Fox Corp. beat Wall Street estimates with its fiscal third-quarter earnings report Wednesday, with revenue hitting $3.4 billion and net income growing to $704 million. The gain in profits was due to last year’s settlement at Fox News, combined with a gain on the value of its USFL assets, which it merged with the XFL to create the UFL.Advertising revenue was down sharply in the quarter though to $1.2 billion from $1.9 billion a year ago, but that was because last year’s quarter included the Super Bowl.In a call with Wall Street analysts, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said that the company’s ad business was moving in the right direction.“Overall advertising trends of Fox are clearly moving in the right direction, both in the scatter market and in early upfront discussions,” Murdoch said. “Demand for sports remains robust, trends at Fox News are improving across the board, including the fact that we’ve now fully lapped the direct response market issue that had adversely impacted Fox News ad revenues. And while there wasn’t much of a primary season this year, we do expect strong political advertising for national and local races as well as local ballot issues in the first half of our fiscal ’25 Which would largely benefit our station group.”As for the lackluster political ad season so far, Murdoch said “obviously we’re disappointed for multiple reasons that there wasn’t a more competitive primary season.”“But we certainly know this is an election in which both sides of politics, or all sides of politics, are very focused on, have raised a tremendous amount of money and that money will will flow ultimately to local television. We are extremely confident of that.”Affiliate fee revenue rose slightly to $1.9 billion.Fox’s cable division, which is led by Fox News, posted revenue of $1.5 billion, down slightly from last year, while its TV division, led by the Fox broadcast network, had revenue of $1.9 billion, down more sharply from last year due to the Super Bowl comparison.On the call, the biggest topics of conversation were Tubi, Fox’s free ad-supported streaming platform, as well as the still-in-development streaming sports joint venture.Murdoch said that the joint venture now has 150 employees working, as well as a fully functional demo product. Though he acknowledged that it does not yet have a definitive agreement between the companies.“It’s very innovative, it’s designed to be entirely focused on the cord nevers, cord cutters, people who are not in the cable bundle, and who frankly won’t be able to compare it to a tier of live channels,” Murdoch said on the product. “It’s a very different digital first product, which when you eventually get it and get to enjoy it you’ll understand how groundbreaking certainly in this country, it really is.”
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