Fox Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fox Corporation first quarter fiscal year 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in 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. If you should require assistance during the call, please press star, then zero. 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, Operator, and we apologize for the technical difficulties. But good morning and welcome to our Fiscal 2025 First Quarter Earnings Call. Joining me on the call today are Lachlan Murdoch, Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer, John Mallon, Chief Operating Officer, and Steve Tomczyk, our Chief Financial Officer. First, Laughlin 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.

Thank you, Gabby, and thank you all for joining us this morning to discuss our fiscal first quarter earnings. Today, we again reported strong operating and financial results. We've had a great quarter and a great start to our fiscal year. Our EBITDA of over $1 billion was up 21% on the back of sustained revenue growth, which this quarter reached 11%, demonstrating the power of our content and brands and the ability of our strategy to consistently deliver outstanding results. In the month of October alone, Fox networks reached over 145 million people. During this election cycle, Americans have turned to Fox News more than any other service to cover the key issues and events leading up to tomorrow's election. Among those events were Fox News hosted programming that, in and of themselves, made news, and clearly resonated with viewers. For example, Gutfeld delivered its highest-rated telecast in history, with almost 5 million viewers tuning in on September 18th's episode with President Trump joining the studio. This was followed by the Trump Town Hall hosted by Harris Faulkner, which also garnered exceptionally strong ratings. But as notable as these were, it was Bret Baier's interview with Vice President Harris that set a new bar for political interviews, generating over nine million viewers on October 16th. And while the election is top of mind today, our news teams have done a brilliant job continuously reporting on events across the world for our audience. Our dedication to news, fair and balanced, delivered almost four billion hours of Fox News media content consumed across linear and digital platforms during Q1. During the quarter, news total audience grew more than 40% year over year and more than 60% in the key 25 to 54-year-old demo. With engagement like this, it's no surprise that the Fox News Channel was the second most watched network in all of weekday television this past quarter, trailing only the Summer Olympics-enhanced NBC. Once again, Fox News ended the quarter as the most watched cable network in total day and in prime time, while maintaining its lead over peers as the most watched cable news network. Additionally, during the quarter, Fox News was the number one cable news channel. Number one among all major political parties in the demo. That's right. The number one news channel with Republicans, the number one news channel with Democrats, and the number one news channel with independence. We are number one in all the key swing states, and we are number one with Asian and Hispanic viewers. Our audience is as diverse as it is valuable. It is as engaged as it is remarkably loyal. Loyal through news and election cycles. Ratings momentum at Fox News continued through October, with second quarter to date total debut and total ratings of 20% and prime ratings of over 30% over prior year. Obviously, this election is not limited to the presidential race. We have also seen highly contested down ballot and issue propositions across our strategic local station footprint. From a revenue perspective, it's the local stations that are our election heroes. but it's not just our stations that are benefiting from strong political spend. This cycle, we have seen Tubi become a material recipient of political advertising. Tubi's large but hard to reach audience, coupled with its advanced targeting and geo-targeting capabilities, have clearly differentiated Tubi as campaigns look to maximize reach and efficiency. Now, I'm happy to report that company-wide, we have achieved record political revenue for both the first quarter and the full fiscal year, inclusive of the very substantial and dramatic impact of the 2020 Georgia Senate runoff. Strong engagement coupled with healthy direct response growth resulted in 19% revenue growth at Tubi during the quarter, which has accelerated in Q2 thus far. Based on the current revenue run rate, we're looking for Tubi to cross the $1 billion revenue mark this fiscal year. Turning to Fox Sports, we're having a strong fall season across our renowned portfolio of rights. For example, just last week, our sports roster featured Green Bay, Detroit in America's Game of the Week, Ohio State and Penn State in our big noon college football window, and the Yankees-Dodgers World Series. The MLB postseason has been both impressive and dramatic. Fox had the highest-rated divisional series ever on Fox Sports 1, the most-watched league championship series in the past five years, and the best Major League Baseball postseason on Fox since 2017. And, of course, the World Series dream matchup of the Yankees versus the Dodgers, featuring two iconic franchises and some of Major League Baseball's biggest stars. We saw an average of 16 million viewers tune in each night of the five-game series across our networks, with almost 19 million viewers watching game five, making this the most-watched World Series and game five in seven years. Moving on to football, the NFL on Fox is off to its best start in five years with America's Game of the Week, the number one program on all television, averaging almost 26 million viewers, including a strong 28% increase in viewership in younger demos versus last season. Additionally, we successfully launched our new Fox College Football Fridays in September, which is averaging nearly 3 million viewers each week, handily outrating our prior Friday night programming by over 40% in its first month. And we still have a pretty robust football calendar yet to come, culminating with our broadcast of Super Bowl 59, where... I'm sorry to say we are already sold out and at record pricing. The excitement continues at Fox Entertainment. The fall premiere of Universal Basic Guys was TV's most watched animation debut of the past decade and the season's number one comedy among adults 18 to 49. While Rescue High Surf was TV's highest rated fall drama debut in four years. Fox's first quarter results once again highlight the strength of our leadership brands and demonstrate the merits of our differentiated strategy. Our momentum is supported by outstanding content across our platforms and an advertising market that is healthy for us across the board. This operating effectiveness coupled with the strength of our balance sheets support our commitment to delivering long-term shareholder value, whether that be through growing our existing business thoughtful M&A, or returning capital to our shareholders. And with that, let me now turn it over to Steve for some further details.