Declining sales, advertising and subscriptions hurt revenues at Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper business in the final quarter of last year, News Corp has reported.
Revenue at the company’s news and information unit, which publishes the media tycoon’s newspapers in the UK, US and Australia, fell 6% to $1.52bn.
Total advertising revenues fell 9%, with the UK market especially hard hit.
“The advertising climate in the UK remains very difficult, but we are renewing our efforts on digital ad sales and assiduously cultivating core clients,” said the chief executive Robert Thomson.
Newspaper revenues in Australia fell 8% thanks to currency fluctuations and weak advertising. But Thompson said earnings from the Australian division were actually higher, thanks in part to lower costs and price increases for its newspapers and subscriptions.
“We have reduced costs, including the closing of our Gold Coast printing site, while we have successfully raised news-stand pricing and subscription rates to drive circulation revenues,” he said. Thompson said the Australian mastheads now had close to 250,000 subscribers, which is a 30% rise from a year ago.
Circulation and subscription revenues fell 3% across the news unit.
However, overall revenues for the company rose 2% to $2.28bn as the book publishing and real estate divisions offset dwindling print revenue.
Revenue from book publishing, which accounts for about a fifth of total revenue, jumped 20% to $469m boosted by the purchase of romantic fiction publisher Harlequin last year for $415m.
Revenue from the high-margin digital property business, which includes a part of the highly successful Australian business REA Group, soared by about 50%. However, this figure was boosted by revenues from Move, the US digital real estate business which includes realtor.com, purchased last year for nearly $1bn.
“It is fair to say that the expansion of our digital real estate portfolio should provide a firm foundation for future growth,” Thomson said.
News Corp and Twenty-First Century Fox were part of the same company until they were spun off into separate listed entities in June 2013, representing the previous firm’s publishing and broadcasting businesses, respectively.
The print media industry has been waging a losing battle as subscribers and advertisers move their money online, forcing publishers such as News Corp to watch advertisers spend less to place ads in their papers.