Murdoch moves on from Time Warner bid, hails earnings

NEW YORK, USA – Rupert Murdoch’s media-entertainment group 21st Century Fox said Wednesday profits jumped on box-office results from its Hollywood studio and that it is looking past its failed bid for Time Warner.

The quarterly profit was $999 million, a year after a loss of $371 million for the conglomerate which operates the Fox studios and television properties.

Revenues jumped to $8.4 billion in the three months ending June 30, from $7.2 billion in the comparable period a year earlier.

The company closed out its first fiscal year since breaking off its publishing operations with an annual profit of $4.5 billion, compared with $7.1 billion based on comparable data from the previous year.

“The company’s strong financial performance was driven by sustained affiliate revenue increases at our cable networks and record fourth quarter contributions at our filmed entertainment segment on the strength of global box office successes ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past,’ ‘Rio 2‘ and ‘The Fault In Our Stars,'” Murdoch said in a statement.

“As we close the fiscal year, I continue to have confidence in our ability to execute our growth plan and drive value for our shareholders.”

The earnings came a day after the company abandoned an $80 billion bid for rival Time Warner which could have merged two of the biggest names in the industry.

Murdoch told a conference call Wednesday that dropping the offer was “a resolute decision” and that the deal was “no longer attractive for Fox shareholders.”

‘We have moved on’  

He also said the company was not looking at another deal in place of the Time Warner tie-up.

“We have moved on,” he said.

Time Warner was a “unique opportunity,” he added, but “we like our business, our future and where we are at.”

On Tuesday, he said the offer was taken off the table after Time Warner “refused to engage with us” and the bid hurt the share price of 21st Century Fox.

The company also said Tuesday that with its cash stockpile, it would launch a $6 billion share buyback program, and Murdoch said this “further underscores our disciplined approach to increasing shareholder value.”

Murdoch last year split his empire into two separate firms, 21st Century Fox and News Corp, which kept the newspapers and other publishing assets which had been a drag on earnings. He remains in control of both firms.

At Fox, the results were led by gains in film and cable operations, and to a lesser extent, satellite television, while results from broadcast operations lagged.

The cable results were helped by regional sports channels, Fox News Channel and the FX cable channel.

Operating results from film nearly tripled in the quarter and its film studio “became the first to cross the $3 billion mark in worldwide box office this year,” a company statement said. 

Revenues for the film segment rose 12% to $9.7 billion for the full year and leapt 38 percent to $2.8 billion in the quarter.

For cable, revenues increased 13% for the year to $12.3 billion and by the same percentage to $3.3 billion in the quarter. –Rappler.com