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ews Corp’s latest release of figures has revealed the company’s revenue from streaming has grown by $254 million, or 10% for the financial year, resulting in its most profitable financial result in eight years.
For the 2020/21 financial year, News Corp reported revenue of $13 billion, leading to a recorded profit of $526 million after the previous financial year resulted in a net loss of $2.1 billion.
The growth in revenue is partially attributed to the continued rise of News Corp and Telstra owned Foxtel, which increased its paid subscriber numbers by 40%, reaching 3.891 million subscribers.
As part of this figure, 2.006 million subscribers were attributed to Kayo, Binge and Foxtel Now, while the remaining 1.885 million were residential or commercial broadcast Foxtel subscribers.
News Corp CEO, Robert Thomson, said the further rise of Foxtel leaves News Corp with some key choices to make about the future of the organisation, referring to recent reports Foxtel was targeting an initial public offering (IPO) or sale.
“It’s very clear that what we have with Foxtel are options,” Thomson said.
“We’ve got the key sports rights long into the future, we have an absolutely contemporary customer-friendly streaming platform network, and those systems are another major means of monetising existing rights at no extra costs.
“We have a broadcast experience that is world class and is now the village square for video in Australia and we surely have price elasticity in a market where an ever larger number of people in Australia understand that you pay a premium for premium content.
“These are auspicious circumstances and their confluence, combined with stage leadership from [Foxtel CEO, Patrick Delany] and [News Corp head of broadcasting, Siobhan McKenna] has transformed Foxtel’s fortunes and certainly given us choices,” he said.
On the growth of subscribers across Foxtel platforms, Thomson said: “We also saw record subscriber growth at Foxtel, where, at the end of June, our paid streaming subscribers reached over 2 million, an increase year-on-year of 155%.”
“That sterling performance has clearly given us much optionality as we consider Foxtel’s future, which is certainly bright, given that revenues rose 33% in the fourth quarter,” he said.
