, driven by mid-teens growth in settlements. Overall, Australian revenues improved by a strong 10%. A partial offset was at REA India with revenues declining mainly due to the sale of PropTiger and the closure of the Housing Edge business with overall performance broadly consistent with REA's outlook as we communicated last quarter. Please refer to REA's earnings release and their conference call for more details.

Realtor.com continued to make strong progress this quarter with revenues rising 10% to $143 million and improved results contributing to segment EBITDA growth. We are also accelerating the pace of innovation, including the announcement of Realtor.com Plus last month. The new platform, which leverages our partnership with the National Association of Realtors and the MLSs, enhances the home search experience by driving agent-client collaboration, transparency and insights.

This quarter, revenue growth was driven by strength in core real estate products, with leads improving by 13%, improving yields and higher annual contract values given the improved penetration of RealPro Select. Additionally, our diversification continued to gain traction with growth adjacencies, new homes, rentals and sellers, accounting for 21% of revenues in the quarter, improving 100 basis points versus the prior year. Average monthly unique users for the quarter also improved, rising 1% to 62 million. Comscore data for the second quarter highlighted that Realtor once again had the highest engagement among real estate portals at almost 5 visits per unique user.

Realtor continued to gain audience share with visits to its properties reaching 29% of total visits to all real estate portals in quarter 2, more than triple that of homes.com and double that of Redfin, while narrowing the gap versus Zillow. These strong outcomes are a result of the improvements in SEO as well as continued product enhancements and a successful brand campaign.

At Book Publishing, business conditions improved markedly this quarter with revenues growing a robust 6% to $633 million despite lapping a tough comparator of 8% growth in the prior year. Segment EBITDA of $99 million declined 2% versus the prior year, with margins of 15.6%, down 140 basis points. However, the results this quarter included a $16 million onetime write-off primarily related to inventory at HarperCollins International operations, which impacted margins by 260 basis points.

Results were driven by recent acquisitions, strong sales at Christian Publishing as well as an improvement in general books due to higher frontlist sales. We also benefited from timing of ordering. Digital revenues at HarperCollins grew 2%, led by higher e-book sales, up 7%. In total, digital sales represented 20% of consumer revenues compared to 21% in the prior year. This quarter, the backlist contributed 59% of consumer revenues, down from 61% in the prior year, driven by a strong frontlist.

News Media revenues were flat at $570 million, benefiting from higher cover and subscription prices in the U.K. and Australia, offset by weak print advertising trends. Segment EBITDA declined 5% to $70 million, driven by challenging advertising conditions and some investment related to the launch of the California Post in January.

Turning to the outlook, some of the themes across each of our segments. At Dow Jones, overall trends remain healthy, and we expect continued strong revenue growth in B2B. As a reminder, last year's digital circulation revenue growth included approximately 300 basis points related to a nonrecurring benefit. At Digital Real Estate, Australian residential new buy listings for January were down 8%. Please refer to REA for more detailed outlook commentary. At Realtor, we hope to see improving market conditions, leading to strong lead volumes, which should translate to continued healthy revenue growth supported by ongoing reinvestment.

At Book Publishing, as Robert noted, trends remain encouraging, and we expect to benefit from HarperCollins backlist and more favorable year-on-year comparisons. At News Media, we expect to incur modest investments related to the launch of the California Post. While difficult advertising trends are likely to continue, we remain focused on driving cost efficiencies.

With that, let me hand it over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from David Karnovsky with JPMorgan.

Robert, I think we've seen this week the market react to AI or the perception of AI and what that is going to mean for companies that operate in the business services or data spaces. And it would be great to kind of get your expanded thoughts on this reaction and what you view as reasonable to worry about versus maybe what the market is potentially overweighing or maybe missing here.

David, a very salient question. There is a fundamental misconception about the impact of AI on News Corporation. AI is retrospective and synthesizes generic content sometimes imperfectly, but it is past tense, often past imperfect. We have contemporary, creative, proprietary content, which is only accessed if AI companies pay us, our woo or sue strategy. And we've been consciously building a moat, and it is a moat with saltwater crocodiles, with sharks and even more dangerous species, lawyers. More importantly, the moat separates commodity content from our premium prescient IP.

Now let's be clear, Anthropic is already set to pay out $1.5 billion for inappropriate use of pirated books, and we and our authors will get a large chunk of that money later this year. And we have a partnership with OpenAI, whose expertise will enhance our editorial business and real estate products, while our editorial will enhance OpenAI products. Now we're not complacent. We're certainly not naive or digital dilettantes, but we are absolutely confident about our ability to create compelling premium content and experiences in an age in which many AI companies will be recycling rubbish.

I mean it is worth remembering that AI models need data. Otherwise, they are just lines of inert code. They need real-time real-world data, and that's what we produce every single minute of every single day. Without compelling content, these AI operators are not omnipotent, they are not unique, they are eunuchs.

Our next question will come from Entcho Raykovski with Evans & Partners.

My question is a follow-up to David's question, actually. I mean, given this is such a topical issue in the market at the moment, I'm just curious whether you're comfortable around the investment into Dow Jones, which is required, including to deal with any AI threat. I think you mentioned last quarter that some of the CapEx is linked to continued investment in technology. I suppose are you able to quantify this? And again, just curious whether the launch of tools like Claude Legal, for example, given it's worried the markets, whether you see it as having a negative impact on your operations?

Entcho, to the last point, absolutely not. We are fully confident in the Dow Jones Professional Information business for the reasons that I outlined in the previous answer. And we're also very confident about the trajectory this quarter and next quarter. And we don't normally give forward guidance, but that's as much forward guidance you're going to get, and it's particularly positive at this stage. And it's positive because we do have unique information. And it's a high-margin business, but it's not a retrospective content set. It's a contemporary content set.

And there's a disconnect between the reality of the threat of AI and the reality of the needs of AI, and we are a company that fulfills the needs and face a very limited threat. We're not a collection of legal case studies. We're a collection of contemporary content, much of it journalistic. And in the book business, we are a collection of unique works written by authors that cannot in any way be used without our permission and their permission, and we certainly look forward to making the most of that. And the fact is we already have AI deals and negotiations are advanced for other AI deals.

Yes. And Entcho, maybe I can take your question on CapEx. Looking forward to seeing you next week in person. Yes, we do expect total CapEx to be up moderately this year, and that was the case in the first half as well. Having said that, Dow Jones CapEx specifically within that is going to be modestly down this year. Overall, we will generate very strong free cash flow growth for the year despite the slightly higher increased investment in CapEx. And then I'd just conclude by saying, we do invite you to join us for the Dow Jones Investor Day to really see the strength and opportunity of this business.

Our next question will come from the line of David Joyce with Seaport Research.

Following on the capital expenditure question, where else would you be allocating to drive returns? How would you prioritize? Are there things that you can do to accelerate your strategies given the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, in case that helps with overall free cash flow allocation plans?

David, I think we've made very clear that we see 3 core drivers of the business, and that is Dow Jones, Digital Real Estate and HarperCollins. And those businesses are traveling very well at the moment, and we will allocate cash accordingly.

Our next question will come from David Fabris with Macquarie.

Look, I mean, kind of in the same vein as the prior question a little bit. But with the broad valuation deratings across your operating segments and your balance sheet, your cash generation, can you just remind us of your M&A strategy and maybe talk to areas of interest or what could be complementary to News Corp? Or would the preference right now to be kind of just to monitor AI developments and execute the buyback?

David, look, we have the option of optionality. We are constantly looking for investments externally that makes sense for the business, but not at unreasonable prices. And you can see from our recent acquisitions, that's been precisely the case. We obviously invest organically where we see growth opportunities within the company, and then there's the buyback. And I'll pass to Lavanya for a little articulation of that.

Yes. Thank you, David, for that question. On the buybacks, we definitely evaluate this on a continuing basis, and we are focused on maximizing and driving shareholder value. As you would have seen from our announcement, we bought back $172 million worth of shares in the second quarter. At the current stock price, we expect the rate of purchases will be higher in the second half and the total dollars repurchased will be meaningfully more in the second half than in the first half.

Our next question will come from Craig Huber with Huber Research.

Robert, just a two-part question for you. I always like to ask you, has anything changed in your mind about investors' thoughts and wishes that you guys would help simplify your company here? It seems like you're doing a lot better fundamentally across the businesses here, but anything changed in your mind to help simplify the company any further here?

And my added question I wanted to ask you was on Homes.com out there in the marketplace versus Realtor.com, you're doing quite well here recently with the revenue growth at Realtor.com, roughly 10% type growth on the revenues there. Is Homes.com in the marketplace concerning you all given all the amount of money that they're putting in place to run that operation there? Is it having any negative effect on you? Are you worried about it? Are you doing anything significant to change your operation to combat that?

Craig, look, we're consciously constantly examining our structure. And our focus is on generating value, long-term value for our shareholders. We have a robust balance sheet, strong free cash flow, positive growth trajectory. And as I said earlier, the option of optionality. As for Homes.com, look, we're absolutely delighted with the progress at Realtor, which is going from strength to strength. Look, obviously, Homes.com is complicated. It's at least a fixer-upper. And while some people suggest that it's more of a knockdown, I think that comparison is a little kind -- unkind, shall I say. For us, the focus is absolutely on Realtor, whose revival is real and whose trajectory is particularly positive.

If I could just add to that, maybe some details on that. As Robert said in his remarks, I mean, we are really pleased with the engagement that we have seen on Realtor.com. We have the highest engagement across all of the portals with 5 visits per unique user. We have gained audience share now up to 29%. And when you look at our visits, we have 3x the number of visits as Homes.com, 2x the number of visits as Redfin. And we've had the fastest revenue growth here in the last couple of quarters that we've seen in the last 4 years. And that's without the property market being meaningfully better. And we do know that, that property market will recover. And so there's a very long successful runway here for Realtor.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Ailsa Lei with UBS.

My question is on [ circulation ] revenue at Dow Jones. You've called out consumers are now rolling off promotional pricing, which will be supportive of ARPU. Can you share any color on how you're thinking about pricing growth going forward and maybe the balance between acquiring new subs versus ARPU?

Look, thank you for the question. The Dow Jones team has successfully secured a significant increase in enterprise customers, where we are incorporating WSJ content into the work streams of companies. Now those tend to be large deals with lower churn and significantly lower marketing costs. But obviously, in the shorter term, they will have a modest impact on ARPU. But the innovative subscription team at Dow Jones believes that we have genuine elasticity on price given our unique editorial experience.

Our ability to track potentially vulnerable subscribers is improving each passing month, as is our ability to identify high-usage subscribers who can be targeted with dynamic pricing that reflects the importance of their reading relationship with the journal. Now obviously, our focus is on recurring revenues, but it should also be noted that digital advertising revenue rose 12% during the quarter compared to a year earlier and to a record high. So not only does Dow Jones have a growing audience, it has a very desirable digital demographic.

And maybe add to that, Ailsa, we did take pricing on digital new customers and on certain tenured customers here in the recent past. We're also working on optimizing a number of our promotions. And I do want to point out that excluding our enterprise customers, our ARPU has been improving at a healthy rate.

At this time, we have no further questions. I'll hand the call to Michael Florin for closing remarks.

Well, great. Thank you all for participating today. Have a wonderful day, and we'll talk to you soon. Take care.

Welcome to News Corp's First Quarter Fiscal 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. Media will be allowed on a listen-only basis.

At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Michael Florin, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to News Corp's Fiscal First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. We issued our earnings press release about 30 minutes ago and it's now posted on our website at newscorp.com. On the call today are Robert Thomson, Chief Executive; and Lavanya Chandrashekar, Chief Financial Officer. We'll open with some prepared remarks, and we'll be happy to take questions from the investment community.

This call may include certain forward-looking information with respect to News Corp's business and strategy. Actual results could differ materially from what is said. News Corp's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings identify risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ and contain cautionary statements regarding forward-looking information. Additionally, this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measurements such as total segment EBITDA, adjusted segment EBITDA and adjusted EPS. The definitions and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations of such measures can be found in the earnings release for the applicable periods posted on our website.

With that, I'll pass over to Robert Thomson for some opening comments.

Thank you, Mike. Following a sterling performance in fiscal 2025, one that marked a record year for profitability on a continuing operations basis, News Corp continued to increase both revenue and profitability in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, led by strength at Dow Jones and Digital Real Estate Services and bolstered by digital and AI related revenues. The positive signs came despite an uncharacteristically weak performance in Book Publishing, which has shown clear signs of improvement in recent weeks. The Book Publishing results this quarter included a write-off related to the expected closure of a book distributor. But overall, our revenue for the period rose 2% versus the prior year to $2.14 billion, and total segment EBITDA increased by 5% to $340 million.

Net income from continuing operations was $150 million, up from $149 million last year, and our adjusted EPS rose from $0.20 to $0.22 in the quarter. Clearly, our current cash position is robust, and we expect to generate strong free cash flow this fiscal year and have thus materially increased the rate of our share buybacks. We believe our shares are undervalued, given the sum of our valuable parts and our profit trajectory. So we will continue to focus on ways and means to maximize shareholder value.

One other notable misconception is the value of IP in the age of AI. Information and sophisticated data are the essence of AI, and without these essential ingredients, AI is but empty, vacuous, ignorant infrastructure. Electricity without alacrity. Buildings without billings. Chips without chops. Thankfully, we are seeing a positive trend with both enlightened companies and wise courts deciding that creativity and content must not be stolen but purchased. Courtship and courts are both crucial components of our strategy. And I must salute Sam Altman and his team at OpenAI for being principled pioneers in understanding the inherent intrinsic value of actual intelligence.

As regards other AI players, our wooing and suing continues apace, but thankfully the wooing has gained traction, and we expect to announce further partnerships in the near future. We anticipate these deals will have a positive impact on our results. The courts are also increasingly enlightened, and we and our authors certainly expect to benefit from the $1.5 billion award against Anthropic for its use of pirated books. It is fair to say this will not be the last case of its kind given the proliferation of piracy and increased scrutiny of shameless scraping by these epigonic enterprises.

We would obviously prefer to partner and to limit lawyers' fees but let me be absolutely clear to every large language model, however large, however small, if you have received stolen goods, we intend to pursue you relentlessly. You may not have done the actual stealing, but receiving stolen property is an offense in legal jurisdictions around the world. Content crime does not and will not pay.

As for our segments during the quarter, Dow Jones EBITDA rose 10% compared to a year earlier, following a solid 6% increase in revenue. Once again, we saw particularly strong revenue growth at Risk & Compliance where revenues surged 16% while Dow Jones Energy revenues were 7% higher. We expanded our offerings in the rapidly growing professional information business by acquiring Eco-Movement, which provides unique datasets that are sold to map providers and car manufacturers seeking to provide enhanced service for their customers.

At the consumer business, total average subscriptions expanded 8% to 6.4 million, including an 11% surge in digital-only subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal. Digital circulation revenues rose from 72% of total circulation revenues last year to 75%, and an increase in digital advertising revenue was offset by a marginal decline in print advertising. In total, digital accounted for 68% of advertising revenues for the quarter, a new record.

In Digital Real Estate Services, we saw the beginnings of an expected renaissance in the U.S. real estate market as lower interest rates stimulated higher demand for housing. With the Federal Reserve cutting rates and the current 30-year mortgage rate approaching 6%, it is reasonable to conclude that we will be high fiving when mortgage rates are in the high 5s.

Even though the market was far from normalized in the first quarter, Realtor.com delivered a 9% revenue boost year-on-year. That result is a tribute to the concerted work of Damian Eales and his team, who have ensured that we are benefiting from more premium offerings and higher yields. The team has targeted 3 areas of growth: the sell side, new homes and rentals, which collectively comprised 22% of revenues this quarter, rising 3 percentage points over the prior year, and we see no reason to suggest the opportunities for growth will abate. We have been working to ensure that Realtor.com provides a holistic real estate experience.

Our moat is uniqueness and quality, so we have built in recent years the largest publisher of original residential real estate news in the United States, as measured by visits per unique user by comScore, not by home brewed metrics. We are providing more reasons for potential buyers and sellers to come to our site, which is why our user metrics are patently superior to those of other sites.

In September, we had the largest number of visits per user, clearly outstripping Zillow and other lesser sites. While revenue growth at Realtor.com was superior to that at REA this quarter, we have seen increased signs of life in the Australian property market in recent weeks, with auction levels in Melbourne and Sydney on track for the most active October in recent years.

For the quarter, Revenue at REA Group rose 3% or 5% in constant currency, and yield grew by double digits. Overall, our margin in Digital Real Estate rose from 30.6% a year ago to 33%. We welcomed a new Chief Executive to the business, Cameron McIntyre, who comes with a distinguished digital background and professional pedigree. There is no doubt that his predecessor, Owen Wilson, performed exceedingly well and his positive contribution will resonate at the company for many years to come. You will be able to welcome Cam and laud Owen when REA formally delivers its results later today.

Book Publishing faced blustery wins in the first quarter, with orders slowing from both readers and retailers and the write-off of a $13 million receivable due to the expected closure of a book distributor. The numbers last year were elevated by the dramatic resurgence of J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy after he was nominated as the vice presidential candidate. But it does appear that the sluggish market has turned in recent weeks as orders have rebounded and our recent releases are thriving, including that of R.F. Kuang, whose Katabasis has quickly become a bestseller.

We are also seeing strong sales for the latest works by Mitch Albom, Bret Baier and Ree Drummond. A collection of previously unreleased stories by Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has also become an instant hit. We look forward to the release later this month of Wicked: For Good, which should bolster book sales through cross promotions and movie magic.

In religious books, we saw elevated interest in the Bible following the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk. September Bible sales revenue rose more than 65% compared to the prior year, with retailers reporting a significant influx of new and younger customers.

At News Media, revenues rose 1% while EBITDA grew a resounding 67%. At the New York Post, preparations are underway for the launch of the California Post early in the new year and the buzz around the project is already audible. We are taking advantage of the Post's reach and influence, which expands with each passing day. One indication of the potency is the advertising revenue at the post, which leapt 19% year-over-year and nearly 90% of that advertising was digital.

It is also worth noting that our rugby league team, the Brisbane Broncos, has just won the Australian version of the Super Bowl. That will provide a modest fill-up for our business in Australia and an immodest fill-up to the mood in Queensland. Rebecca and the team in the U.K. oversaw continued growth at The Times and Sunday Times, where digital subscribers rose from 600,000 to 640,000 while digital subscriptions at News Corp Australia expanded 3% to 1.162 million. Overall, our margin for the News Media business increased from 3.3% a year ago to 5.5%. The first quarter saw a positive start to fiscal 2026, even though there were temporary headwinds that obviously were not suspicious.

Thankfully, the wind direction has changed in recent weeks in the book business, and we look forward to building on that momentum through the second quarter and for the rest of the year. We are also confident in the outlook for Digital Real Estate and Dow Jones and expect to continue aggressively pursuing our buyback in coming months.

With that, I cede to our insightful Chief Financial Officer Lavanya Chandrashekar for further detail.

Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon to everyone. I would like to start with an update on our capital allocation strategy. We are making strong progress in returning value to our shareholders through the accelerated and expanded share buyback program, which we announced in July 2025. Since we last reported earnings, we have repurchased at a rate of approximately $2.5 million per day over 4x the previous pace. We are confident in the company's growth potential and continue to believe the stock is trading at a significant discount to net asset value. As a reminder, we expect fiscal 2026 pacing to benefit from the repayment of approximately $380 million of Foxtel shareholder loans.

This quarter, our results demonstrate the continued strength and resilience of our digital businesses, particularly within Dow Jones and Digital Real Estate Services. Despite the backdrop of ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty and difficult prior year comparisons, especially in our Book Publishing business, our results underscore the benefits of our strategic diversification across recurring, high-margin content licensing and digital revenues. As a reminder, since fiscal 2018, the percentage of our business comprising digital revenues has almost doubled to 62% in fiscal 2025.

Dow Jones and Digital Real Estate, which together accounted for 29% of our revenue and 55% of our EBITDA in fiscal 2018, accounted for 49% of revenue and 84% of our EBITDA for fiscal 2025. On the other hand, our reliance on advertising revenue has reduced by almost 50% to just 16% of revenues for fiscal 2025. Shareholder value accretive M&A in this decade has brought valuable assets such as OPIS and CMA to our portfolio while divesting assets such as News America Marketing, and we have successfully exchanged Foxtel for a valuable stake in DAZN, the Netflix of sports. There is always more to do on this front, and we remain committed to maximizing shareholder value.

Turning to the results. News Corp reported fiscal first quarter revenues of over $2.1 billion, up 2% from the prior year and total segment EBITDA of $340 million, up 5% year-over-year. Total segment EBITDA was negatively impacted by a $13 million write-off of a receivable at HarperCollins related to the expected closure of one of its distributors. Margins improved from the prior year by 40 basis points to 15.9%. This quarter, 89% of profits were from Dow Jones and Digital Real Estate Services, which we believe underscores the inherent value discount and the company's ability to drive long-term profit growth.

First quarter adjusted revenues were up 2%, while adjusted total segment EBITDA rose 5% versus the prior year. Note that the adjusted result includes the $13 million write-off of the receivable at HarperCollins. For the quarter, we reported earnings from continuing operations per share of $0.20 compared to $0.21 in the prior year. Adjusted earnings from continuing operations per share were $0.22 in the quarter compared to $0.20 in the prior year.

Moving to the individual segments, starting with Dow Jones. Dow Jones delivered another strong quarter with reported revenues of $586 million, up 6% versus the prior year period. Digital revenues accounted for 84% of Dow Jones segment revenue this quarter, improving by 2 percentage points from last year. Professional information business revenues, which reflect our B2B products and services, rose 10% year-over-year, repeating the Q4 fiscal 2025 growth rate.

Within that, Risk & Compliance revenues grew 16% to $94 million driven by new customers, new products and improved yield. We saw continued momentum from risk feeds and API solutions and further penetration of advanced screening and monitoring products. At Dow Jones Energy, revenue grew 7% to $73 million, with customer retention remaining very strong at approximately 90% in addition to improving yields.

Admittedly, the rate of growth was slower than recent quarters, partially impacted by the timing of the World Chemical Forum event. In September, Dow Jones acquired Eco-Movement a leading global platform for EV charging station data, which collects and optimizes EV data across almost 2 million connectors across more than 80 countries. Eco-Movement strengthens Dow Jones Energy with best-in-class data and analytics and builds on OPIS's energy transition activity in carbon markets, clean fuels, solar and hydrogen.

Factiva returned to growth driven by lapping a customer contract dispute which has now been settled and new customer acquisitions with a focus on Gen AI. Within the Dow Jones consumer business, circulation revenues increased 3% versus the previous year with digital circulation revenues up 8%. We recently raised the full price rate for The Wall Street Journal digital subscription for new customers and to a portion of our tenured customers. Recognizing the value of our best-in-class journalism, we are actively reviewing our go-forward pricing strategy.

Digital circulation revenues accounted for 75% of circulation revenues for the quarter, up from 72% in the prior year. Digital-only subscriptions improved by 10% year-over-year and by 159,000 sequentially driven by enterprise customers. While ARPU dilutive, these are margin accretive. Wall Street Journal digital subscriptions increased 91,000 sequentially and were up 11% year-over-year. Advertising revenues were $85 million for the quarter, stable versus prior year, with digital up 2% and print down 4%. Digital represented 68% of advertising revenues, up 1 point from the prior year. Dow Jones segment EBITDA for the quarter grew a robust 10% to $144 million with margins increasing to almost 25%, an increase of 90 basis points year-over-year.

Moving on to Digital Real Estate. Digital Real Estate had another solid quarter despite the uneven macro environment and softer listing volumes in Australia driven by a tough prior year comparison. Segment revenues of $479 million were up 5% versus the prior year, an improvement to the growth rate in the prior quarter and up 7% on an adjusted basis. Segment EBITDA was $158 million, up 13% and up 16% on an adjusted basis.

Recollect, last year in this quarter, the EBITDA included $12 million of deal-related costs for the proposed offer to acquire Rightmove which was subsequently withdrawn. REA revenues gained 3% year-on-year to $327 million and were up 5% on a constant currency basis. Growth was driven by a combination of residential yield increases and customer contract upgrades. Residential yield growth improved by 13% driven by strong Premier Plus retention and the growth in extension products, including AMAX.

New buy listings in the quarter declined 8% with listings in Melbourne and Sydney down 4% and 6%, respectively, while home prices remained strong. Financial Services posted a strong improvement driven by higher settlements.

In September, the business divested PropTiger in India and following recent regulatory changes impacting the commercial viability of the Housing Edge offering, REA India made the decision to discontinue this business in October. Please refer to REA's earnings release and their conference call for more details. We are very pleased with the continued progress at Realtor.com, which posted revenues of $152 million, up 9% compared to the prior year, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth and the highest quarterly growth rate in nearly 4 years.

Revenue growth was driven by the continued strength of growth adjacencies, new homes, rentals and sellers which represented 22% of revenues in the quarter. Importantly, core real estate revenues also returned to growth this quarter as the strategic shift to higher intent and quality audiences is beginning to pay off. Strong penetration of RealPRO Select, a product targeted primarily at larger brokers, led to higher annualized contract values. Lead volumes declined by just 1% with trends improving throughout the quarter, a notable improvement compared to the quarter 4 decline of 13%.

Average monthly unique users for the quarter fell 6% to 72 million. comScore data for the first quarter and the month of September highlighted that Realtor once again had the highest engagement amongst real estate portals at almost 5 visits per unique user. Realtor has also gained audience share with total visits reaching over double that of Homes.com and that of Redfin while narrowing the gap versus Zillow. The improvement reflects Realtor's focus on high-quality audiences and the benefits of the investments made to improve user experience and increase brand awareness.

At Book Publishing, as expected, very difficult prior year comparisons weighed on the results this quarter. The quarter was impacted by both timing of ordering and softer U.S. market conditions, albeit trends improved in the recent weeks. Segment revenue of $534 million declined 2% while segment EBITDA of $58 million declined $23 million or 28%. As mentioned earlier, EBITDA was negatively impacted by a $13 million receivable write-off relating to the expected closure of Baker & Taylor, a distributor focused predominantly on the library channel.

While performance in the U.K. and Christian Publishing continued to be resilient, sales of general books were notably lower than the prior year. Recollect, this quarter last year benefited from a strong performance by J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, the Bridgerton series and Wicked. Digital revenues at HarperCollins fell 9% with audio books down 11%, driven by the mix of titles compared to last year.

In total, digital sales represented 23% of consumer revenues compared to 25% in the prior year. This quarter, the backlist contributed 65% of consumer revenues, up from 64% last year. News Media had a very strong quarter with revenues rising 1% to $545 million, led by higher cover and subscription prices in the U.K. and Australia. Advertising trends were mixed but with notable strength at the New York Post. Segment EBITDA grew 67% to $30 million, driven by continued cost efficiencies.

Turning to the outlook. Some of the themes across each of our segments. At Dow Jones overall trends remain healthy, and we expect continued strong revenue growth in B2B. We also expect cost growth to be slightly higher in quarter 2, primarily due to the prior year comparisons. At Digital Real Estate, Australian residential new buy listing for October were down 3%. Please refer to REA for more detailed outlook commentary. At Realtor, we hope that improving market conditions driven by a reduction in mortgage rates will lead to continued healthy revenue growth alongside growth in adjacencies.

At Book Publishing, October trends were encouraging, and we expect quarter 2 to benefit from the timing of ordering and a stronger front list. At News Media, despite difficult advertising trends, we are focused on continuing to drive cost efficiencies. We expect strong free cash flow in the current fiscal year despite anticipating capital spending to be up moderately from the prior year.

The increase in capital spending will be partially driven by an investment in new supply chain logistics facilities for HarperCollins, which should deliver additional cost savings and continued investment in technology. And as I mentioned at the start of my remarks, we expect to repurchase shares at an elevated rate, reflecting our confidence in the company's growth potential, and we continue to believe the stock is trading at a significant discount to net asset value.

With that, let me hand it over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Kane Hannan with Goldman Sachs.

Just, Move, obviously a very strong revenue print there. Given the housing backdrop and some of the comments that were made, is there anything you can see or anything we should be thinking about that I suppose stops that business doing double-digit revenue growth through the year?

Well, Kane, look, we are delighted by the growth in revenue at Realtor, which is expanding despite a U.S. housing market still somewhat hamstrung by high interest rates. We've been very much focused on the 3 aforementioned growth areas, seller, new homes and rentals, as well as high-yield sales. And that strategy is clearly paying dividends, even though we're only at the very start of the housing market recovery. We have built a site that is a holistic housing experience and -- which is the leader in residential property news in the U.S. The value of that investment and the value of Realtor itself will be increasingly obvious as the market likely gathers momentum over the coming year.

Our next question will come from David Karnovsky with JPMorgan.

Maybe just on the repurchase, recognizing that you've already accelerated this rate by 4x, I think there's still a question naturally from investors on why not lean in kind of even further for a period given where shares are traded and the views you expressed on the call regarding value.

And then if I can ask just one more on the business with The Wall Street Journal price increase, I don't know if you could speak to the decision to raise the rate there and what you've observed so far and how that kind of informs your strategy ahead.

David, you can indeed see from our disclosures that the rate of the buyback has accelerated markedly, actually at 4x the previous rate, and we intend to fully take advantage of the expanded resources approved by our Board. Our robust cash position means that we certainly have the potential to increase the buyback if that is the optimal strategy. We have genuine optionality, and we will exercise that optionality with all of our investors in mind.

And as for The Wall Street Journal, clearly, we're at the early stage of testing and reviewing subscription pricing, but believe that there is definitely elasticity, an elasticity that will be enhanced by planned product improvements in coming months. Our WSJ readers do indeed recognize that they should pay a premium for a premium service.

Our next question will come from Entcho Raykovski with Evans & Partners.

My question's around Dow Jones and the Factiva dispute, which has obviously now been settled. Given that settlement, obviously not a headwind anymore. I'm just curious on whether you've seen any revenues in the PR and communications category in the quarter, which obviously was the source of the dispute. And if it was a tailwind, are you able to quantify the contribution to growth and whether that tailwind is likely to accelerate into Q2?

Entcho, it's difficult to be specific, but I think overall Dow Jones, the performance was excellent with a 16% increase in revenues at Risk & Compliance. And as you indicate, much improvement at Factiva, which had been hobbled by that legal dispute, but increased revenues 9%. And we had growth of 7% at Dow Jones Energy. And there, I should point out that, as Lavanya mentioned, the revenues were somewhat affected by a shift in date for its landmark event, the World Chemical Forum, which will be held this year in Q3. So factor that into your calculations. Nonetheless, we are strengthening the team at Dow Jones Energy and have an impressive array of new and enhanced offerings pending for our customers, current and potential.

Sorry, I'd just add to that. The -- what we got from the settlement of the dispute was very modest. The good news is we are bringing in new customers into that space. We do have a very cool Gen AI search capability now in Factiva, and that is turning out to be a good source of success as well.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Craig Huber with Huber Research.

Robert, as I typically like to ask you, I mean, you obviously fairly recently disposed of your Foxtel operation, pleased a lot of investors there. I'm wondering if your thoughts have changed at all here about further simplifying of the business at News Corp here. Any changes there in your mindset?

Craig, we are certainly not allergic to structural changes. And as you indicated, the recent sale of Foxtel to our partners at the DAZN is eloquent testimony to that willingness to simplify. Not only to be institutionally introspective, but actually active. But we also believe in the importance of transparency, hence, for example, the research, segmentation and the increased focus on the performance of Dow Jones, which is a global growth engine for the company, and on our News Media business, which reported a significant increase in margin for the quarter.

Overall, we are acutely conscious of the need to consider the evolving environment and to maximize returns for our shareholders, which is why we have significantly accelerated the buyback and maintained our dividend. And we certainly have an armory, an arsenal when it comes to the buyback.

Our next question will come from David Joyce with Seaport Global.

I am very fascinated by the growth at Risk & Compliance, granted that little bit of that came from some acquisitions, but I'm wondering what could be some further tailwinds to growth there. Specifically, I was wondering if some of the services could be maybe mandated by certain industry verticals, regulatory bodies, for example. Just wondering what your thoughts are for the runway there.

We're very optimistic about the trajectory of Risk & Compliance. Clearly, companies, boards want to minimize risk and maximize compliance. The Know Your Client regulations, which are stringent and being enforced by governments around the world, are also a source of new business. So while we saw 16% growth in the most recent quarter, we're confident that further growth is indeed possible in coming quarters.

Our next question will come from David Fabris with Macquarie.

I just wanted to ask about News Media. So revenues return to growth modestly and there's been a big improvement in EBITDA. How should we be thinking about the trajectory of that business from here?

David, we saw a slight increase in revenue, but also the benefits of leadership and cost discipline across the businesses in Australia and the U.K. and a significant surge in advertising at New York Post. Digital advertising at the Post was up 23% year-on-year and we are looking forward to the extra inventory. That is great journalism that will be generated when the California Post launches early next year. It really is a testament to all the team's hard work around the world that the margin at News Media rose from 3.3% last year to 5.5%.

Yes, I'd just add to that. On the cost front especially, I mean, really great work done by the team in News UK. The commercial printing joint venture that we entered into last year is continuing to deliver savings to us. We've also saved money on the top TV business and that's been an important move for the team over there. News Australia as well has continued to really press the boundaries in terms of cost efficiency, leveraging new capabilities to deliver better EBITDA growth.

At this time, we have no further questions. I'll now hand the call over to Michael Florin for closing remarks.

Well, thank you for participating. We look forward to speaking to you very soon. Have a great day. Luke, thanks as always, for your help, and we'll talk to you soon. Have a great day.