News (NASDAQ:NWS) executives used a Dow Jones investor briefing to highlight the company’s shift toward digital and recurring revenue, discuss artificial intelligence partnerships and enforcement efforts around intellectual property, and lay out a financial target for Dow Jones to reach $1 billion in EBITDA within five years.
News Corp leadership frames Dow Jones as a core growth engine
News Corp Chairman Lachlan Murdoch said that since the separation of News Corp and Fox more than a decade ago, the company’s strategy has been to build “a digital-first news and information services powerhouse” with an emphasis on Dow Jones, book publishing, and digital real estate services. He said the approach has helped make News Corp less exposed to swings in traditional media and positioned it to “meet the AI moment” with what he described as “deeply moated products.”
Thomson said News Corp’s digital mix rose to 62% in fiscal 2025 from 22% in 2014, and that excluding HarperCollins, the business was 72% digital. He also said segment EBITDA margin improved to nearly 17% last fiscal year from 11% in 2014.
AI strategy: partnerships, monetization, and enforcement
Thomson described AI as enhancing the value of News Corp’s content, data, and intellectual property, citing a “landmark deal” with Meta for AI and an earlier partnership with OpenAI. He said News Corp is using AI to improve subscription management and “true dynamic pricing,” support audio-to-text and text-to-audio, translate into multiple languages, and improve efficiency.
He also outlined a dual-track strategy of “wooing and suing” technology companies, saying the company prefers partnerships but will pursue legal action for intellectual property violations. Thomson referenced litigation against Perplexity and said Anthropic agreed to pay publishers and authors $1.5 billion to settle a lawsuit over illicit IP usage; he added that News Corp expects to receive its share of that settlement starting later in the calendar year.
Dow Jones outlines three-business model and a $1 billion EBITDA goal
Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour said Dow Jones is organized into three units—news, risk, and energy—serving both consumer and enterprise markets. Latour emphasized three takeaways for the briefing: Dow Jones is a “news, data, and business intelligence powerhouse”; the company expects “outsized growth” in B2B properties in risk and energy; and management believes Dow Jones has “a clear path to hit $1 billion in EBITDA within five years,” which Latour described as a 70% increase from fiscal 2025.
Latour said Dow Jones has become “fundamentally different” over the past five years, citing progress since it became a separate segment. He said Dow Jones more than tripled digital subscriptions since 2018 and doubled them since the 2020 resegmentation, while increasing its focus on B2B. Latour said more than 80% of Dow Jones revenue in fiscal 2025 was recurring and that the majority of EBITDA was driven by B2B, adding that since 2018 the company nearly doubled EBITDA margin and more than tripled EBITDA overall.
Latour described AI as an “accelerant” that improves efficiency, enables new products, and increases demand for reliable information. He argued that Dow Jones’ proprietary data and journalism cannot be replicated by AI models and are tied to regulatory requirements in multiple jurisdictions, making “trust” the core asset.
Consumer and enterprise news: pricing, bundles, and AI connectors
Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker said the newsroom is focused on exclusivity and trust, describing unbiased journalism and editorial rigor as central to Dow Jones’ broader information services offering. Tucker said more than half of subscribers have a net worth above $1 million and that the Journal is seeing a younger audience, with “pre-suites” early-career professionals representing 22% of subscribers. She also highlighted in-house AI tools, including “Orca,” which she said helps journalists process podcast information more quickly.
Chief Growth Officer Scott Havens said the Wall Street Journal app is in a “continuous upgrade cycle” and that Dow Jones is embedding AI to improve personalization and discovery. On pricing, Havens said Dow Jones has raised prices across digital and print over the past two years “without sacrificing volume.” He said the Wall Street Journal U.S. digital list price increased from $38.99 per month in fiscal 2024 to $44.99 in fiscal 2026, while print pricing moved from $54.99 to $64.99 over the same period. He also said the company has shortened some promotional offers and shifted to data-driven, engagement-based pricing to improve ARPU while supporting retention.
Havens said that as of Q2 fiscal 2026, digital subscriptions grew 12% year over year to 6 million, digital direct subscription ARPU rose 6%, and digital circulation revenue grew 7%. He also said Dow Jones is launching a “super bundle” of all digital consumer products priced at $7,499 per year. On advertising, Havens said fiscal 2025 ad revenue mix shifted toward higher-value formats, with 65% of ad revenue from digital, and he noted the most recent quarter was the “best quarter ever” for digital ad revenue. He also said open market programmatic advertising represented less than 3% of fiscal 2025 ad revenue.
In enterprise news, General Manager of Industries Lisa Fitzpatrick said The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, and Factiva together contributed $352 million in fiscal 2025 revenue. She said growth is being driven by tailored delivery via APIs, AI connectors, and client partnerships, and she cited an opportunity to expand into more corporate clients, including targeting the Russell 3000. Fitzpatrick said roughly 10% of enterprise news revenue comes from outside the U.S., which she described as a growth opportunity. She highlighted a partnership with Yomiuri Shimbun that uses AI translation into Japanese and noted the launch of a Factiva ChatGPT connector developed with OpenAI, which requires a Factiva subscription and is listed in the ChatGPT app store.
Risk and Energy: proprietary datasets, benchmarks, and market growth
Dow Jones Risk & Compliance General Manager Joel Lange described regulatory-driven demand for sanctions, anti-money laundering, and due diligence data. He said the business built proprietary data on more than 50,000 companies globally linked to sanctioned entities and cited an example of responding to a U.S. Department of Commerce “affiliates rule,” researching 3,000 companies and creating a database of 24,000 researched companies that he said generated more than $1 million in new subscription revenue in two weeks. Lange said the risk business has approximately 90% retention and an 18% revenue CAGR, and he noted corporates now represent 44% of revenue. He also said a top five Australian bank is using Dow Jones’ generative AI due diligence solution, “Integrity Check,” reducing due diligence reporting time from five days to 15 minutes.
Dow Jones Energy General Manager Sarah Cottle described the unit as a price reporting agency providing benchmarks, data, news, and events. She said the energy business has about 90% retention, has secured 60 “benchmark” price assessments and 150 exchange listings, and operates in an $8 billion energy information market projected to grow 8% to 10% annually over the medium term. Cottle said Dow Jones Energy currently has about 3% share of that market and is aiming to gain share through proprietary pricing and data, expert judgment, and integrated delivery such as APIs. She also highlighted the Eco-Movement acquisition as expanding EV charging station data and referenced prior acquisitions and assets including OPIS, Chemical Markets Analytics, McCloskey coal pricing, and A2i Systems.
Financial overview: mix shift, margins, and operating leverage
Outgoing Dow Jones CFO Jared DiPalma said that since fiscal 2018, Dow Jones revenue grew to $2.3 billion, representing 6.5% annualized growth, while digital revenue grew 11%. He said in fiscal 2025, 82% of revenue was digital, 80% was recurring, and advertising represented 17% of total revenue. DiPalma said EBIT expanded to $588 million, more than three times fiscal 2018 levels, and that margins increased from 12.9% to 25.2% over the period. He also said Dow Jones converted about 70% of EBITDA into cash flow in fiscal 2025.
Looking ahead, DiPalma reiterated the $1 billion EBITDA goal within five years and said the plan is grounded in risk and energy growth with margin expansion, direct-to-consumer growth supported by products and pricing, increased focus on enterprise news as a high-margin offering, and continued cost discipline.
In the Q&A, Latour said Dow Jones’ path to $1 billion in EBITDA assumes only “bolt-on” M&A, with “material” acquisitions not included in the estimate. He said areas of interest for potential bolt-ons include segments “nestled between” existing verticals, citing examples such as supply chain and defense. Executives also discussed AI-driven personalization, translation, and pricing, as well as confidence in recent Wall Street Journal list-price increases, citing churn trends and the ability to tailor pricing based on engagement.
About News (NASDAQ:NWS)
News Corporation (NASDAQ: NWS) is a global media and information services company engaged in news and digital real estate, book publishing and other media businesses. The company’s operations include print and digital newsbrands, business and financial information services, consumer platforms for property listings, and a major book publishing arm. Through its subsidiaries and brands, News Corp produces news content, market and financial reporting, online real-estate marketplaces and trade and consumer publishing products.
Key areas of activity include news and information, where the company publishes national and regional newspapers and operates business information services; book publishing through a well-known global publisher; and property-related digital businesses that operate online marketplaces for real estate listings.
