Noon, everyone. We are excited to keep this going. Very happy and thankful to have John Nallen here, President and COO of Fox Corporation. That is a new title, so congrats on the promotion.
Thank you.
It's been a big year for Fox. And there's a lot of accomplishments. I'm curious, as you kind of think back over the past year, what are you most proud of? Help us think about where Fox has come over the past year and why you think things have seemingly gotten a lot more positive, at least in terms of the market perception.
Yeah. First, thanks for having us. I appreciate it. I don't want to spend a lot of time looking back. We'll probably talk more about looking forward.
Yeah.
It probably sets the stage for the conversation. If you look over the last 12 to 18 months, it has been a really strong period for us. Advertising, I mean, we had big events, Super Bowl, election. Even on a core basis, advertising, particularly at the national level, has been very strong. Affiliate, which is the second biggest part of our revenue stream. We booked 25% of our book during the fiscal 2025. We have nothing left for the fiscal year. We are done. On screen, it was really a great year with the election, the Super Bowl, a lot of news, a ton of news, which continues.
Great.
Tubi, I'm sure we'll spend some time talking about Tubi. Strength to strength, crossed the $1 billion trailing 12-month revenue. Just Monday, we announced Fox One, our D2C initiative. I think if you look at events and activity that has set us up for the future, it's that group of activities that have brought us there. I think you also have to wrap it up in how we've run the company. I mean, from an allocation of capital standpoint, it's been really disciplined, really thoughtful, organic investment, M&A, but a lot of return of capital to the shareholders. I think looking back in the 12 to 18 months, that's probably the way to set up how we should talk about looking forward.
Yeah. Maybe I'd even go back further, like just the decision of which assets and focus of the portfolio. I'm just curious, with the assets that you have, and we'll get into some of the details that you mentioned, there's clearly the challenges of the broader landscape, but it seems like the unique portfolio that you have kind of sets you up as we start to think about going forward for Fox's path to continue to be a little bit different.
Yeah. I think that's true. The thesis that we started six years ago on, which was focus on the core of the business around live news and sports. And entertainment's a part of it. We tacked Tubi on, you remember, after the formation of Fox, a couple of years after, and continued with the activity around Tubi. But at its heart, if you just focus the business on live events, news and sports, that's where the affiliate dollars are, that's where the advertisers' dollars are, and more importantly, that's where the audience is. I think that's what our continued focus is.
OK. Let's go to the big announcement that you alluded to. What we would say, smartly staying on the sidelines and avoiding billions of dollars of losses within these streaming wars, the decision to finally announce a Fox D2C platform called Fox One. help us understand why is now the right time?
It's a funny question because I've sat through conferences with Moffett Nathanson, and you would always ask us, when are you going to do it?
Right.
When we finally do it, you ask us, why did we do it?
Yeah.
Why now? Look, we're the last cab off the rank, if you will, from the big media companies to enter D2C. I think some of the learnings we got from the venue platform helped initiate and prompt us to move forward on it. At its heart, our focus of the business continues to be on the pay TV traditional world. Fox One is intended to address the cordless market, not the pay TV market. We are not intending to take anyone out of that market and bring them into the Fox One product. I think the way you'll see that first is pricing. We're going to respect the wholesale price with a margin, so there will be a healthy price for this product in the market. I think you'll see that in the marketing.
You're not going to see any of our marketing on Fox Sports or Fox News or any of that because that's addressed to the market that we already have. I think you'll see also the way we treat our distributors will be different in that this product will be available to them and to their subscribers. D2C won't be a massive business for us. Low single-digit millions over three years. Won't be one of our top distributors by any means, but it will be an important asset for us.
If you're familiar with our research, we've labeled some of the other streamers as essentially cheaters of the ecosystem by the fact that they're double dipping, essentially offering a much lower retail price, but then charging the distribution partners still a significant wholesale price. I mean, you just touched on it, but can you help us kind of unpack a little bit more about why you think the pricing piece is so critical to limit that cannibalization from the next round of negotiations with the distributors?
Yeah. Your commentary, I read your commentary after our Q3 earnings, which seemed to almost leak us into that group of cheaters. Clearly, we are not going to be in the place where we're competing with our largest revenue stream, the affiliates. You should expect, as I said, a healthy price for this product. I'm not announcing a price today. The product will be available right before the college football season. We've made that known. All the marketing will start to commence in Q4, so you'll start to see some of the earnings impact of launching D2C in our Q4, more significant in our fiscal Q1. I don't think there's going to be a debate that we'll have with the affiliates around us competing with them.
As I said, if you're in the pay TV system and you're a Fox News subscriber, through Fox One, you will get Fox News as part of that subscription. We are not looking to enhance our position with the distributors. We are actually trying to protect them by keeping that environment complete.
OK. A different way maybe of thinking of Fox One, and this goes back to our friends at Venue, should we think about Fox One as a new avenue to really monetize the news assets and portfolio of sports rights, maybe even potentially the sub-licensing conversation comes in or the bundling with some of the aggregators like YouTube or Amazon or Apple even? How do we think about that as part of the future of Fox One's strategy?
You shouldn't think about the D2C initiative as prompting us to sub-license product. It's another monetization stream for the channels and the brands that we have. We will bundle. There's no question that before we launch, there's some bundling activity that we'll have either with other brands or other distributors. That's just natural. It will enhance the product for the consumer. Again, I come back to the holy grail for us is the pay TV world. You shouldn't see us taking and ingesting our content into someone else's streaming product. Fox One will be our brands, entirely our brands. You won't get Fox News, Fox Sports, FS1 separately. It will be an entire product of Fox D2C being offered. I think importantly, it's not an SVOD service.
The cost for launching Fox One for us is helped by the fact that we don't need to buy any more content. We have all the rights that we need. There'll be no exclusive content in there or separate content than what a pay TV operator is already offering to its consumer. Like the pricey SVOD systems that went out and had to spend, your quote earlier, the hundreds of millions on original content, licensing, exclusive sports, we just don't have that cost. We have all the rights today to launch that product. I don't have to go back to the leagues. I don't have to go back to any other content owner and say, I need more rights here so I can launch the D2C. We already have those rights.
OK. Let's talk about the pay TV ecosystem in a little bit more detail. Aside from this past quarter, I think previous five quarters, affiliate fees were actually stepping up sequentially every single quarter, which is something that we don't see from anyone else. As we think about the next round of affiliate fees, I think that the natural question is, even bringing Fox One back into this for a second, how do we think about Fox's position to keep pricing growth ahead of the pay TV declines?
Just to set the stage, as I said in my opening, 25% of our subbase was renewed in the current year. We've got another 25% coming in fiscal 2026 for us. Importantly, that set of renewals is of the same vintage as the renewals we've done in 2025 and 2024. We're not breaking new ground on packaging or pricing with that vintage. That really starts in 2027, 2028, when in each of those years, we have about a third to a touch more of our affiliate base renewing. I think, look, if you look at where we were, we were down 8 and 1/2 from a volume standpoint. In our Q4, we just reported down 6 and 1/2, so 200 basis point improvement before the introduction of skinny bundles. None of this reflects any marketing or promotion around skinny bundles. I think the trend is encouraging.
I think the position that we have with a focused portfolio and suite of channels that we're offering and the leadership position that we have with those channels puts us in a great position to continue to gain pricing on those channels.
OK. Can you talk about the skinny bundles in a little bit more detail? Do you think the current pricing is the right kind of magical price point and something that we're focused on, thinking about how YouTube TV, given its prominence in the new pay TV world, whether they should and will end up offering their own skinny bundle maybe at a more aggressive price?
I hope so. Because to your point earlier on, the pricing now, you've got Comcast, DirecTV, Fubo out there with skinny bundles. The promotion around these have really just begun. DirecTV, only in the last week, has been promoting the last couple of weeks, has been promoting its genre packs to the market. The important part for Fox is we're in every one of these skinny bundles. So that's not true with the other peer companies, but we're in every one of these. But to your point about pricing, that's the one that's a little tricky. Because the skinny bundles are now the ones that are most popular are around $70. Contrast that to an $83 price for YouTube TV. And the gap in that pricing may not be dramatic enough to bring, for me, the most important constituents in, which is the cordless market to enter a skinny bundle.
I think the pricing is fine to spin down people inside of pay and retain them as an anti-churn measure. To bring a brand new cohort and get that volume into it, it may not be. The introduction, if YouTube TV, after it goes through all its contract renewals, is able to put a skinny bundle out there at a more aggressive price, the market has to respond. I think that opens up the opportunity for more volume to come into the skinny bundles. I'm really encouraged by the skinny bundles. The innovation that the content owners and the distributors finally have in talking to each other about what customers in America really want is a really positive sign. I'm probably more encouraged than anyone in our company about where the skinny bundle opportunity is for helping alleviate the erosion that we've seen in subscribers.
OK. With that, I'm curious your view on another strategy within pay TV. Is Charter's strategy to bundle streaming services with their linear offering? Do you think that that's also going to have success in terms of mitigating the subscriber declines, or because of its pricing, that has less of a potential impact?
No, I think it's a great strategy. To try to—we've talked to Charter about this and to other providers—that as part of your subscription, you should get every element of the linear and digital aspect of the channels you're subscribing to. You should just get that as part of your subscription. I think that strategy will prove positive for everyone in holding more and more people inside of pay TV. We are big supporters of it, which is why I said once Fox One gets launched, you're a pay TV subscriber. You're getting our streaming service.
OK. Let's switch to the other big piece of your business, advertising. Again, just given the current backdrop that we've all been dealing with over the past couple of months and the added volatility in consumer sentiment, I'm curious, and it didn't come up on the earnings call, but have you observed any real noticeable shifts in advertising over the past couple of months? Maybe even go one level deeper when we think about local, which is usually a leading indicator versus national trends.
Let me cover national first. Overall, national and local, we haven't seen any negative impact from the macroeconomic issues. We've seen none. Now, if you talk about the national business, which is really our sports, news, and entertainment side, it's been really strong. The place you see that—and we're in the upfronts now. We've begun discussions. Even though we had our presentation on Monday and all the presentations are this week, everyone's talking already with advertisers and agencies about next year's book. From a pricing—if you take pricing as an indicator, current pricing, scatter in entertainment and sports is up high single digits against upfront a year ago. That's a great trend going into the upfront. If you look at supply going into the upfront, you're going to have two unique big events next year, in the Winter Olympics and the World Cup.
We benefit on the second one, in that Fox is broadcasting the World Cup. On the digital side, you'll have that supply as well. You've now got the NBA on Amazon and Peacock. You've got, I assume, ESPN flagship. I can't call it flagship anymore, but ESPN.
Just ESPN. Exactly.
Will add some inventory into the market. There'll be natural growth coming out of Netflix, Amazon, et cetera. Again, the position that Tubi has against that growth, I think we feel—not I think, I know we feel very good about where we're going to land. On the local side, it's a little more mixed. What we've seen is auto is a bit choppy compared to what we're used to. On the other side, wagering is doing fantastic. It's just a little more nuanced on the local side than it is on the national side. None of which thus far has seen the impact of the tariffs or pharma legislation. In fact, we do this research. Looking at pharma, there's 50% more consumer drugs coming to market next year than there is this year.
That bodes well for pharma spending for advertisers like content owners like ourselves.
OK. You just hit on this a little bit, but maybe to go a little deeper. When we think about the overall ad dollar ecosystem and how the eyeballs are clearly shifting towards the digital connected TV platforms, given Fox's unique portfolio of sports and news, do you still expect to retain a greater share of those linear dollars? Or does Tubi come in to help kind of continue to expand your piece of the pie?
Take them each. I don't think there's any case to be made where our linear business, particularly news and sports, go backwards just because of the sheer strength of the ratings and the audience they're delivering. If there are linear dollars being lost in the system, I think they're being lost out of cable entertainment as opposed to news and sports. Even broadcast entertainment, given the pricing I was just mentioning, is benefiting slightly from the movement of cable entertainment linear dollars out of the system. The biggest beneficiary, though, by far of that movement is the streamers, the digital side of it. Tubi sits there ready and waiting to take that kind of money that's leaving that system and that continues the growth of Tubi.
OK. Let's go to Tubi then. Clearly, it's been a pretty huge part of the growth story for Fox. I would say finally getting the appropriate attention that it does deserve. Is there a way to leverage Tubi's success when thinking about back to Fox One as a potential on-ramp? How are you thinking about using Tubi in conjunction with Fox One?
You said Tubi's getting the proper attention. It's not getting the proper valuation, though.
I was going to get to that next. Yeah.
We will come to that then. No, look, Tubi has just gone from strength to strength. On the quarter we just reported, Tubi's revenues were up 35%. In April, they are pacing roughly or booked. April is over. We booked at about the same rate as we entered the third quarter. Its content library, its tech engine led by the personalization factor, and its scale are what is attracting audiences. From a scale standpoint, you would have seen this at the upfront on Monday, 97 million monthly active users. 65% of those are cordless. That is a market that advertisers find hard to reach, and they are able to reach them at Tubi. It is a great business for us whose growth will continue. As an on-ramp for Fox One, it is a natural because of that, because so many cordless users are on Fox One.
You will see us spending all of our marketing dollars digitally. Of course, Tubi, given its position, will be the home of some of that digital marketing spend.
OK. Another thing that came up at the upfronts was how sports has helped kind of drive the overall brand, clearly Super Bowl being the extreme example of that. I think you also announced that World Cup will be a part of Tubi's focus for the coming year. Maybe just help think about what type of content we should even think about when we think about Tubi. Is that strategy evolving?
Tubi's mainly our content is to be attracted to the generation a little younger than me, which is a great market for advertisers to be to. If you look at our originals, we had this big product that we talked about at the upfront called Sideline that was out. It was a young adult influencer-led type of original, which we've taken that and continued to build originals around that market. Yes, we did use sports in the past year with the broadcast of the Super Bowl on Tubi, where on the day we brought 24 million people to Tubi. Concurrently, we had 16 million watching the Super Bowl without interruption, no tech issues whatsoever, on a free service.
The benefit is we got a lot of information around 24 million people on a day, many of which have stayed on to the Tubi platform and become part of those monthly active users that we quoted earlier.
OK. Taking where Tubi is today, can you help us think about how you're thinking about this vision for Tubi over the next, call it, five years? If you want to help in terms of any sort of profitability targets. Then really coming back to one of your first points you made on valuation, is there any potential for spinning this off if it's not continuing to get the appropriate value that you think it deserves?
I don't think I've never contemplated a spin-off of Tubi, so I'm not here to announce we're spinning off Tubi. I think we probably could do a better job in describing the metrics around Tubi, which will get a bigger spotlight on the business, some of which I've covered here today. In five years' time, let's just look. In the last two years, incrementally, we've reduced the investment into Tubi. You'll see us do that yet again in fiscal 2026. In five years' time, I see Tubi continuing. Look, can you continue 35% growth every year? I'm not sure you can, but I see it as a big contributor to Fox's EBITDA. Market pundits have said that SVOD services, mature SVOD services, should do around 20%-25% EBITDA margins.
I don't know why the leading AVOD service wouldn't do that same kind of margin in that period of time. So that's kind of true north for us as we look out to see where Tubi's headed.
OK. Let's shift to Fox News, a pretty important asset within the portfolio. When we think about advertising, affiliate fees, clearly the viewership gains have been tremendous. How do we think about the monetization of these viewership gains? Is it going to be more from the advertising, which is obviously more of a direct impact from the higher engagement? Or can affiliate fees also be another significant lever, given the importance that they are for the overall ecosystem?
I think it's hard to talk about the top line at Fox News without talking about engagement and audience. We expected after the election, and we have full history on this, that the audience would decline because there's just fatigue in the audience generally. There's not a real longing for or yearning for news at that point in time. Complete opposite happened in this election cycle. In the Q3 that we just reported, it was the highest viewership ever in Fox News' history. From January through to April, just a couple of weeks ago, Fox News is the number two broadcast network in the United States. CBS, and we jumped behind CBS or NBC one of those months, but number two as a broadcast network. That growth has just continued into the current quarter.
When you look at, and from a share standpoint, two-thirds of the cable news audience is on Fox News from a share. It is just striking, I should say, not shocking, how significant the news audience is on Fox News. Yes, that has translated into advertising gains for us. From a pricing standpoint on news, if you use upfront, last upfront as a basis, just as a marker, news is not a massive contributor to the upfront, but use it as a marker. Our scatter pricing is up 50% from last year's upfront. Our DR pricing, we reported, was up 25% or 26% in Q3. We are running the same rate in Q4. Pricing has been significant, partially because we have also seen a lot of volume and supply come to Fox with 200 new advertisers since the election.
It's really, you have to go back to the viewership and the ratings to support the fact that the advertising revenue has done what it's done.
Should we think about Fox Nation as something that will be part of Fox One, or is that going to remain an independent service?
A bit of both, in that we've got over 2 million subscribers to Fox Nation now. They're very used to the app that they're on. We don't want to disrupt that experience with them by moving them over into a different environment. For the current subscribers of Fox Nation, they'll stay on the Fox Nation platform that they're on right now. Fox One, though, will offer a tile inside of it to allow someone to access, to buy Fox Nation through Fox One, so they can have the single experience of Fox One and Fox Nation inside of the Fox One app. It's a bit of a hybrid you'll see there.
OK. Let's shift to one of our favorite topics as we think about Fox, the importance of the sports portfolio. Clearly, your rights are locked up for a number of years ahead. That said, one kind of interesting data point to us was that Netflix swooped in and got the Women's World Cup. I'm just kind of curious on your latest thoughts on how Fox is positioned to compete with these digital bidders over the next couple of years as some of these bigger rights start to come up again.
Yeah, we've got our portfolio is locked up. If you take the NFL, we have the next five years. You take Major League Baseball, the next four years. And our college football and basketball properties are much longer than that. NASCAR is somewhere in between. And now we have the rights to IndyCar as well that we just recently announced. There is no big right in that period of time that's coming to market. Rather, there are events. Black Friday games or the Friday night game of the week one that YouTube is doing are coming up. No comprehensive set of big rights are coming up. I'd be crazy not to recognize the fact that Netflix and Amazon are in the sports game. There's no question.
Our rights and our portfolio and our history of producing, promoting, and reaching a large audience across America is something that the leagues recognize and value pretty highly.
OK. Do you care to comment on some of those other packages that are in the market right now? MLB, top of mind right now, especially given your existing relationship with the league. Home Run Derby is something that seems like a natural fit for you. Any comments around that package?
Those rights through this baseball season are all secure. ESPN has its contract. We have ours, the other ones that are out there. I recognize after this season, baseball has to deal with what is the ESPN package. We have a great relationship with Major League Baseball. It is a core property to Fox, like the other rights that I mentioned. To the extent that we can extend our relationship with baseball, where it makes sense for both of us, we would be happy to do that.
OK. How about two more for you? UFC is also in the market. You have a long history with that fighting league. You mentioned just IndyCar. Formula One seems to be out there as well. How do those two properties potentially fit within the Fox portfolio?
I doubt you'd see us as finalists for either of those two. I think that's the easiest way for you to describe it.
That's a clear answer. Thank you. Let's shift over to sports betting. We just had our friends DraftKings here before you. Clearly, you have a pretty valuable option with the FanDuel, 18.6%. You went through the value of that on the earnings call. I'm not going to make you restate that. You're welcome to if you want. The question really for you on sports betting and the FanDuel option is, is there a way to monetize the option aside from going through the strenuous process of getting licensed? Would you look to explore selling it back to Flutter? Is that the best-case scenario, or is that something that you'd rather kind of go through the process and hold that 18.6%?
I will restate some of what we said on the earnings call.
Sure.
Just in summary, that if you take the two pieces of our betting assets on our balance sheet, wagering assets, the Flutter investment and the 18.6% in DraftKings, you're talking about $8-$9 a share, where I'm confident we are not getting that kind of value inside of our stock for those wagering assets. As it relates to the option, we've got until 2030 to exercise this. If you look at the accretion and the value of that, it's far outpaced the strike price during that period. From a capital allocation standpoint, it's been good that we haven't put our foot down on it and deployed that capital thus far. We've got plenty of time. The issue that's around this is just a practical, technical, blocking and tackling issue of getting licensed in 26 different states. We're in the process of doing that.
What happens in these states is once you get licensed, you're expected to not sit on that license, but go ahead and exercise and be active in it. We've got to line up these states and be ready to do it when the time is right. We have no intention of transferring that option, selling that option, in any way monetizing that option, other than through its exercise.
OK. When we think about Fox, clearly, the balance sheet, we can't ignore how strong it is and how that's an asset for the company. When thinking about the free cash flow generation of these businesses over the next couple of years, how best should investors think about this cash? Because I think there's, again, putting FanDuel aside, there's the question on how to best use the cash, whether to be more aggressive on capital returns, whether M&A comes into that. Help us think about the latest thoughts, given the strength, even just last quarter, seeing the free cash flow.
Since quarter end, we repaid $600 million of debt, which puts us at around 6.7% of gross debt, which is the way I look at the balance sheet. I don't look at, some people look at net debt. The cash is there to be deployed for growth for the company. Leverage should be always looked at on a gross basis. The three legs of our capital allocation program are intact: organic investment, you've seen that in Tubi, Fox Nation, Fox Weather, some of the other things that we've done. Acquisitions, we also acquired Tubi, but we did a more recent acquisition of not a major scale in Red Six Ventures. We're looking to deploy that capital toward an accretive acquisition.
We just haven't found one, given the discipline we have of size and scale, that we can lean into it and say, this is the one that we will deploy the capital toward. Therefore, the best use of our capital has been the return of capital to the shareholders. We've deployed about $6.4 billion in buybacks since the start of Fox. We've got a $7 billion authorization. We'll run out of that soon. In due course, I'm sure the board is going to re-up the authorization for that. In the absence of a really compelling M&A story for us, we do look to capital returns as a great way to deploy capital.
OK. When thinking about free cash flow, I'm curious to come back to sports for one second. The total content spend for the entire company is clearly a lot locked in based on the sports commitments. How do you think about the overall level of content spending as it relates to sports, which, again, is pretty well known, but the flex that you can make on the non-scripted content spending stuff?
On the entertainment side.
On the entertainment. Sorry. Yeah. Thank you.
No, I think the entertainment side, Rob Wade and his team have done a great job in balancing between originality and scripted and returning product. You would have just seen in the last month or so, we announced with Disney the re-upping of The Simpsons, Family Guy, Bob's Burgers, and bringing American Dad in. We augment that with non-scripted. Some of the game shows that we have, Masked Singer, some of the other product that we have on there. I think the balance is right. There's not a wholesale solution we're looking for to say, Rob, look, you've got to reduce the cost of entertainment dramatically, because I think they've got the balance right, and the ratings have shown that. Recognize we only do two hours a night on entertainment. In many weeks, particularly in the fall leading into the early spring, Friday night's covered by sports.
We're really only then doing four nights at two hours. This balance that he's achieved, I think, has been exactly right in the sweet spot that we like it.
OK. So just wrapping up here. Hopefully, when you're back with us next year and we sit down in retrospect thinking about the last 12 months, what do you think investors will be most surprised by? I'm guessing I know your answer as it relates to Tubi, but is there anything else that you think that the market is not fully appreciating, given Fox's overall portfolio?
No, I think, yeah, I think it's the frustration that we have around Tubi valuation, the wagering assets I described. We've got some other what we call hidden assets, below-the-line assets in the Fox lot and tax attributes and others. I think that's pretty well understood. That's not the issue. I think delivering on, continuing to deliver on the plan and on the focus strategy that we have. That was the thesis of the company, which is focus on live news and sports. We got into streaming. If you look from an advertising and from principally from an advertising standpoint, it's almost our Head of Ad Sales, Jeff Collins, calls it a barbell, where the money is moving either towards live or towards streaming. Anything else in the middle is just getting squeezed out to those ends. We've got a great position in both.
Hopefully, if you invite me back a year from now, we're able to prove that.
We'll book it now. Thank you, John.
All right. Thank you.
Appreciate you being here.