Fox Corp (FOXA) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by welcome to the fox corporation second quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings conference call at this time all participants are in a listen-only mode later we will conduct a question and answer session i would like to emphasize the functionality for the question and answer queue will be given at that time if you require assistance during the call please press star then zero on your touchtone keypad as a reminder this conference is being recorded i'll now turn the conference over to chief investor relations officer ms gabrielle brown please go ahead ms brown thank you krista good morning and welcome to our fiscal

2026 second quarter earnings call joining me on the call today are lachlan murdoch Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer, John Nallin, President and Chief Operating Officer, Steve Tomczyk, our Chief Financial Officer. First, Lachlan and Steve will give some prepared remarks on the most recent quarter, and then we'll take questions from the investment community. Please note that this call may include forward-looking statements regarding Fox Corporation's financial performance and operating results. These statements are based on management's current expectations, and actual results could differ from what is stated as a result of certain factors identified on today's call and in the company's SEC filing. Additionally, this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EPS and adjusted EBITDA, or EBITDA as we refer to it on this call. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and our SEC filings, which are available in the Investor Relations section of our website. We also refer to free cash flow, which we define as net cash provided by operating activities, plus capital expenditures. And with that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Lachlan.

Thank you, Gabby, and thank you all for joining us this morning. As you can see from our release, the operating and financial momentum that we have delivered over the last several years, has continued to build over the first half of fiscal 2026. It is the product of both a highly differentiated strategy and high-quality execution that reflect the power of our leadership brands across news, sports, streaming, and entertainment. Our favorable results were broad-based, including notable strength in advertising revenue, where despite high political advertising a year ago, we still adroitly grew total company advertising revenue. I made the comment last quarter that we were experiencing the most robust advertising market we have seen for some time. That remained true during the second quarter, and it continues to be true today, where we are seeing unabated healthy trends and positive metrics across our portfolio. In sports, we achieved record-breaking ad revenue for the Major League Baseball postseason, capped off by a seven-game World Series, while we also generated records for both the National Football League and college football regular seasons. Looking forward, we've had a strong NFL postseason, and we're now gearing up for our marquee motorsports events, the Daytona 500 and Indy 500, and, of course, the highly anticipated FIFA Men's World Cup, which starts in June. At news, despite comparisons to a heavy political news cycle in the prior year, we not only grew advertising revenue in the second quarter, but also achieved a highest second quarter advertising revenue ever. News business, further demographic expansion, and pricing growth in both direct response and national advertising all contributed to this strong result distribution revenue grew 4% during the quarter with subscriber declines notably improving sequentially even when excluding the contribution from Fox 1 which continues to exceed our expectations driven by both direct signups as well as part at this point we have not observed any noticeable cannibalization of traditional subscribers a result of our targeted marketing to cord cutters and cord nevers. Although Fox One launched just five months ago, we are encouraged by consumer reception to the product and we have already gained meaningful insights into audience engagement trends. While live sporting events continue to drive the majority of engagement, news accounts for approximately one-third of total minutes viewed on Fox One. Notably, news viewers engage with the platform twice as many days per week as non-news viewers and watching it nearly three times as many minutes per week on average. These patterns reinforce our view that Fox 1 is not only the premier destination for live sports but also the leading platform for timely relevant live news streaming. Whether streaming, linear, social or digital, Fox News media media continues to meet our audiences where they are. Over the past 12 months, a fast-moving and consequential news cycle has reinforced Fox News Media's leadership position, with audiences turning to the network for live coverage and in-depth analysis. Fox News again finished the quarter as the most-watched cable network in total day while maintaining its lead as the most-watched cable news network and producing the top 11 cable news programs. Again, according to recent Nielsen data, Fox News is the number one cable news network among all three political parties, which bodes well for the upcoming political election cycle. On the digital side, social media views for Fox News Digital were up an astounding 170 percent over the prior year, and both Fox News and Fox Business ranked number one in YouTube video views amongst their peers during the quarter. There is no question that Fox News Media remains front and center with today's audiences while actively engaging with the next generation of news consumers. We are focused on expanding our podcast content and talent across Fox News and the broader Fox platform, supporting our strategy to meet our audiences wherever they are. underscoring fan engagement across the fox brands fox sports ended 2025 as the leader in live sports event viewing a title it has held for six of the last seven years from the world series that drew over 27 million viewers for game seven to a 10-year high in nfl regular season viewership and the big 10 championship setting the record from any conference championship game on any network, the strength of the Fox Sports portfolio is unmatched. We capped the season with the Seattle Seahawks' NFC Championship victory over the LA Rams, drawing 46 million viewers and providing a powerful lead-in to Fox Entertainment's Memory of a Killer, the most-watched series premiere on any network this season, with over 11 million viewers across multiple platforms. The trend of strong engagement was further extended at Tubi. Tubi delivered its most streamed quarter of all time and grew total view time 27% year over year, supported by an expanding content slate, including the NFL Thanksgiving game simulcast and the premiere of Sideline 2, a Tubi original that has become a fan favorite. This engagement growth was the strongest in seven quarters and powered by an on-demand viewing, which is over 95% of consumption on Tubi. Tubi's most streamed quarter translated into record quarterly revenue, which grew 19% in the quarter on an absolute basis. And this revenue growth once again translated to the bottom line, with Tubi achieving EVA. profitability for the second quarter in a row. Meaningful audience engagement is a consistent and enduring theme across our results, highlighting Fox's unique cultural position. Ensuring that we constantly and deeply connect with fans across our brands is at the forefront of our strategy. As an example of this strategy in action, total minutes viewed across sports, news, entertainment, and Tubi increased 15% year over year in calendar year 2025. Amid strong competition, Fox stands out through compelling storytelling and deliberate investment in fan-driven content that delivers unmasked real-time reach. Together, these elements reinforce Fox's position as a trusted destination for audiences today while building lasting connection with future fans. We enter the second half of our fiscal year with strong momentum and with confidence in our strategic direction. Our emphasis on live sports and news, together with the strength of Tubi and increasingly Fox One, has driven exceptional performance and reinforced our leadership position across the portfolio. This focus, together with our strong financial position and best-in-class balance sheet, underpin our ability to deliver sustained growth and shareholder value. And with that, I will turn the call over to Steve to take you through the details of the quarter.

Thanks, Laughlin, and good morning, everyone. Fox delivered yet another strong quarter, with our fiscal second quarter total revenues reaching $5.18 billion, a 2% increase from the prior year quarter. Distribution revenues grew a healthy 4%, reflecting the strength of our brands and must-have nature of our channels. Advertising revenues grew 1%, despite facing a difficult comparison to last year's record political cycle driven by strong linear pricing across our portfolio, continued robust revenue growth at Tubi, and a seven-game World Series at Sport. Content and other revenues were flat compared to the prior year quarter, as higher sports sub-licensing revenues were offset by lower entertainment content revenues. Quarterly adjusted EBITDA was $692 million as compared to the $781 million reported in the prior year quarter, as the increase in revenues was offset by higher expenses. This included growth-driven spend at our digital-led growth initiatives and higher sports programming and production costs, partially offset by lower entertainment programming and production costs. Net income attributable to stockholders was $229 million or $0.52 per share compared to the $373 million or $0.81 per share reported in the prior year period. Excluding non-core items, adjusted net income was $360 million and adjusted ETS was $0.82. Turning to our segments, starting with cable, which delivered revenues of $2.28 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $687 million, both representing growth of 5% versus the prior year quarter. Cable advertising revenues grew a robust 7%, driven by higher pricing at news and sport. Cable distribution revenues increased 5%, as pricing gains from our affiliate renewals outpaced the impact from net subscriber declines, which continued to improve both inclusive and excluding the contribution from FOX1. Cable content and other revenues grew 4%, predominantly due to high sports sub-licensing revenues, which were offset by a corresponding level of sports rights expenses. Reported expense growth at Cable was 5%, with high sports programming and production costs partially offset by lower news gathering costs relating to our coverage of last year's presidential election. Now turning to our television segment, which reported $2.94 billion in quarterly revenues. Advertising revenues at television were unchanged as continued growth at Tubi, the impact of additional MLB post-season gains and pricing strength across our sports schedule were offset primarily by the absence of last year's political advertising revenues. Television distribution revenues increased 1% in the quarter as healthy growth in fees across Fox owned and affiliated stations more than offset the impact from industry subscriber declines. Television content and other revenues were down 19% year-over-year, primarily due to lower revenues tied to our entertainment production studios, which were impacted by the timing of deliveries. Expense growth of our television segment was held to a modest 1%, driven by high sports programming rights and production costs, and continued investment at Tubi, partially offset by lower entertainment programming and production costs. All in, EBITDA at our television segment was $143 million, compared to the $205 million in the prior year quarter, trading free cash flow where we recorded a deficit of $791 million this quarter. This is consistent with the seasonality of our working capital cycle, where the first half of our fiscal year reflects the concentration of payments for sports rights and build-up of advertising-related receivables. both of which reverse in the second half of our fiscal year. In terms of capital allocation, demonstrating our commitment to utilizing our full buyback authorization, fiscal year to date we have repurchased an additional $1.8 billion through our share buyback program. This brings the total cumulative amount repurchased to $8.4 billion, or approximately 35% of our total shares outstanding since the launch of the buyback program in 2019. This includes $1.5 billion of the accelerated share repurchase transaction we announced last quarter, for which the initial tranche of approximately 8.5 million Class A and 10.9 million Class B shares have been retired, with the remainder to be settled during the second half of this fiscal year. In addition, today we announced the $0.28 per share semi-annual dividend. With this dividend distribution, our total cumulative cash return to shareholders in the form of both dividends and share buybacks will have reached approximately $10.4 billion since the establishment of Foxcorp. These capital return measures are supported by the strength of our balance sheet, where So we ended the quarter with approximately $2 billion in cash and $6.6 billion in debt. And with that, I'll turn the call back over to Gabby.

Thanks, Eve. And now we will be happy to take questions from the investment community.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to emphasize the functionality for the question and answer If you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a tone indicating you have been placed in queue. you may remove yourself from cue at any time by pressing the star then one if you are using a speakerphone please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers it has been requested that you limit yourself to one question once again if you have a question please press star then one at this time one moment for the first question our first question comes from John Pudelik with UBS, please go ahead.

Great, thanks. Good morning, everyone. It looks like cable advertising is really the standout. Can we talk a little bit about that? First, on the news side, are you guys closing the gap in terms of CPMs with broadcasting? And how should we expect that to move forward as the comps get easier as we move into the midterm elections? That's on the news side. For sports, any color there in terms of pricing and how should we think of how you guys look at profitability of the World Cup this year versus what you've had in the past given it's in the U.S.? Thanks.

Hey, good morning, John. Thank you. Good to hear your voice. First on cable advertising, the news, I wouldn't say the news advertising market, but certainly the advertising market for Fox News has been incredibly robust. This half, we've added about 200 new advertisers, and you have to remember that's on top of the 350 new advertisers that we added last year. So the demand for the product and the demand for the audience remains incredibly strong. That's also, you know, reflected in our scatter pricing for news, which is, you know, which is up sort of an embarrassing 46% or 47% year-on-year. We don't compare scatter pricing in news to the upfront because news doesn't have traditionally large upfront, so we compare it sort of on year-on-year pricing. So scatter pricing is very strong, direct response pricing is strong, and, you know, So we couldn't be more pleased with the performance of advertising sales at Fox News. Moving forward into the political cycle, we expect that's only a positive for us. We expect a robust political advertising cycle. Of course, we benefit from that primarily at our local station group. But if you remember from the last political cycle, news has started to see a growing appetite for national political advertising, and we would expect to be the primary beneficiary of that Fox News. And why do we expect to be the primary beneficiary? Because Fox News is not only the number one news source for Republicans and conservatives, but it's also the number one that has more Democrats and more independents watching Fox News than watching our competitors. So we feel that we're in a very good position going forward into this political cycle. As for the – I think your second question was on the World Cup. Will it be profitable? Yes, it will. There's a tremendous excitement around the World Cup by, you know, the sponsors and other traditional advertisers. We're looking forward to a great competition and to a sort of robust advertising market on our – Next question, please.

Our next question comes from the line of Jessica Reeve-Ehrlich with Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Two questions. On the NFL, like, step up, we all know that's coming, and obviously the positive is it will give you certainty. but you know we're also expecting like a big step up in cost I don't know if you can address that or not but how do you think about offsetting increased costs you're thinking there are there any new ways to monetize like how are you thinking about the NFL like new contracts and then separately it's a little bit weird but it's I mean unusual for me but it's we never talk about entertainment on this call but it seems like you've you've been making a lot of talent deals in the last few months and it just seems notable so how are you thinking about the entertainment business overall are there any changes

that you're contemplating thank you I hope you well so starting with the the NFL look we don't want to speculate in terms of what the yeah how the NFL will will choose to move forward in terms of their option to renegotiate their rights. I would agree with you that obviously the great benefit of that is giving us certainty as we move forward. It's obviously tremendous content for us, and they've been a really fantastic partner. And although this year's Super Bowl is not ours, we're certainly looking forward to it as we're all all fans. So, again, without speculating, you know, we have the ability to offset a portion of any kind of cost increases because we look at our sport portfolio as a whole. So, you know, we would certainly, you know, consider, you know, balancing or rebalancing our portfolio as we move forward, you know, when those when those opportunities become available, so we feel pretty comfortable about sort of the sports business as we move forward. On entertainment, you know, we continue with our existing strategy on the entertainment network. You know, as you know, we balance scripted and non-scripted programming efficiently to maintain sort of an efficient and ultimately sort of profitable cost base in that business. But we will always sign first-look deals and their creative deals with the best content creators and producers and writers in the industry. And, you know, the proof is in the pudding because, you know, this past season, with the launches of Good Medicine, with the launch of Fear Facts, Memory of a Killer, all these launches achieved over 10 million viewers in their first week across multiple platforms. This is the best season launch we've had in approximately 13 years. So – and that's also reflected in revenue at the Entertainment Network, which was up in this time in many years. So we're pleased with that strategy. It's not a signing first-up deals or signing a creative deals. It's something that we've always done, and we'll continue to do so.

Next question, please, Operator. Your next question comes from Michael Ng with Goldman Sachs. please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thank you for the question. I just have two. First, Lachlan, I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the performance of Fox One, you know, what's been driving the upside relative to your expectations. And as we go into the rest of the year and think about things like sports seasonality, do you expect any of the subscriber momentum to be impacted by that. And then second for Steve, relatedly, could you just explain where FOX1 sits in the P&L? You know, is it in distribution revenue, is it in corporate and other, or both perhaps? But I think there have been some disclosure changes, so just wanted to make sure we understood how FOX1 was flowing through the P&L. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Mike. All right, I'll start with the first question. So we are incredibly pleased with the performance of FOX1. It has exceeded our expectations in terms of its enthusiastic take-up by consumers. I think as I might have mentioned in my comments, and you would know, about two-thirds of the audience are sports fans and come to the platform first for sports, and about a third are news fans and regular news viewers. We would maintain our expectations of having sort of low to mid single digit millions of of subscribers over the next three or four years. We're well on track to hit those benchmarks for us. And we'll see as we move forward with sports seasonality. What we're actively doing, very proactively doing, is, you know, promoting the sports now that the football season is over, promoting, you know, the tremendous sports state that that we have on FOX1 on the platform, whether it's Daytona 500 or Indy 500, the start of the baseball season, and obviously moving forward into the World Cup. So it's too early to tell what sort of – how significant seasonality will be, but we're actively working to ameliorate any sort of declines that we might have.

Hey, Mark, it's Steve. Just on how we treat FOX1 through the P&L, so the best way to think about it is the platform cost, the cost of sort of running FOX1 as a business sits in our corporate segment, and so you're seeing that the corporate segment, the EBITDA negativity there has gone from 81 to 138. That's predominantly sort of the FOX1 cost. It then pays like, almost like a virtual NVPD, it then pays an affiliate fee to the networks for the programming, and we record that in the two segments, cable and TV.

Next question, please. Your next question comes from Michael Morris with Guggenheim. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. I want to ask one about distribution and then one about Tubi, if I could. On distribution, can you share a bit more detail on the improvement in the rate of subscriber declines that you saw? How much did that improve? What do you think the drivers are there? And I think you're in your last year of renewals under your current contract vintages. How do you see yourself positioned for the upcoming renewals? So that's the first question. And then second on 2B, can you share some more detail about the growth rate that you saw there on advertising during the quarter, how that's pacing for the balance of the year and what some of the drivers there are? Thank you.

All right. Thanks, Michael. Well, on distribution, we're pleased to see the sub-6.5 percent decline in our subscriber base. That's 6.3 percent, but it's – I don't know why we don't say 6.3, but it's sub-6.5-6.3. And that's a great improvement, you know, and consistent improvement actually over some So we're very pleased to see that. That number excludes FOX1. So if we were to include our FOX1 subscribers that are paying subscribers of our content just in the way that the cable subscribers are, that number would be better. But we've chosen out of an abundance of caution not to include the FOX1 subscribers in that subscriber numbers. And nevertheless, we're very pleased with a 6.3 percent decline and improving. What's driving that? It's too early to say, but we would expect that the emergence of skinny bundles in the cable universe would be playing a factor and potentially an increasing factor in keeping sub declines down. It's early because a lot of the distributors are only launching now or planning launch soon their Skinny Bundle packages. For us, for Fox, we like Skinny Bundles. We are in the Skinny Bundles. We are paid by the distributors for all of our channels. We bundle our channels when we sell them to distributors, and we give them some flexibility in how they want to take those channels and market them to their consumers. So, for us, skinny bundles are a positive, and we look forward to distributors continuing to make their packages more effective, more efficient to their consumer. On Tubi, you know, Tubi has continued to grow. Obviously, TBT growth is the lead sort of indicator of what we can then translate into TVT growth of 27% coupled with a very strong upfront for Tubi, a healthy direct response and partner trends, and also direct advertiser trends with big clients. All of that really drove that revenue growth of 19% in the second quarter. You have to remember that Tubi's audience is younger, it's more diverse, and it's hard to reach. 70% of Tubi's user base are cord cutters or cord nevers. This is higher than any of our competitive set and really puts us in a prime position with our advertising clients.

Yeah, Mike, just to pick up, I think you asked also about vintages in terms of renewals. We're pretty much done for the years. There's not much in the back end of our current fiscal year, but then we ran. in 27 and 28. 27 will be more skewed towards TV in 28.

Next question, please, operator. Your next question comes from the line of Robert Fishman with Moffitt Nathanson. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Can I just follow up on the skinny bundles? We've talked about this for many years and waiting for these launches. The upcoming launch with YouTube TV's sports pack, depending on how aggressively they price it, I'm curious if you can talk specifically about the Fox News economics, which I don't think is included in that specific package. And if there is a trade down from other pay TV subscribers who might only want sports, are there protections in place that you were just kind of referencing that can limit that downside? And then on the sports betting side, just curious, your updated thoughts on the prediction market, whether this is a new opportunity to license or, you know, how you see this playing out like the partnership ESPN did with DraftKings, how do you think you want to approach the whole FanDuel partnership in general? Thank you so much.

Thanks, Robert. So on Skinny Bundles, as I said, we are a net beneficiary of Skinny Bundles. The short answer to your question is yes. We – as we sell to our distributors our entire bouquet of channels, we are not impacted by whether they choose to offer a sports bundle or a news bundle or another type of bundle. They acquire our channels as a bundle, and then they are – they have flexibility in terms of how they market them to their consumers. So we do have that downside protection when it comes to how skinny bundles are offered as each distributor chooses to, you know, uniquely offer them to their customer base. I should just say that it's – we are a fan of the bundle, right, of the core bundle. You know, we think consumers and sort of our consumers want to enjoy all of our content and enjoy all of our brands. And that's why we have number one sports brand and the number one news brand in the market. So I should note that YouTube post this football season is offering a discounted bundle for all traditional channels. So before they launch their sports pack, they're actually offering a bundle, including news, including sports, and other channels to retain their customers. So we're a big fan of the big bundle. Obviously, YouTube and others are big fans of the big bundle. But when ultimately these skinny bundles roll out, we think we're a net beneficiary of them. In terms of sports betting and prediction markets, I should preface this with saying that, you know, we continue to be big fans of Flutter and FanDuel. Our 2.5% of Flutter is worth about $700 million. And our option, if you look at these average sort of valuation, of our option of 18.6% in FanDuel remains worth about $2.1 billion. If you take the two of those together at $2.8 billion, that's worth about $6 to $7 per share on our share price, which we don't think is reflected today. So we're big fans of sports wagering, particularly of Flutter and FanDuel, and we're watching the prediction markets' growth with interest. It is an opportunity for us in terms of advertising and sort of deals with these emerging prediction markets. And I think over time you'll see revenue flowing to us from an advertising – significant revenue flowing to us from an advertising perspective from these clients.

We'll take the last question, Operator.

The last question comes from Thomas Yee with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Back on the ad market, Lachlan, you mentioned new advertisers coming into news. Can you just help unpack which categories you're seeing particular strength in? Or are these new categories, like the prediction market one that you just mentioned, or GLP ones and consumer AI services being additive? And then on the midterms, is there a view on whether more political spend, either at at the national or local level migrates towards CTV, and how do you position 2B in that particular instance to capture more of the political revenue opportunity?

Thanks, Thomas. So on the ad market, if I just step back one step for some perspective, if you look Look at the Fox, you know, portfolio of brands and businesses. About 94% of our – sorry, I should preface this – our national advertising sales, 94% come from sports, news, and streaming. 6% comes from entertainment. Of course, you know, what we know is the live news, live sports, and streaming are the segments where there is growth and there is, you know, great advertiser appetite for those segments, and the vast majority of our business is in those segments. When I look at the category spend, and again, I'm just talking national, and I can – you didn't ask about, but I can touch briefly on local in a minute, but if I look at advertising category across our sort of national portfolio, this includes sports and news, you know, of the top ten categories that we track, you know, financial, pharma, retail, packaged goods, et cetera, automotive, eight of the top ten categories are significantly up. We've had significant demand for the A of the top categories. Leading that is financial, which is obviously really led by the insurance companies. So great strength across all categories. The ones that are modestly down, entertainment, which is just, you know, movie premieres, and then sort of government and some sort of corporate political spending, which we expect to obviously increase as we get into the political cycle. You know, so what does that translate to? Well, at Fox News Media, we've had the highest ad revenue in Fox News Media's history for the first half with, as I mentioned, 200 new advertisers added. For Tubi, the highest quarterly, weekly, and daily ad revenue in Tubi history. On Fox Sports, in the NFL, the highest ad revenue for any Sunday package in history. the highest ad revenue for post-season and NFC championships game in Fox Sports history, the highest full-season ad revenue on college football in Fox history, and in Major League Baseball, the highest post-season ad revenue in Fox Sports history. So, tremendous strength. I should also mention, not to leave them out, at Fox Entertainment, we had ad revenue exceeding prior year for the first time in four years. Locally, as I mentioned, the local market is more mixed. This is really a factor of the Super Bowl and the Olympics in this quarter we're now entering, but we feel pretty good about the local market, although it is mixed as historically is always true, Super Bowls and Olympic cycles absorb some of that local advertising revenue. Now, it's a great quarter for us, and the momentum continues into the third quarter, but I should just say that if you look at the sustainability of this strategy, if I look back over four years or five years to 2021, if I look at – Our peer set, excluding Fox, total advertising, including streaming as a group, it's obviously mixed within it, it's down about 4% CAGR in advertising revenue over those – each year over those four or five years. At Fox, we're up about 8%, of course, including streaming, you know, over those four or five years, 8% per year on CAGR. And I think that just shows the strength of the strategy, the sustainability of the strategy, and why we're so excited about Fox's future.

Great. Thank you so much. At this point, we're out of time. But if you have any further questions, please give me or Charlie Costanzo a call. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you, everyone. Have a good day.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the Fox Corporation second quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings conference call. Thank you.