Fox Corporation (FOX) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending September 30, 2022

November 1, 2022 8:30 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the FOX Corporation First Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 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 that functionality for the question-and-answer queue will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] 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.

Gabrielle Brown

Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to our fiscal 2023 first quarter earnings call. Joining me on the call today are Lachlan Murdoch, Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer; John Nallen, Chief Operating Officer; and Steve Tomsic, 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 filings.

Additionally, this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measures, including 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.

And with that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Lachlan.

Lachlan Murdoch

Thanks Gabby and thank you all for joining us this morning to discuss our first quarter results, and Happy Halloween everyone. I was trying to think of a Halloween reference or a joke, but in fact there's nothing scary in these results.

Actually fiscal ‘23 has started off – by the way, that's called a dad joke in my household. Fiscal ‘23 has started off on a solid footing for us, supported by healthy viewership at sports and news, revenue growth across our platforms, and impressive momentum at TUBI. Financially we delivered 5% growth in our top line revenues, led by an 8% increase in advertising and 3% growth in affiliate revenues.

Our advertising growth in the quarter was driven by strong pricing at FOX News and FOX Sports. Record first quarter political revenues at the local stations, and in a quarter where industry-wide digital advertising revenues appear to have been under pressure, to be posted standout revenue growth of almost 30%.