Intellectual Property Law

Earnings Update: News Corp., DirecTV Post Strong Results

By Cynthia Brumfield

Yesterday was chock full of interesting news and developments but the necessity of actually doing real work got in the way of my blogging. I'm a day late here but a couple of key earnings reports issued yesterday are worth flagging today.

First, global entertainment, TV, publishing and now Internet giant News Corp. issued its fiscal Q3 08 results yesterday (PDF), showing strong performance, as usual, in its cable network division. (For more detailed News Corp. financial data download our spreadsheet.)

The most interesting thing to come out of News Corp.'s earnings call is that its interactive media unit, which includes Myspace, will miss its fiscal year revenue projections by 10%. One other thing: the company's net income soared due largely to a $1.67 billion gain made from the sale of its 41% stake in DirecTV to John Malone's Liberty Media.

News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch may be glad he got rid of the DirecTV "turd bird," but the U.S. DBS provider, which also issued its earnings results yesterday, did just fine in Q1 08. DirecTV continued its healthy subscriber, cut churn, and boosted both revenues and operating income by 16% year-over-year. (Again, for more detail, download our spreadsheet with detailed data on DirecTV.)

Full post as published by IP Democracy on May 08, 2008 (boomark / email).