NEWS CORPORATION (NWSA): what the price requires

The current priced-in claim for NEWS CORPORATION (NWSA) is temporarily suppressed because the live engine record is unavailable. The dated report remains a snapshot, not a current market read.

Generated: 2026-07-14 · Exported: 2026-07-16 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/NWSA

Headline

FieldValue
TickerNWSA
CompanyNEWS CORPORATION
Current price$27.77/sh
CompositionCirculation and subscription 36% / Advertising 16% / Consumer 24% / Real estate 17% / Other 7%

What The Price Requires (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

FieldValue
Inversion basissegment

The price sits below what even a 5%/yr operating-profit decline would warrant; the inversion reports a bound, not a solved growth path.

Solve inputs: computed at a 8.8% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage.

How unusual the bet is: within-range (limited comparison data)

ReferenceValue
cohort percentile (of 225 peers)0
implied end-window share0%

Valuation X-Ray

The price is supported by asset-based and earnings-power and relative-multiple value, while growth-DCF lands below the price. A value/asset-supported name, not a pure growth bet.

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

FamilyMedian price/FVModelsReads
Asset1.05x4expensive
Earnings0.85x2justifies
Relative1.12x5expensive
Growth1.58x1expensive

Families that justify the price: Asset, Earnings, Relative Families that call it expensive: Growth

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 8.3%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=12)

ModelFamilyFVPrice/FVApplicableMethodology
DCF Perpetual GrowthGrowth$0.00—noNegative/zero FCF — equity value floored at $0
DCF Exit MultipleGrowth$0.00—noNegative/zero FCF or EBITDA — equity value floored at $0
Relative ValuationRelative$24.801.12xyesP/E 18x (static sector reference · 2026-04), scenarios: 15.2x / 18.0x / 20.8x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 20.54x
Simple DDMGrowth——no—
Two-Stage DDMGrowth——no—
Simple Excess ReturnAsset$22.121.26xyesBV/sh $15.45, ROE (TTM) 13.2%, ke 9.3%
Two-Stage Excess ReturnAsset$26.241.06xyes5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3%
Discounted Future Market CapGrowth$17.561.58xyesRev $8.8B, growth -0% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 1.5x / 1.8x / 2.0x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 8x)
Peter Lynch Fair ValueRelative$24.121.15xyesEPS $2.01, growth 2% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=6.79 (Overvalued)
Margin TrajectoryGrowth——no—
Earnings Power ValueEarnings——no—
Residual IncomeAsset$27.121.02xyesBV $15.45 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 13.2% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 8.6%/yr
Graham NumberAsset$26.431.05xyes√(22.5 × EPS $2.01 × BVPS $15.45) — Graham's conservative floor
EV/EBITDA RelativeRelative$7.273.82xyesEBITDA $0.40B × sector EV/EBITDA 12.0x
FCF YieldEarnings——no—
SBC-Adj FCF YieldEarnings——no—
Ben Graham FormulaEarnings$64.860.43xyesEPS $2.01 × (8.5 + 2×15.0%) × (4.4 / 5.3%)
ROIC-Justified P/BAsset——no—
P/Sales SectorRelative$39.590.70xyesRevenue $8.80B × sector P/S 2.5x
PEG Fair ValueRelative$75.370.37xyesEPS $2.01 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 25.0% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 37.5x
Earnings YieldEarnings$21.731.28xyesEPS $2.01 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%)
Funds From Operations MultipleRelative——no—
Clinical Phase NPVGrowth——no—
MertonAsset——no—
V5 Mechanical———no—

Solvency

FieldValue
Net cash$167.0m
Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax)-0.28x (net cash)
Net debt / operating income (pre-tax)-0.18x (net cash)
Share count CAGR (buyback)-1.6%
Burning cashno

Interest expense is not separately reported in the latest filings, so interest coverage cannot be computed.

Bullet Takeaways

Bull Case

The most counterintuitive fact about this stock is sitting in the ticker itself. NWSA is the Class A voting line, and it trades below the Class B nonvoting line, around $25.27 (June 27, 2026) against roughly $28.75. The two classes have claims on the exact same five businesses, the exact same $2.01 in earnings per share, the exact same $15.45 of book value. The only difference is votes, and here votes carry a negative price. That happens when a controlling holder makes the votes economically inert for everyone else; the filing flags exactly this, that "holding a significant percentage of the voting power of the Company's outstanding voting stock" sits with the controlling family. For a buyer who never expected to swing a proxy fight, the practical read is that NWSA is the cheaper way to own the identical cash flows.

And the cash flows underneath are better than the conglomerate label suggests. Dow Jones is the crown asset, a subscription-driven financial-information franchise anchored by the Wall Street Journal and Barron's, described in the 10-K as a "financial news website targeting active investors" that earns recurring revenue rather than cyclical advertising. The second engine, Digital Real Estate Services, is the company's controlling interest in ASX-listed REA Group plus 80% of Move, a high-margin listed-classifieds business with genuine network effects. Both segments expanded margins in the most recent quarter, Dow Jones from 21.7% to 23% and digital real estate from 26.8% to 30.5%. These are not the economics of a dying newspaper company.

Management is returning capital while it reshapes the portfolio. The 2025 program authorizes repurchases of "up to $1 billion in the aggregate of the Company's outstanding Class A Common Stock and Class B Common Stock," and the share count is already declining about 1.6% annually. Buying back the voting class at a discount to the nonvoting class is, if anything, the more accretive use of that authorization. With $167 million of net cash and $2.17 billion of liquid assets on hand, the buyback is self-funded, not borrowed, which is the difference between a durable return program and a temporary one.

Bear Case

Read the earnings stream as a cyclical, because half of it is. The most recent quarter delivered a 67% jump in net income from continuing operations and an EPS print of $0.14 against $0.07 a year earlier, the kind of comparison that looks like a turnaround until you separate the segments doing the work from the ones being carried. Advertising, which is roughly 16% of the mix, moves with the ad cycle, and circulation faces the structural print decline the entire industry lives with. Peak quarterly comparisons in those lines are not sustainable earnings; they are the high side of a cycle that turns. The 10-K is direct that advertising competition rests on "product reach and engagement, advertising rates, advertiser results, availability of alternative media and q"uality, all of which compress in a downturn.

The demand-cycle exposure compounds with format risk. HarperCollins, about a quarter of revenue, sells into "a highly competitive market that is quickly changing and continues to see technological innovations," competing with Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster; consumer publishing earnings swing on a few title releases and consumer discretionary spending. The Australian masthead business and the broader news-media segment face both the ad cycle and secular circulation erosion at once. When several of the segments share the same macro sensitivity, the diversification the conglomerate structure promises turns out to be thinner than it looks, because the cycles overlap.

The valuation does not make a strong bear case on its own, which is its own kind of warning. Every value-based method lands at or below today's price; the price already embeds only modest operating-profit growth, low single digits, against what the business has actually shown. That is not a stock the market is asking to grow into a rich multiple; it is a stock the market has decided to discount despite reasonable economics. The discount usually reflects the controlled-company structure and the drag of the weaker segments, and neither resolves quickly. A holder is betting the discount narrows; the risk is that a structurally controlled, cyclically exposed media conglomerate simply trades cheap for a long time.

Valuation

What is the price actually asking the business to do? Surprisingly little. Working today's price backward into the assumption it embeds shows the market is paying for operating profit to grow only about 4.6% a year, against a company already running roughly a 10.4% operating margin. Set against News Corp's own history that requirement is unremarkable, landing close to the middle of where comparable companies have come out, not in the rare tail. The price is not a growth bet; it is a value-and-asset bet that the existing earnings hold.

The methods agree, and they agree on the cheap side. The asset-value lenses, book value plus profitability, residual income, a two-stage excess-return model, and a Graham floor, all land at or just below today's price (residual income reads the price at about 0.93 of its estimate, the Graham number and two-stage excess return at roughly 0.96). The peer-multiple lens lands at about 0.97 of its estimate, and the earnings-power methods reach well above the price, meaning trailing earnings alone more than support it. No family finds the stock expensive. When every approach clusters at or below the price like this, the spread itself is telling you the buyer is underwriting demonstrated economics, not a forward story.

The honest way to value this company is segment by segment, because a single blended multiple averages five different businesses into a number that fits none. Dow Jones belongs against financial-information names like S&P Global and Moody's; the real estate stake against listed-classifieds platforms; HarperCollins against Pearson and Wiley in the publishing market the filing calls "highly competitive." The blended multiple the price implies, just over 15 times earnings, sits below where the best of those parts would trade alone, which is the conglomerate discount made visible. On footing, the picture is comfortable: $167 million of net cash, $2.17 billion of liquid assets against $2.0 billion of gross debt, and a $1 billion repurchase authorization covering both share classes [per the FY2025 10-K]. The downside is not solvency; it is patience, the wait for the discount to close while the cyclical segments do what cyclical segments do.

Catalysts

The largest catalyst is the simplification of the portfolio. News Corp agreed to sell Foxtel to DAZN at an enterprise value of A$3.4 billion, a transaction that lifted $724 million of Foxtel debt off the consolidated balance sheet and removed a capital-intensive, low-growth segment from the story. The result is a company weighted more heavily toward its two best businesses, Dow Jones and digital real estate.

Recent results showed the mix shift in the numbers. Third-quarter fiscal 2025 revenue was $2.01 billion, up 1% year on year, but net income from continuing operations rose 67% to $107 million, with reported EPS from continuing operations of $0.14 versus $0.07 a year prior. Total Segment EBITDA climbed 12% to $290 million, driven by Dow Jones revenue growth of 6% with margins expanding from 21.7% to 23%, and Digital Real Estate Services lifting margins from 26.8% to 30.5% on a 5% revenue increase.

The forward question is the buyback and the discount. With a $1 billion authorization in place across both share classes and the Class A line trading below the Class B line, repurchases bought at the voting class are the most accretive deployment available. Each subsequent earnings print will show whether the cleaner, post-Foxtel company can keep margin expansion at its two quality segments ahead of the cyclical and secular pressures in the rest of the mix.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Dow Jones (reported)

Digital Real Estate Services (reported)

Book Publishing (reported)

News Media (reported)

Methodology Note

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.

Sources

News Corp Q3 FY2025 earnings release

View the full interactive NWSA report on boothcheck