News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson kicked off the company’s third quarter earnings call with a few words about Donald Trump‘s Liberation Day tariffs, offering a bit of a cheeky take on the across-the-board levies that have sent markets gyrating.
The company, controlled by the Murdoch family, is the parent of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, as well as the New York Post and HarperCollins Publishers.
While touting the company’s “potent results,” Thomson said that they had nevertheless come “despite political turbulence that has clearly affected some of our business partners and undermined their ability to plan coherently.
“We firmly believe that this disruption is ephemeral and that the U.S. has the potential for robust growth when the heavens return to equilibrium,” Thomson said. “The administration’s pursuit of sensible deregulation and a sound energy policy, combined with America’s economic prowess and innate creativity, should produce favorable results. When Adam Smith spoke sagely of the power of the invisible hand, he did not envisage an economic slap in the face from the unruly introduction of exorbitant tariffs. America’s animal spirits do need emancipation from the cage of uncertainty.”
The Journal’s editorial page has weighed in multiple times against Trump’s tariffs, and the president has in turn lashed out at the publication.
News Corp. revenues for the three months ended on March 31 were $2.01 billion, a 1% increase from the same period a year earlier. Net income from continuing operations was $107 million, up 67% from a year earlier. Total segment EBITDA rose 12% to $290 million.
Revenue at Dow Jones reached $575 million, up 6% from a year earlier. That was driven by higher circulation and subscription revenue, as well as growth in the professional information business. Digital only subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal rose 5% to 3.91 million, representing 90% of subscriptions to the publication. Barron’s Group saw digital subscription revenue rise 12%, to 1.37 million.
In the news media segment, revenues decreased by 8% to $514 million, due to lower advertising revenues, including at NewsUK, primarily The Sun.
The company also saw 5% growth in digital real estate services revenue, to $406 million, and a 2% rise in book publishing, to $514 million.
Lavanya Chandrashekar told analysts that despite the uncertainty of tariffs, the impact on the company would be “immaterial.” But she said that while the news media segment to benefit from initiatives to rein in costs, “advertising is likely to be volatile, given the macro uncertainty.”
Thomson also addressed AI. News Corp. has signed a partnership with OpenAI, but last year sued another company, Perplexity AI, claiming infringement of copyrighted work.
“In the midst of the current political maelstrom, it is imperative that journalists focus on facts, a task complicated by faux fact checking at a time when even science, from climate to medicine, has become politicized and polarized, undermining the long term credibility of once-trusted experts and institutions. The currency of credibility will become even more crucial as AI continues its exponential growth and inevitably blurs the lines between the actual and the anthropomorphic.”
Even though Thomson was critical of Trump’s tariff policy, he also put another raging policy debate in terms personal to the president: AI companies use of copyrighted content in their training models.
Thomson added, “We are pleased with our principal partnership with OpenAI and trust that other AI operators strip mining our intellectual property filly appreciate their responsibilities to our company, to creativity and to the community.” He said that some AI companies “have no doubt ripped off even the president of the United States by ingesting books, including The Art of the Deal, and repurposing them for profit without his permission. And we expect that the AI anarchists will surely have done the same with Truth Social, purloining content and data to fuel their economic engines.”
The post News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson Bashes Donald Trump’s Tariffs In Q3 Earnings Call: “Economic Slap In The Face” appeared first on Deadline.
