Good day, and welcome to the News Corp. 4th Quarter Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded. Media will be in listen only mode for the duration of the call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr.
Mike Florin, Senior President and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, Blake. Hello, everyone, and welcome to News Corp's fiscal Q4 2014 earnings call. We shared our earnings press release about
an hour ago and can now be posted
on our website at newscorp.com. On the call today are Robert Thompson, Chief Executive and Bedi Singh, Chief Financial Officer. We will open with some prepared remarks and then we'll be happy to take some questions from the investment community. This call may include certain forward looking information with respect to the News Corp's business and strategy. Actual results could differ materially from what is said.
News Corp's Form 10 ks for the 12 months ended June 30, 2014 identifies risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ and these statements are qualified by the cautionary statements contained in such filings. Additionally, this call will include certain non GAAP financial measurements. The definition of and a reconciliation of such measures can be found in our earnings release and our 10 ks filings. Finally, please note that certain financial measures used on this call such as segment EBITDA, adjusted segment EBITDA and adjusted EPS are expressed on a non GAAP basis. The GAAP to non GAAP reconciliation of these non GAAP measures is included in our earnings release.
With that, I will pass over to Robert Thompson for some opening comments.
Thank you, Mike. We have now completed one full fiscal year as the new news call. And it's fair to say that the sensibility of a startup has characterized our pursuit of digital and global expansion for our distinctive portfolio of companies, a portfolio that is diverse in both revenue mix and geographic spread. We will be building on the company's proud tradition and the progress attained over the past year, during which we made disciplined strategic acquisitions, targeted divestments and tactical investments in technological and international initiatives. The company is at the very center of the global debate over the value of content and the creation of platform permutations for the delivery of that content.
Throughout the year, we have also been disciplined on costs and aim to deliver value to our customers, advertisers and investors. 1 year into our existence, the real measure of our progress lies in the answer to this question. Are we better off, better positioned today than when the journey began? For News Corp, the answer is a resounding yes. We said on Investor Day that we would become more digital and global and we are.
We have increased market share in a number of our businesses, most notably REA and HarperCollins. We said that we would be acutely and astutely cost conscious and we have been and will continue to be. Our costs this year are down and we will assiduously search for additional savings. We said that technology is a canvas for our content and that has never been more true than it is today. We said that the percentage of our revenue that comes from non advertising sources will increase significantly over 5 years.
And 1 year in, we can see that prediction being borne out. In fact, today, non advertising sources account for more than 50% of our revenues and that has provided us added support in a sometimes challenging advertising marketplace and an uneven economic recovery. For the year, revenues were $8,600,000,000 a 4% decrease, while EBITDA improved 12% to $770,000,000 Most important, our free cash flow improved by more than $290,000,000 to $365,000,000 Let me be more specific about our acquisitions, cost consciousness, investments, digital and global initiatives and the challenges we've faced. Our acquisitions and we are in an early phase of our expansion have echoed our determination to grow digitally and globally and show that we will not be rushing naively to overpay for underachieving companies. Just last week, we completed the acquisition of Harlequin, which will give HarperCollins a jump start on international digital expansion and a plus.
We believe this was a prudent and disciplined move that will benefit HarperCollins and News Corp. This very day, our HarperCollins executives are in Canada working constructively with the talented Harlequin team. Our first acquisition was Storyful, the world's leading social media news agency, which has already launched FB Newswire with Facebook and last week celebrated 1,000,000,000 views of its videos on YouTube. Now we are focusing on monetizing that traffic and using Storyful's unique authentication expertise for the benefit of our businesses and of our clients. We also continue to recast our portfolio consistent with our cost conscious focus.
And so we sold the Dow Jones Local Media Group and the Community Newspapers Group to focus on core branded properties in the U. S. And we sold a live events business at HarperCollins earlier this year, which we viewed as not core to our mission. We are resizing the cost base in news and information services with savings that are made more realizable by the extra focus and increased cooperation in the new news. This has been achieved through a combination of operational and back office initiatives, including a wide range of contract negotiations and health and pension reforms among many other steps.
Beatty will elaborate on these efforts shortly. We also expect to achieve natural efficiencies across our businesses as we migrate to digital with consolidation of servers and software and the repurposing of platforms. This trend is evident at HarperCollins, which is well down the path of digital migration and which will certainly benefit from Harlequin's success and skills online. We have made smart targeted investments, including partnerships with real estate sites in China and Hong Kong through REA, the leading online real estate services company in Australia. The deals give us a connection with a still maturing market in China and will bring Chinese investors closer to property opportunities in Australia and elsewhere.
And speaking of REA, I'd like to point out their robust numbers and the ongoing benefit from secular tailwinds as agents aware of the high ROI that REA can offer. REA recently announced the purchase of a minority stake in iProperty for $100,000,000 iProperty has burgeoning online property, advertising operations in Southeast Asia and just reported revenue growth of over 40%. We are excited about potential global opportunities in this sector. Also this year, we announced plans to add $50,000,000 to our investment in SEEK Asia, a growing employment listings business as we expand our presence in Southeast Asia, a region which we believe holds tremendous growth potential. Last year, we launched Ball Ball, which offers exclusive soccer highlights from the 5 major European leagues to audiences in Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam through desktop, laptop, mobile and tablet platforms.
And also on the investment front, this past year, we successfully launched the global programmatic advertising exchange, which has helped us cut out 3rd party networks and allowed us to work directly with advertisers who want to reach our premium audiences. Owning our data and protecting the privacy of our customers are imperatives. While still early, we are certainly pleased with the pricing improvement and extra revenue that we've generated. We remain firm believers in the power of print, but we are committed to using technology to make our content more accessible, mobile and profitable. And that is why we have been driving digital throughout News Corp.
In the U. K, the Sun launched Sun plus the digital version of the country's most popular newspaper and we are focused on enhancing engagement with the imminent launch of a new tablet app. Our News U. K. Publications have integrated innovative sports video clips and apps and expanded into online luxury shopping, catering to the needs of an extremely desirable demographic.
In particular, we've been pleased with The Times, which grew in volume, revenue, pricing and market share, thanks to great journalism and sustained technological toil. A newspaper launched in 17/85 has definitely made a successful transition into the digital age. In Australia, we're pleased to show very strong digital growth for our paid digital subscriber base over the past year, now exceeding 200,000. And The Australian, which has just celebrated its 50th birthday, released a new iPad ad. Today, The Australian has more paying customers than at any time in its history and a larger audience than ever with more than 3,000,000 readers each month.
We are planning to relaunch our paid digital mastheads in Australia with a simplified subscription offering. We'll also begin integrating these digital publications with a unique form of interactive advertising that will take advantage of the strengths of different formats. No matter how esteemed the publication, our teams are working continuously to improve the experience for our readers and for our advertisers. Also in Australia, Foxtel announced triple play bundling and launched Presto, its new online movie service, which is in its infancy. Foxtel is focused on monitoring market conditions to respond to competitors and to opportunities and are driving penetration to increase the value of this great asset.
Here in the U. S, Dow Jones released key enhancements to Factiva and The Wall Street Journal bolstered its digital leadership through new video programming and the launch of WSJD, along with verticals focused on economics, marketing and Washington policy. Also in the U. S, I'm particularly pleased to note that in store advertising has shown impressive growth at News America Marketing. There is much discussion about owning the point of sale, but the point of purchase is crucial and that is the strength of our in store team.
Amplify launched its new digital curriculum in English Language Arts for grades 6 to 8, and we're excited about the quality of the offering as we engage with school districts around the country. Publishing, e book sales at HarperCollins this quarter were 23% higher versus the prior year, thanks in part to the success of the Divergent trilogy, which underscored the power of book blockbusters in a digital environment. And HarperCollins was at the forefront of the industry in forming partnerships with online e book subscription services, Hoister and Scribd. Of course, any candid review of the year must include the challenges we have faced, including advertising headwinds in Australia and elsewhere. The ability to make confident forecasts is undermined by the erratic patterns that have characterized trading, particularly in print, which seriously undervalued as a platform by advertisers.
Print is a concentrated, intense reading experience with unique affinity in our digitally distracted age. Our professional information business at Dow Jones is still in the process of being recast following a period of difficulty, about which we've been quite frank. Clients are responding favorably to the new product, pitch and pricing, but the development work is not yet done. The rate of decline has certainly eased, but we expect some softness for a quarter or 2. In balancing the opportunities and challenges, we believe there is more upside in the opportunity than downside in the challenge.
Our core message is untarnished and unvarnished. We promised that we would work with restless energy on behalf of investors who understandably expect that creativity is balanced by fiscal discipline and that the expansion does not just mean an expanding cost base. Despite headwinds, we still experienced significant growth in free cash flow and we showed stable profit margins demonstrating the strength and diversity
of our asset base. We remain
focused on driving top line performance and generating sustained and sustainable revenue returns for our shareholders. In summary, 1 year into our existence, News Corp is unified by our pursuit of premium content and the building of iconic brands, brands that are potent platforms in a digital age. We understand the deep affinity between those brands and our audiences. That affinity is the nexus of revenue and of profitability. This is a company where calculated risks are taken, instincts followed and objectives pursued with passion, purpose and principle.
We are, as our Executive Chairman, Rupert Murdoch said on Investor Day, an eclectic and unconventional company in an age where such attributes hold great value. We remain fully aware of the challenges we face, whether the vagaries of the macroeconomic cycle in the countries where we work, the ebb and flow of advertising and readership rates and the mass media mass migration, which continues to unfold. Those challenges will be met with a focus on costs and on digital and global growth. We are intent upon fashioning an ever more rewarding future for our audiences, our employees and our investors. Now, I will turn it over to Badi to discuss the financials in detail.
Thanks, Robert, and good afternoon, everyone. As Robert mentioned, we made strong progress in our 1st year to further digitize our asset portfolio and improve our market share across several business units. We prudently reduced our cost base and held consolidated adjusted EBITDA margins relatively stable despite continuing advertising headwinds. For the full year, we reported revenues of $8,600,000,000 a 4% decrease versus the prior year. Excluding the impact of acquisitions, divestitures and foreign currency fluctuations, adjusted revenues were 1% lower than the prior year.
We reported full year total segment EBITDA of $770,000,000 which was a 12% increase versus the prior year. Reported results included costs related to the U. K. Newspaper matters net of indemnification, which was $72,000,000 for the year. Excluding all acquisitions and divestitures, costs related to the U.
K. Newspaper matters and foreign currency fluctuations, adjusted total segment EBITDA was down 2% versus the prior year and would have been flat excluding the dual rent costs for the London office. Fiscal 2014 reported EPS were $0.41 versus $0.81 in the prior year, which included a significant non taxable gain in other net related to the CMH acquisition and the sale of our ownership interest in Sky Network Television as well as impairment charges net of taxes. Excluding the impact of all these and other items, our adjusted EPS were $0.46 compared to $0.62 in the prior year. Free cash flow available to News Corp was $365,000,000 an improvement of $293,000,000 compared to last year.
For the Q4, the company reported total revenues of $2,200,000,000 a 3% decrease versus the prior year period and our adjusted revenues declined by 1%. Fiscal 4th quarter total reported segment EBITDA was $127,000,000 a 2% decrease versus the prior year period. Reported results included $16,000,000 related to the U. K. Newspaper matters net of indemnification.
Our adjusted total segment EBITDA this quarter declined by 7%, but was slightly up excluding $13,000,000 of dual rent and other facility costs, mainly related to our London office relocation. With that as a brief overview, let's look at our Q4 performance for our key segments. As you can see, we have now added a new reporting segment Digital Education to present Amplify separately, which was previously included in the other segment. In News and Information Services, revenues
for
the quarter declined $104,000,000 or 6% versus the prior year period. Adjusted segment revenues were down by 5%. Within segment revenues, advertising looking at advertising performance across our key publishing units, at News Corp Australia, advertising revenues declined around 16% or 11% in constant currency for the quarter, a slight improvement from the prior quarter. The biggest improvement came from national advertising, but we also saw some improvement albeit a smaller magnitude in retail. At News U.
K, advertising revenues declined around 1% or 11% in local currency, fairly similar to last quarter. Softness was driven by retail combined with the decline in broadband and mobile ad spending versus the prior year, partially offset by the late Easter this year. And at The Wall Street Journal, advertising declined low double digits this quarter, impacted by much tougher year ago comps and weakness in a few categories, most notably Telecom and Finance. Total circulation and subscription revenues for the quarter declined around 4%, driven primarily by continued softness in Professional Information Business at Dow Jones, which had a negative $17,000,000 impact to revenues this quarter. This was an improvement however versus the Q3 as we continue to make progress to stabilize trends and retain existing Factiva customers.
Total newspaper circulation revenues showed modest growth in local currency, mostly driven by prior quarter subscription and cover pricing increases at a number of our mastheads. It's worth highlighting as Robert mentioned that this quarter we saw volume and revenue growth in local currency at The Times in the U. K. And at The Australian, further tangible evidence that our quality newspapers are benefiting from the migration to digital. At News America Marketing, sales improved 4% versus the prior year period, led by double digit growth in in store advertising and modest growth from the FSI business.
Segment EBITDA decreased $80,000,000 in the quarter or 38% as compared to the prior year period and adjusted segment EBITDA was down 34%. Included in segment EBITDA was $11,000,000 related to the relocation of our London operations for dual rent and other facility costs and we also incurred much higher expenses at News U. K. Related to specific marketing initiatives as I had discussed last quarter. We also had higher severance costs in the U.
K. This quarter. In Cable Network Programming, revenues declined $10,000,000 or 7% compared to the prior year quarter due to adverse foreign currency fluctuations. Subscription revenues, which account for over 80% of FOX Sports revenues, were flat, but grew 6% in local currency, benefiting from higher digital platform subscribers and higher CPI linked cable and satellite affiliate fees. Advertising revenues declined modestly and were fairly consistent with the prior quarter, impacted by a soft marketplace combined with the absence of the Lions Tour Rugby tournament in the year ago quarter.
Segment EBITDA in the quarter was flat compared to the prior year. Adjusting the impact of foreign currency fluctuations, adjusted revenues were down 2% and adjusted segment EBITDA improved by 11%. In Digital Real Estate Services, revenues increased $22,000,000 or 24% compared to the same quarter last year reflecting higher pricing and uptake of premium products. Segment EBITDA increased $16,000,000 or 35 percent compared to the corresponding prior year quarter due to the increased revenue. If you exclude adverse foreign currency impacts, adjusted revenue and adjusted segment EBITDA grew 33% 41% respectively.
Turning to the Book Publishing segment. Revenues improved 10% and segment EBITDA grew 50% versus the prior year quarter. We continue to see very strong performance from the Divergent series by Veronica Ross, which clearly got a boost from the theatrical release in March and has begun to spread overseas. We sold globally an additional 3,600,000 net units of the series this quarter and a total of over 19,000,000 net units for the year. Total e book net sales for the quarter grew 23%, mainly due to the Divergent series and accounted for 22% of HarperCollins consumer revenue, up from 19% in the prior year period.
We have, as Robert mentioned, completed the acquisition of Harlequin Enterprises from ThorStar Corporation for CAD 455 1,000,000 We expect, as we've indicated before, the deal to be accretive to earnings in fiscal 2015 and to improve our free cash flow. We are just now beginning the integration work with Harlequin and we will update you on our progress over the course of the year. On an annualized basis, we expect Harlequin will contribute revenues in the $320,000,000 to $340,000,000 range excluding their joint ventures, but haven't yet factored any material synergies in the current fiscal year. We do expect to incur non recurring transaction costs of approximately $5,000,000 in fiscal 2015. At our Digital Education segment increased $7,000,000 compared to the prior year quarter, primarily due to lower project based consulting revenues at Amplify's legacy assessment business as I had also noted on our last call.
Segment EBITDA was negative $53,000,000 and was fairly consistent with the prior year. For the full year, Digital Education EBITDA loss was 193,000,000 dollars Amplify remains on track to roll out the English Language Arts digital curriculum targeted to grades 6 through 8 for this coming fall. We expect to have approximately 10,000 students for our digital ELA curriculum and 20,000 for our digital math and science supplemental offerings signed up this year. In addition, Amplify will have around 250,000 students signed up for the fall to use its digital hybrid K-five program known as Core Knowledge Language Arts, which is viewed as a bridge to our broader digital product offerings. And finally, our next generation tablets designed in collaboration with Intel are also on track for a fall rollout with plans to deploy to at least 26,000 units students.
In our other segment, which primarily includes corporate overhead and our strategy and creative group, excluding U. K. Newspaper matter costs, segment EBITDA was negative $49,000,000 compared to negative $76,000,000 allocated in the prior year. With respect to our earnings from affiliates, Foxtel ended the year with around 2,600,000 total subscribers, up 6% versus the prior year driven by higher digital platform subscribers. Cable and satellite churn improved to 12.5% compared to 14.2% in the prior year.
Broadcast ARPU rose 1% for the full year impacted by a February price increase. Foxtel revenues for the year were up 2% on a constant currency basis and EBITDA was up 8% similarly. Turning now to cash flow. News Corp's cash flow from operations improved to $854,000,000 compared to $501,000,000 in the prior year and free cash flow available to News Corp improved to $365,000,000 compared to $72,000,000 in the prior year. Just a few additional items to note.
CapEx for fiscal 2014 finished at $379,000,000 which was in line with our expectations and included in that CapEx was around $100,000,000 related to costs for the London office relocation and HarperCollins headquarters within Manhattan. On our ongoing cost savings initiatives, as I mentioned in past quarters, we have been very focused on reducing the cost base. In the aggregate, we identified over $100,000,000 in annualized cost reductions, most of which were realized in fiscal 2014. The majority of savings are in distribution and production, including renegotiated paper and ink contracts, closing our divestitures of warehouses and printing plants, reduced software technology spend through aggressive procurement efforts and restructuring of health care and pension plans. And we will continue to look at further efficiencies in the coming year.
Let me now discuss a few drivers that we see for fiscal 2015. At News and Information Services, we'll be looking to enhance our paywall offerings with planned relaunches across all regions. We will still have the dual facility expenses related to the relocation of the London office in fiscal 2015 of around $25,000,000 While the Professional Information business at Dow Jones remains challenged, we do expect stabilization over the course of the year. Advertising remains relatively weak, but our ad sales teams are cautiously optimistic and we hope for improvement. We expect continued strong performance at News America Marketing led by in store advertising.
At Cable Networks, programming costs should be up only modestly given a few additional events this year including the Asian Cup in January and the Cricket World Cup in February March and we have no major rights renewals coming up this year. At Book Publishing, given the huge success of Divergent last year, at this point, we do expect HarperCollins to face tougher comps, particularly in the second half of fiscal twenty fifteen, before reflecting performance from the Harlequin acquisition. At Digital Real Estate, we expect continued strong performance benefiting from favorable secular trends and high ROI to the agents. At Digital Education, the focus will remain to broaden its curriculum and drive further sales adoption. Given that the curriculum is now in the commercial rollout phase, we will begin capitalizing some of the content development costs.
We expect to capitalize $60,000,000 in fiscal 2015 related to ELA and that EBITDA will improve by at least this amount. We expect however our total cash investment spend at Amplify to be relatively similar in fiscal 2015 as it was in fiscal 2014. Corporate Overhead and Creative and Strategy Group will likely spend similar levels to fiscal 2014 in a range of $160,000,000 to $180,000,000 Finally, CapEx for fiscal 2015 should be around 400,000,000 dollars including the additional $60,000,000 capitalized software cost at Amplify as well as around $70,000,000 in the U. K. To complete the London office relocation.
So in summary, fiscal 2014 was a very busy year for News Corp as we balanced ongoing operational efficiencies with prudent investments and strategic acquisitions to expand our global footprint and digital offerings. We remain steadfast on stabilizing top line performance and look forward to updating you on our progress throughout the year. And with that, let me turn it back to the operator for our Q and A session.
Thank you. And we will take our first question from John Ioannidis at Jefferies.
Thank you. Betty, now that you've been public for a year, can you give us your current views on return of capital given your free cash flow generation last year? And then on new segments, the decline in EBITDA at least in the Q4 was a bit more than I would have expected. Are those marketing initiatives going to step down in the next quarter or 2? And are you starting to run out of leverage to pull on the cost front?
Thanks, John. Let me just start by addressing the Q4. Clearly, as we had also mentioned in the Q3, we expected to see additional marketing costs in London, which indeed did come through. And one's view is that they will be beneficial to us in terms of revenue in the quarters to come. The London relocation obviously was also an extra expense in that quarter.
And the Professional Information business at Dow Jones was also soft. So I think that gives you a sense of the kind of impact those things had in Q4. With respect to your earlier question, I think the way to think about it is we're still very focused on making sure that the business is stabilized especially in News and Information Services. And we look to additional investments and smart strategic and disciplined acquisitions, clearly with a view to generating long term shareholder value per share, which remains kind of a mantra.
Operator, we'll take our next question please.
Our next question comes from Entcho Raykovski at Deutsche Bank.
Hi, Robert. Hi, Beatty. My question is around Amplify and you've obviously provided some guidance there into fiscal 20 15. Is that contingent on targets being met throughout the year? Or are you feeling it's too early in the performance of the business necessarily to be setting targets?
It's Robert here. To be honest, a little early in the business to be setting targets, but what we're focused on is the development of the curriculum. That's the key part of the investment that we've undertaken at Amplify. And we said to you 18 months ago that in 18 months, we would have a much clearer indication of the trajectory of the business. And I think it's fair to say now that we are getting a sense of that and we still hold ourselves to that deadline.
And so as the business unfolds over the next 12 months, we'll be keeping you updated about sales, about sales patterns and about the substance of the business.
And if I can just add to that, clearly ELA was the sort of production effort and now it's gone to market. But we still have a lot of production effort behind math and science which will continue in 2015. And sales for those products will start at the end of 2015.
So it's a significant investment, but it's clearly a significant opportunity.
And sorry, if I can just follow-up. And so in the coming few months, do you have specific student targets that you do need to reach? Are you prepared to disclose those?
Look, we don't have specific targets. This business, as you can understand, is evolving. It's in the early stage of the evolution. It's evolving quickly. And as we pass key metrics, we'll pass those metrics on to you.
Okay. Operator, we'll take our next question, please.
Our next question comes from Justin Diddams with Citi.
Good morning, guys. Just a question on the News Information Services business. Given we enter FY 2015 with what's potentially a continuation of these advertising declines, I continuation of these advertising declines, do you think there's scope again in FY 2015 to cut the same amount of costs out of the cost base? Otherwise, we probably need to put in an EBITDA number much lower for this year if you're not able to cut those costs. And I just wanted to clarify that it was $100,000,000 spent on the office move in the UK.
So in terms of CapEx that we spent in the London building that was in fiscal 14, it was $75,000,000 of capital expenditure. And we expect somewhere in that sort of region in fiscal 2015 as well just to fit out the building completely. People have started moving in, but not all the floors are occupied.
Justin, on your question about costs and advertising trends. First of all, on costs, clearly, we're because of the concentration, the new focus of the new news, we are finding opportunities to consolidate and to cut costs and that frankly is not going to stop. And that's separate from trends in the advertising revenue, which clearly the winds have been buffeting. But what we're seeing really are different circumstances in different regions. And it's at the moment, there are indications that the rate of decline has declined in Australia.
There are green shoots on the Nullarbor plane. And part of that is really great work by our team in Australia. We focused on local advertising and local advertising revenue trajectory has changed in Australia. The national market is different, but there'll be an increasing focus on that as well. And that's a great tribute to Julian Clark and Peter Tonner and our advertising team in Australia.
At Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, it clearly was a quarter of decline. But as we look forward a little bit, you'll see that, for example, WSJ Magazine, which didn't exist when News Corp took over Dow Jones, in September, it will have 2 issues. One of them, a record amount of revenue. You can count the pages for yourself. Meanwhile,
in
the U. K. In the last quarter, clearly, there was some marketing spend. Now I know companies like to blame the World Cup for all sort of ailments. But it was clear that if England had progressed beyond the group stage in Brazil that advertising would have picked up, there would have been momentum.
But it's also fair to say that the England team failed to exceed low expectations.
Operator, we will take our next question please.
And our next question comes from Michael Morris at Guggenheim Securities.
Thanks. Good afternoon, guys. With respect to The Wall Street Journal and the value of the content, the fact that I think it's must have access to for most business professionals. Can you talk a little bit about the pricing power there? How you look at pulling levers on pricing and the risk domestically?
And also when you look at that brand outside the U. S, where do you think you are in fully leveraging the brands and content? And what's could we be looking for there in the future? Thanks.
Well, I think it's fair to say that we haven't fully leveraged the brand and that Will Lewis, who's been doing a marvelous job since he took the helm, is looking not only at overseas opportunity, but what more to your point can be done to leverage and take advantage of the necessity that many people have to read Wall Street Journal content, but also looking at different platforms for the delivery of that content. And over the period since the News Corp acquisition, we've been seeing strong year after year growth in circulation revenue, and there's no reason for that not to continue.
Operator, we'll take our next question please.
Our next question comes from Alexia Quadrani at JPMorgan.
Thank you. When you look at the book publishing business, which has clearly been an outperformer for some time here and you look at a book like Divergent, which is a multiple part there's several books in the series, how long of a tail does that typically have? I mean, I know you mentioned more challenging comps in the back half of your fiscal year. But for the next couple of quarters, can we continue to benefit from this series? Or we have already played it through a bit?
So look, it's a little difficult to forecast, neither Badi or I or soothsayers. And it is it's a blockbuster. But for example, there are variables that may have an efficacious impact such as the release of the second movie in the trilogy, which is scheduled for the spring. So it's but at the moment, it's fair to say that we're still seeing benefits.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Doug Arthur at Evercore. Your line is open sir.
Hey.
Your line is open sir. Please check your mute function.
Yeah. Can you hear me? Sorry. Yes. Robert, you alluded to sort of stepped up or accelerated rollout of digital content in the news and information group given the success of the Sun plus I mean that's not a new strategy, but in terms of this marketing spend, as you do similar efforts in Australia, perhaps more stepped up in the U.
S, Are we likely to see marketing spend line go up as a result in line with this effort?
To be honest, Doug, I wouldn't draw too many long term conclusions from the last quarter. I think one of the advantages we have as a company now is that we learn from experiences in different places. The executives in London, Sydney and New York are constantly talking about efficient marketing spend. And so that focus is enabling us to generally over the longer term keep the marketing spend to the minimum necessary.
Operator, we'll take our next question please.
Our next question comes from Craig Huber at Huber Research Partners.
Yes. My first line of question please. What was the cash level on your balance sheet end of the quarter? And also what is holding you guys back from buying stock and or putting in place a quarterly dividend? I have a follow on.
Thank you.
So our cash balance at the end of the quarter and obviously the fiscal year was $3,100,000,000 And in terms of how we think about deploying the cash, as we've said before, we're very focused on making sure that we do smart strategic acquisitions that we make sure the top line is getting stabilized. We make internal investments in projects such as Balboa. So that's really the frontline focus to make sure we build long term shareholder value at the company.
Operator, we'll take our next question please.
Our next question comes from Adam Alexander at Goldman Sachs.
Good afternoon. Just a question on Dow Jones institutional business. It's obviously been a drag through FY 2014. You mentioned that you'd seen some stabilization. I'm just wondering if you could give some color around what's the key area of customer pushback there and how you're going about addressing that?
To be frank, the key area of pushback was in Factiva, where we had changed the offering in a way that, to be honest, some of the clients found unacceptable. And so what we've done, we've listened to our clients. We've perfected the product, the pitch and the pricing, and we're starting to see some positive feedback there.
We'll take our next question from Erik Katz at Wells Fargo.
With regard to the investment in Southeast Asia, can you tell us a little more about that asset? And if you think you can move the needle in the segment, also raised strong growth rates? And then secondly, foreign currency has been a big headwind for you in fiscal 2014, but it seems like you'll be lapping some of those comps. So do you feel like you may have a bit of a tailwind now in fiscal 2015 as you lap that?
It's hard to predict on foreign currencies. But yes, I think generally speaking shouldn't be as unfavorable as we saw in 2014. The iProb are you asking about the iProperty acquisition? Sorry, I didn't get the first part of the question. Yes.
Right.
Yes.
So we've taken a small stake in iProperty. I think we've disclosed it's 17% or 17.5%. It's really REA that's done that. And I think it's part of the stated objective of expanding outside sort of Australia, but near to Australia in a sense so that you have the ability to monitor what's going on in a region that's close by. We'll have a Board seat on that company for that investment.
And I think we will help them and encourage them to grow. There may be cross platform opportunities with other things we are doing in the region such as with Seacatia or with Balvol, which we haven't fully exploited yet.
I think it's fair to say that at the Investor Day, we indicated that we would increase our presence in East Asia and frankly in the U. S. We're keeping that promise. As Beatty said, it's a relatively small at this stage investment, but it's a small investment in a fast growing region.
Operator, we'll take our next question, please.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Alice Bennett of CBA.
Hello. Just I have a question around Fox Sports. Maybe just a bit of clarification. So did you say that total local currency revenue was down 2%, but subscription up 6%? And if that's the case sort of what dragged down?
Was it just advertising? Or is there something else that dragged the total revenue down to that negative territory?
I think the reported numbers were dragged down by foreign currency. But I think local currency we were up.
Okay. So is that the adjusted number in the Yes.
Adjusted is adjusted for sorry, yes, for currency.
Okay. Operator, we'll take our next question please.
And there are no further questions in the queue. Okay.
Well, thank you all for participating and we look forward to sharing with you our progress throughout the year. Have a good night.