News Corp.’s annual report for fiscal year 2013 – its first since spinning off from Rupert Murdoch’s entertainment divisions – shows a modest year-over-year revenue increase, from $8.654 billion to $8.891 billion.
The company attributed the 2.7 percent increase to a rise in circulation and subscription revenue. Net income was way up: $506 million (or 87 cents per share) compared to 2012’s loss of $2.075 billion ($3.58 per share).
But revenues in News Corp.’s news and information services division, which contains titles such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and London’s The Times, actually fell by 5 percent, from $7.058 billion in 2012 to $6.731 billion in 2013.
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The company attributed the decrease to an almost 10 percent decline in advertising revenue, which makes up half the division’s earnings. News Corp. still earns the vast majority of its revenue from the news and information division.
News Corp. reported a 10 percent rise in fourth-quarter revenue to $2.3 billion but a loss of $1.1 billion. That’s due to a writedown of its Australian and U.S. publishing assets by as much as $1.4 billion, which the company disclosed in May.