News Corporation Reports a Loss Of $433 Million
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News Corporation, the media company controlled by Rupert Murdoch, reported a loss of $433 million after taking a non-cash expense for an accounting change that reduced the value of television-station broadcast licenses.
The first-quarter loss was 14 cents per Class A share, compared with profit of $625 million, or 22 cents, a year earlier, New York-based News Corporation said yesterday in a statement distributed by Business Wire. Revenue rose 10% to $5.68 billion.
News Corporation’s 20th Century Fox film studio increased profit 26% to $368 million on box-office sales of “Fantastic Four” and home-video revenue. Higher sales at the company’s cable television networks including Fox News Channel and FX outweighed higher programming costs for local sports and news at News Corporation’s 35 Fox television stations.
“Fox is a well-managed studio,” Aryeh Bourkoff, an analyst at UBS Securities in New York who rates the shares “buy 2,” said before earnings were released. “They’ve done well with the ‘Robots’ DVD as well as ‘Transporter 2.'”
The company’s Class A, non-voting shares, which have fallen 21% this year, today rose 11 cents to $14.67 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
