News Corp posts record first-quarter profit as AI licensing deals and real estate gains offset print decline

News Corp reported its strongest first-quarter results on record on Wednesday, with net income climbing 43 percent and revenue rising 6 percent, as growth in digital real estate listings, business information and book publishing outweighed a continued slide in its print news operations. The results, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, cover the three months ended September 30, 2026, the first quarter of the company's 2027 fiscal year.

The quarter extends a run of consecutive profit growth that Chief Executive Robert Thomson, in the earnings statement, dated back more than three years. It also comes as News Corp leans further into licensing its journalism to artificial intelligence companies, a strategy the company has paired with ongoing litigation against AI firms it accuses of using its content without permission.

A record quarter, by the numbers

Total revenue reached $2.28 billion, up from $2.14 billion a year earlier; on a constant-currency basis, growth was 4 percent. Net income rose to $215 million from $150 million, aided in part by a gain tied to the divestiture of REA India's remaining business. Net income attributable to News Corp stockholders was $159 million, up from $112 million. Total Segment EBITDA, the profitability measure the company emphasizes to investors, rose 19 percent to $403 million, while adjusted EBITDA rose 13 percent to $392 million.

Reported earnings per share were 29 cents, up from 20 cents a year earlier, and adjusted earnings per share were 28 cents, up from 22 cents. The company held $1.78 billion in cash at quarter's end.

Not every line moved in the same direction. Operating cash flow from continuing operations fell sharply, to $13 million from $85 million a year earlier, while capital expenditures rose to $102 million from $81 million. The combination pushed free cash flow negative, to a loss of $89 million, compared with a positive $4 million a year earlier — a detail the earnings release did not highlight but that shows the profit gains did not translate into more cash on hand this quarter.

Content as 'the very essence of AI'

The earnings release leaned heavily on News Corp's positioning in the fight over how news content is used to train and power AI products. The company has signed multi-year licensing agreements with both OpenAI, in a deal announced by OpenAI in 2024 covering content from the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch and other Dow Jones and News Corp titles, and with Meta. At the same time, Dow Jones and the New York Post are pursuing a copyright and trademark lawsuit against the AI search company Perplexity AI in federal court in Manhattan, a case that has survived a motion to dismiss and remains in active discovery proceedings before Judge Katherine Polk Failla. Other publishers, including the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, have filed related but separate suits against the same company.

Thomson framed that dual-track approach — negotiating licenses while suing alleged infringers — as central to the company's strategy going forward.

"We are pleased to have partners in OpenAI and Meta that recognize the importance of our content, and remain optimistic that other platforms will choose compensation over confiscation, principle over plunder. To that end, we will woo and we will sue."

Thomson also argued that News Corp's journalism has become a necessary input for AI systems in the way that computing infrastructure is. "We believe we are primed for further growth in the AI age, as data centers, chips and water may be necessary components, but high quality content is the very essence of AI," he said in the release, adding that the company "remain[s] vigilant in protecting that priceless intellectual property."

Mixed fortunes across the portfolio

The quarter's growth was concentrated in three of News Corp's five reporting segments, while a fourth continued to contract.

• Digital Real Estate Services, which includes the majority-owned Australian property portal REA Group and the U.S. site Move (Realtor.com), was the strongest performer: segment revenue rose 10 percent to $529 million and segment EBITDA jumped 34 percent to $212 million. REA Group's revenue rose 13 percent to $369 million, helped by favorable currency movements and double-digit growth in what the company calls controllable buy yield — the revenue it earns from real estate agents per listing. Move's revenue grew 5 percent, to $160 million.
• Dow Jones, the segment that houses the Wall Street Journal, Barron's and MarketWatch alongside the Dow Jones Risk & Compliance and Energy data businesses, posted revenue of $630 million, up 8 percent, and segment EBITDA of $160 million, up 11 percent. Average total subscriptions to Dow Jones news products reached 6.9 million, up 8 percent, with digital-only subscriptions near 6.5 million, up 10 percent.
• Book Publishing, built around HarperCollins, grew revenue 9 percent to $582 million and segment EBITDA 29 percent to $75 million, with the company citing strength in general books and children's publishing and a 6 percent rise in digital sales.
• News Media — the segment that includes News Corp's Australian, U.K. and New York tabloid and broadsheet titles — was the outlier. Revenue there fell 1 percent, to $540 million, and segment EBITDA fell 40 percent, to $18 million, underscoring the continued pressure on print advertising and circulation even as the company's digital and data businesses expand.

The divergence illustrates a trend that has defined News Corp's results for several years: the parts of the company built around subscriptions, real estate data and licensed content are growing faster and more profitably than its legacy newspaper operations, which still carry the News Corp name but now generate a shrinking share of its earnings. The company's "Other" category, which includes corporate costs, posted a wider EBITDA loss of $62 million, compared with $50 million a year earlier.

What comes next

News Corp did not update its full-year guidance in the release, and the earnings statement gave no specific figures for revenue expected from its AI licensing agreements, which the company has previously said it discloses only in aggregate, folded into the Dow Jones and News Media segment totals. The Perplexity litigation is scheduled to continue through discovery, with document production deadlines that have already been extended once by the court; a trial date has not been set.

For shareholders, the quarter adds to a run of improving profitability that has helped lift News Corp's stock over the past two years, even as the company continues to depend on REA Group's Australian housing market and Dow Jones's institutional subscribers for a large share of its growth. For the newsrooms under the News Corp umbrella, the results offer little reassurance: the News Media segment's shrinking profitability means the prestige titles and data businesses are increasingly subsidizing, rather than being subsidized by, the newspapers that built the company's name. Investors and media analysts are likely to focus next on whether News Corp discloses more detail about AI licensing revenue, and on the outcome of discovery in the Perplexity case, when the company reports second-quarter results early next year.