NEWS CORPORATION (NWSA): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $30.65, NEWS CORPORATION (NWSA) is priced for +7.2% growth. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating; individual model outputs and user-controlled scenarios are analytical inputs, not Boothcheck targets. Narrative composed 2026-06-27.

Generated: 2026-08-30 · Exported: 2026-08-31 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/NWSA

Headline

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

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

The operating-margin figure is value-band context at year 12: derived from the framework's value band, a separate calculation — not part of the priced-in solve.

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

How unusual the bet is: n/a

Valuation X-Ray

Asset, earnings-power and peer-multiple models all land far below the price; ONLY the growth-DCF reaches it. The bet is durable compounding the static frames structurally cannot price (a moat/durability premium).

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.

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

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 8.5%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=6)

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

One or more material disclosed units has unresolved economics. Unknown/general is not evidence of homogeneity: segment SOTP is primary but incomplete, consolidated cash flow may remain only a secondary cross-check when every unit shares an enterprise basis, and one sector multiple or target margin is withheld.

No total common-equity value is stated. One or more material units lack a supported unit value. The displayed values are an indicative subtotal; consolidated debt and cash cannot be applied to a fraction of the company.

Solvency

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

Bullet Takeaways

• News Corp's Class A voting shares change hands around $25.27, a discount to the Class B nonvoting line near $28.75, an unusual flip that says the market is pricing the controlled-company structure, not the underlying earnings stream, which are identical across both classes.
• The clearest risk is concentration in declining formats: circulation, subscription, and advertising together make up roughly half the revenue mix, and the company competes "from other providers of information, news, real estate-related and entertainment products and services."
• Capital return is the lever to watch: the board authorized a program to buy back "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 shrinking about 1.6% a year.

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)

• FDS (FACTSET RESEARCH SYSTEMS INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …0001013237 2025 FY FALSE P3Y P3Y http://fasb.org/us-gaap/2025#PrepaidExpenseAndOtherAssetsCurrent http://fasb.org/us-gaap/2025#PrepaidExpenseAndOtherAssetsCurrent http://fasb.org/us-gaap/2025#AccountsPayableAndAccruedLiabilitiesCurrent http://fasb.org/us-gaap/2025#AccountsPayableAndAccruedLiabilitiesCurrent…
• FY2025 10-K: …a specified timeframe through the life of our share repurchase program. It is expected that share repurchases will be paid using existing and future cash generated by operations. Refer to Part II, Item 7. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, Liquidity and Capital…
• MORN (MORNINGSTAR, INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …morn:MorningstarRetirementSegmentMember 2025-01-01 2025-12-31 0001289419 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember morn:DealXMember 2025-01-01 2025-12-31 0001289419 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember morn:DealXMember us-gaap:CorporateAndOtherMember 2025-01-01 2025-12-31 0001289419 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember…
• FY2025 10-K: DisclosureMember us-gaap:FairValueMeasurementsRecurringMember 2025-12-31 0001289419 us-gaap:DebtSecuritiesMember us-gaap:FairValueMeasurementsRecurringMember us-gaap:FairValueInputsLevel1Member 2025-12-31 0001289419 us-gaap:DebtSecuritiesMember us-gaap:FairValueMeasurementsRecurringMember…
• TRI (THOMSON REUTERS CORPORATION)
• FY2025 40-F: Common Shares TRI The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC 3.350% Notes due 2026 (1) TRI26 The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC 5.850% Notes due 2040 (1) TRI40 The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC 4.500% Notes due 2043 (1) TRI143A The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC 5.650% Notes due 2043 (1) TRI143B The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC 5.500% Debentures due 2035…
• FY2025 40-F: …by any of the registrant's executive officers during the relevant recovery period pursuant to §240.10D-1(b). ☐ Auditor Name : PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Auditor Location : New York, NY , USA Auditor Firm ID : 238 UNDERTAKING AND CONSENT TO SERVICE OF PROCESS a. Undertaking. The Registrant undertakes to make…
• SPGI (S&P Global Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …the value of the S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC joint venture include an estimated discount rate, a range of assumptions that form the basis of the expected future net cash flows (e.g., the revenue growth rates and operating margins), and a company specific beta. The significant judgmental assumptions used that…
• FY2025 10-K: (10.13)*† Form of S&P Dow Jones Indices 2024 Long-Term Cash Incentive Compensation Plan , incorporated by reference from the Registrant's Form 10-Q filed on April 25, 2024. (10.14)*† Form of S&P Dow Jones Indices 2025 Long-Term Cash Incentive Compensation Plan , incorporated by reference from the Registrant's Form…
• MCO (Moody’s Corporation)
• FY2025 10-K: -gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember mco:DSBankingProductAndServiceMember mco:MoodysAnalyticsMember 2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0001059556 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember mco:TransactionRevenueMember mco:InsuranceMember mco:MoodysAnalyticsMember 2025-01-01 2025-12-31 0001059556 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember…
• FY2025 10-K: …mco:CorporateFinanceMember mco:MoodysInvestorsServiceMember 2024-01-01 2024-12-31 0001059556 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember mco:TransactionRevenueMember mco:CorporateFinanceMember mco:MoodysInvestorsServiceMember 2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0001059556 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember mco:RecurringRevenueMember…

Digital Real Estate Services (reported)

• ZG (ZILLOW GROUP, INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …and prevent or inhibit the ability of customers to access or effect transactions using our services. Since our customers may rely on our products and services, including our real estate transaction services and customer relationship management tools, for important aspects of their personal lives and businesses,…
• FY2025 10-K: …than ours. Any of our current or future competitors could merge with each other or a separate entity, which may enable them to compete with us even more vigorously and represent a greater share of consumer engagement, real estate listings, and transactions. Additionally, we compete against mobile apps and websites…
• CSGP (COSTAR GROUP, INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …to our customers under subscription-based license agreements that generally renew automatically, a majority of which have a term of at least one year. Upon renewal, many of the subscription contract rates may change in accordance with contract provisions or as a result of contract renegotiations. To encourage…
• FY2025 10-K: …property owners, real estate agents and brokers, and landlords, in each case, typically through a fixed monthly fee for its subscription-based advertising services. Other subscription-based services include (i) real estate and lease management solutions to commercial customers and real estate investors, (ii) access…
• OPEN (Opendoor Technologies Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …and in person assessments of the home, as well as additional review from our in-house pricing analysts, to finalize the offer. We dynamically adjust our offers to account for the level of certainty in pricing each home. This degree of certainty can be impacted by factors such as macro conditions, local market…
• FY2025 10-K: …we now have the ability to make offers in substantially all residential zip codes. We are focused on growing market share across this expanded footprint, as we believe greater scale improves awareness, trust and adoption, operational cost efficiencies, and pricing competitiveness and provides more data. We have…
• BEKE (KE Holdings Inc.)
• FY2025 20-F: …from housing customers. We have also expanded into home renovation and furnishing and home rental services, addressing long-standing industry pain points such as fragmented service quality and lack of transparency. By providing standardized and professional renovation and rental services, we are allowed to serve…
• FY2025 20-F: …services industry in China. We started to research on VR technology from as early as 2015 and built our VR lab in early 2016. We believe that the power of VR technology can help agents on our platform grow their business, get more housing customers, and deliver top-level services, especially when a growing number of…

Book Publishing (reported)

• NYT (THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY)
• FY2025 10-K: …and profitability. The number of print subscribers continues to decline as the media industry has transitioned from being primarily print-focused to digital, and we do not expect this trend to reverse. We are limited in our ability to offset the resulting print revenue declines with revenue from home-delivery price…
• FY2025 10-K: …our best lever for long-term value creation because it generates recurring consumer revenue; has the potential to generate more advertising, affiliate and other revenue opportunities; and contributes to higher marketing efficiency. We plan to continue our emphasis on growing subscribers through our focus on promoting…
• TRI (THOMSON REUTERS CORPORATION)
• FY2025 40-F: …by any of the registrant's executive officers during the relevant recovery period pursuant to §240.10D-1(b). ☐ Auditor Name : PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Auditor Location : New York, NY , USA Auditor Firm ID : 238 UNDERTAKING AND CONSENT TO SERVICE OF PROCESS a. Undertaking. The Registrant undertakes to make…
• FY2025 40-F: …the Registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☒ No ☐ Indicate by check mark…
• PSO (PEARSON PLC)
• FY2025 20-F: …shipment when title passes to the customer, when the Group has a present right to payment and the significant risks and rewards of ownership have passed to the customer. Revenue from physical books sold through the direct print rental method is recognised over the rental period, as the customer is simultaneously…
• FY2025 20-F: …any AI), as laws and regulations evolve and develop. If the Group fails to successfully invest in and deliver the right products and services or fails to respond to government concerns and/or competitive threats, its sales and profits could be adversely impacted. A common trend facing all the Group's businesses is…
• WLY (JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …titles, and discontinue the sale of others in the normal course of our business. We also create adaptations of original content for specific markets based on customer demand. Our general practice is to revise our textbooks every 3 to 5 years, as warranted, and to revise other titles as appropriate. Subscription-based…
• FY2025 10-K: …the years ended April 30, 2025 and 2024: 2025 2024 Key growth strategies for the Research segment include publishing more peer-reviewed research and expanding our journal portfolio, thereby increasing the value of our Journal Subscriptions (pay to read) and Transformational Agreements (pay to read and publish),…
• MH (MCGRAW HILL, INC.)
• (no filing in the citation store)
• DLX (DELUXE CORP)
• FY2025 10-K: …and promotional products are highly competitive and fragmented, with competitors including traditional storefront printing companies, office superstores, wholesale printers, online printing companies, small business product resellers, and providers of custom apparel and gifts. We believe our competitive advantages…
• FY2025 10-K: …as well as from direct mail and online sellers of personal and business checks, check printing software providers, and certain major retailers. In addition, the ongoing shift toward digital payment solutions continues to exert downward pressure on the demand for traditional check products, resulting in persistent…
• CMPR (Cimpress plc)
• FY2025 10-K: , laws and regulations, that affect our businesses, including related to import tariffs; our failure to manage the growth and complexity of our business; our failure to maintain compliance with the covenants in our debt documents or to pay our debts when due; competitive pressures; general economic conditions; and…
• FY2025 10-K: -party fulfillers. Advertising spend as a percent of external revenue was about 5% in fiscal year 2025, although it also varies by business. 2. PrintBrothers: Consists of our druck.at, Printdeal, and WIRmachenDRUCK businesses. PrintBrothers businesses serve customers throughout Europe, primarily in Austria, Belgium,…

News Media (reported)

• NYT (THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY)
• FY2025 10-K: …of which have attracted and any of which may further attract audiences, subscribers, advertisers and/or licensees to their platforms and away from ours. Our news and lifestyle products compete for audience, subscriptions, advertising, affiliate referrals and licensees with other providers of U.S. and global news and…
• FY2025 10-K: …make some of our content free as a way to generate large audiences that we monetize through advertising revenue, affiliate revenue or by eventually converting them into subscribers; this includes Wordle and Connections (daily digital word games) and portions of our audio and video journalism (which is distributed…
• FOX (FOX CORPORATION)
• FY2025 10-K: …through traditional and virtual MVPDs and other digital platforms, primarily in the U.S. The businesses in this segment include FOX News Media (which includes FOX News and FOX Business) and our primary cable sports programming networks FS1, FS2, the Big Ten Network and FOX Deportes. 4 The following table lists the…
• FY2025 10-K: …for sales of advertising time is based primarily on the anticipated and actually delivered size and demographic characteristics of audiences as determined by various measurement services, price, the time of day when the advertising is to be broadcast, competition from other cable networks, broadcast networks, cable…
• FOXA (FOX CORPORATION)
• FY2025 10-K: …through traditional and virtual MVPDs and other digital platforms, primarily in the U.S. The businesses in this segment include FOX News Media (which includes FOX News and FOX Business) and our primary cable sports programming networks FS1, FS2, the Big Ten Network and FOX Deportes. 4 The following table lists the…
• FY2025 10-K: …for sales of advertising time is based primarily on the anticipated and actually delivered size and demographic characteristics of audiences as determined by various measurement services, price, the time of day when the advertising is to be broadcast, competition from other cable networks, broadcast networks, cable…
• NXST (NEXSTAR MEDIA GROUP, INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …was launched in 2020, when we initiated the conversion of WGN America to NewsNation, leveraging our core competency in news and profitable foundation to build a network focused on providing unbiased, fact-based news. We believe there is significant growth potential for NewsNation as news networks are among the most…
• FY2025 10-K: …rights for regional and local sporting events. We compete against in-market broadcast station operators, cable networks and streaming services for exclusive access to this programming in our markets. In a different way, our local stations also compete with other stations in their markets to provide exclusive news…

Methodology Note

• Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
• Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
• Economic-unit decomposition (SOTP): each disclosed business unit is assigned its native valuation basis before any multiple is applied. Operating units are valued on enterprise value; funded financial units are valued on their own common equity, because their borrowings fund earning assets rather than levering the parent. A company total is stated only once every material unit carries a supported value and the parent capital bridge reconciles.
• Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
• Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.

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.