Well, good afternoon, and welcome to today's investor briefing on Dow Jones. Thank you all for coming and to those watching on the webcast. I'm Michael Florin, the Global Head of Investor Relations at News Corp. Before I start, safe harbor, please note that this presentation contains certain forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. Please refer to our cautionary statements regarding these items on the slide. We have a great afternoon for you. We're gonna start with some opening remarks from News Corp Chair Lachlan Murdoch and our Chief Executive, Robert Thomson. Then we're gonna turn it over to the Dow Jones team, starting with Almar Latour, the Chief Executive Officer of Dow Jones. The briefing should last about two hours, including a question and answer session. Following the Q&A session, we invite you to reception, and we'll also be demoing several Dow Jo nes products.
Before I turn it over to our Chair, Lachlan Murdoch, please enjoy this video.
A new day, a shared horizon. For more than a century, we have captured history, informed conversations, fueled debate, and helped people make sense of the world.
This is the freedom of the press that is needed.
Trusted then, trusted now, trusted tomorrow.
What we do is incredibly important to society.
From the fresh ink of a first edition to pixels that inform, engage and entertain. We're the voice on the radio, the podcast in your ear, the story that sparked your curiosity across finance and fiction, real estate and revelations, politics and pop culture. We inform, we inspire, we illuminate. We believe in facts and freedom, in fearless storytelling. We fight for truth even when it's difficult.
China has arrested an Australian journalist.
I spent six months thinking I was never gonna get out.
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Finding truth is often hard, but it is essential to our nation and to our future.
From bookstores to browsers, newsrooms to neighborhoods, machine learning to human insight, we turn curiosity into clarity.
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Capturing moments, meaning, and magic.
Wicked.
At the edge of yesterday, the future unfolds. A new day, a shared horizon.
Keep fighting for freedom of expression for everybody, not just us.
For every voice, every story, every generation. News Corp. Be curious. Always.
Please welcome News Corp Chairman Lachlan Murdoch.
Oh, thank you. Thank you very much and then thank you, Mike. Good afternoon. Thank you all for joining us today. Whether you're in the room or here with us in New York or tuning in via the podcast, thank you. I know that many of you have flown in from across the country and from around the world, and it's our pleasure to host you over the next few hours and give you some insights into the Dow Jones business. It's a business that we are very proud of, but we're not just sitting on our laurels here. We are just getting started. When News Corp and Fox separated over a decade ago, our thesis was that we would create shareholder value by applying a disciplined focus on building a digital-first news and information services powerhouse.
That thesis has been proven right thanks to the leadership of Robert and our management team and to the incredible work of our journalists and employees across the world. We have spent the last 13 years executing a strategy that has made us less subject to the vicissitudes of the traditional media world. Our focus on strengthening our core drivers, Dow Jones, which we will examine today, and book publishing and digital real estate services, has fueled our transformation. You will see how Dow Jones embodies and exemplifies this strategy. The business is well-positioned to endure and to thrive as we meet the AI moment, backed by great journalism, expert analysis, thoughtful investment, and deeply moated products. Ultimately, any business is only as good as those who run it, and our people are one of our key advantages.
I'm very happy you will hear from many of our leaders this afternoon and get to know them and their businesses a little bit better. With that, I'll hand you over to Robert Thomson.
Thank you, Lachlan, for that introduction and for your astute and principled leadership. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. We are indeed gathered at a tumultuous moment, both in the political and the commercial sense, and it is a moment that brings clarity to the profound importance of News Corp and Dow Jones. We are deep in the age of AI, which is positively transforming the value of our assets, while News Corp itself has been fundamentally transformed over the past decade. We have sold low-yielding properties and acquired highly profitable assets. We have become a majority digital company. We had a deep reliance on advertising, but are now replete with recurring revenues and expanding margins. We had record profitability last year on a continuing operations basis and are on track for record profitability this year.
We have reported 11 successive quarters of year-on-year EBITDA growth, and at the very heart of that success has been Dow Jones. Of course, as Lachlan mentioned, Dow Jones is but one of our three growth engines, which also include Digital Real Estate and HarperCollins, all of which generate handsome profits and strong free cash flow. That free cash flow rose to $571 million in fiscal 2025, and our bolstered cash position has prompted ratings agencies to upgrade our status. Moody's have already put us on positive notice for a possible further upgrade. One other consequence of that robust cash position is that we've been able to sharply increase our buyback, which has been running at a level four times that of a year ago, while we have maintained our dividend. Now, a few specific metrics for context.
We were 62% digital in fis cal 2025 compared to 22% in 2014. Obviously at HarperCollins, we will always have hit hardbacks and profitable paperbacks along with e-books and audio. Putting HarperCollins to one side, we were 72% digital as of fiscal 2025. Meanwhile, our total segment EBITDA margin in 2014 was 11%, and last fiscal was nearly 17%. We are entering a new age of opportunity, the AI age. Earlier this month, news broke of our landmark deal with Meta for AI, which follows our pioneering partnership with OpenAI. Now, these deals are not just transactional, but they are fundamental in that we are learning from each other, getting priceless insights into contemporary content creation and consumption. We firmly believe AI is dramatically enhancing the value of our news, data, intelligence, insights, and other IP.
We are using AI to improve subscription management, to introduce true dynamic pricing, to transform audio to text and text to audio, to translate into multiple languages, and to bring manga alive. We expect to deploy AI to intelligently cut costs and improve efficiency and enhance creativity. To understand how the value of our content has increased markedly, it is actually worth studying how the AI world is evolving. There are the large horizontal platforms, OpenAI and Meta, with whom we are partnering, then the perplexing Perplexity, whom we are suing, or Anthropic, which has agreed to pay publishers and authors $1.5 billion to settle a suit over illicit usage of IP. Now, we look forward to receiving our share of that hefty settlement starting later this calendar year. We have a very clear strategy, wooing and suing.
We would much prefer to woo these companies, but if there are IP violations, we will certainly sue them. You have the large horizontal platforms, and they are increasingly recognizing the value of our content. We are also seeing a rapid proliferation of vertical specialist AI companies who are focusing on specific segments. We believe this is a whole new generation of opportunity for our companies, whether our mastheads, HarperCollins, or Digital Real Estate, which generates a vast amount of repurposable data. Now, we're already tracking a rising number of these companies attempting to scrape illicitly, illegally our precious content. We are identifying these bad boy bots, and we will pursue them. We're also receiving increasing calls from honorable companies who want to acquire copy content in the proper way, the right way in building their AI-based products.
Why is that, and why is that trend just beginning? We are an input company. Semiconductors are inputs. Energy is an input. Editorial is an essential input itself. AI engines require information, and they need constant updates to remain relevant. Otherwise, they are merely retrospective. There are few companies on the planet that have the range of archive and the immediacy of contemporary content that we can offer across borders and across segments. Now, we are confident that this will be a large and additive revenue stream. However, at the output end, there will be intense competition with emerging companies and a plethora of new products. That is AI downstream. For us, we have our existing, highly profitable growing businesses plus a potentially lucrative monetization opportunity upstream. That is our compelling AI advantage in an age in which Dow Jones should be uniquely positioned to prosper.
Now to tell that story, to outline that profound potential, we have Almar Latour, the Dow Jones Chief Executive, and his talented team. First, a scintillating sizzle reel.
An exiled Iranian opposition figure has been thrust into the spotlight.
There's been more and more concerns out of Wall Street that the surge in AI investment is starting to resemble a bubble.
This, as The Wall Street Journal reported, methodically destroying Iran's communist state. It's quite hard to contain the rate and scale of change that we see.
For global companies, the regulatory landscape is constantly evolving.
The opposite of what all of these businesses and economists predicted happened.
Everywhere you go. Please welcome the Chief Executive Officer of Dow Jones and Publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Almar Latour.
Hi, everyone. Thank you, Lachlan, Robert, and welcome everybody. Thank you for spending this afternoon in our company. My colleagues and I will use this time to demonstrate why we relish this moment. Now, with so much change happening all around us, and you know this, geopolitics, global trade, energy, technology, of course, AI, the need for reliable news and intelligence is greater than ever. As someone who personally has deep experience in both the news side and the data side and technology of our business, I believe unequivocally that this is the moment for Dow Jones. This is, in fact, why we exist. Now, there are three key takeaways to focus on over the arc of this presentation. One, Dow Jones is a news, data, and business intelligence powerhouse.
2, we expect outsized growth in our B2B properties in risk and energy, and that growth will be underpinned by the value creation and consumer and enterprise news, especially in the age of AI. 3, we believe we have a clear path to hit $1 billion in EBITDA within five years. That's a 70% increase from fiscal 2025. Now, let's start by taking a look at how Dow Jones is built today. Dow Jones is organized into the three units that you see here, news, risk, and energy, and the former has two key parts, consumer and enterprise news. Dow Jones is built to inform the business world. It's built to inform you, and we anticipate and respond to the shifting needs of our clients and consumers in this era of great change, which also is an era of misinformation. We all know this.
Now, just to bring that to life, let's take a look at world events over the past few weeks. We've all seen a lot, which put news, geopolitical risk, and energy at the forefront of the global stage. February 2026, our Dow Jones Risk experts told an audience of CEOs in a closed setting that they expected a US attack on Iran two days later on Saturday morning. Now, by that Saturday, February 28th, the attack indeed took place, and our news team was providing live coverage of the unfolding military action. The next day, Dow Jones Risk's Dragonfly unit sent out an alert that Khamenei had been killed, and that was ahead of many news reports. The Dow Jones Energy team sprung into action immediately, preparing impact reports for the global energy market on pricing of crude oil and other commodities.
We all have seen what's happened since. Meanwhile, our Dow Jones risk analysts worked with Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, and Dow Jones Energy to provide geopolitical commentary, guidance, and insights to our corporate clients. Now, our customers, as well as global media, turned to Dow Jones experts around the clock during that time. I'm sure you've seen it on TV. Now, some of the stats here show our early impact. Increased customer engagement, increased audience engagement, increased client consultations, lots of incoming calls, increased subscription registrations, increased orders. This is just one showcase for how each of our individual assets create value for our customers and how in concert they actually offer even more value. This is the Dow Jones flywheel effect. It's incredibly powerful.
Now, on any given day, our news, data, and intelligence convening power, they ripple through the business world, and this is how we create premium value for customers, and that's what today is about, driving that value. Now, as you could just see, our news and information is essential in this age of vast change, and that's even more the case in an era of AI, which of course is only just getting started. Indeed, we believe AI is an accelerant to our business, an accelerant for our growth. AI helps our business with greater efficiency. It allows us to create new products and new ways to deliver our news and data, and it is fueling even more demand for reliable information. Our clients, they range from hyperscalers, you heard Robert talk about them, to financial institutions, large corporations, hedge funds, startups.
They know that their AI models' outputs are only as good as their inputs. AI models need to be updated constantly to stay relevant, and our news does just that. But there's more. Just like our news is exclusive and reliable, so too is our Dow Jones proprietary data, and there's a lot of it. That news, data, and intelligence is gathered by thousands of reporters, researchers, analysts, data scientists in ways that simply cannot be replicated by AI models. Our proprietary data, news, and services are also tethered to regulatory requirements around the world. You may not know this. Governments set their own very specific, immovable standards for the information that guides the worlds of finance and geopolitics, and we play a role in this. At the root of all of this, everything that I just told you, is trust.
Trust that our colleagues and I have to earn every day. Trust that has been built over decades. We are collectively agnostic to which tools and delivery channels are used to deploy our news, data, and intelligence, whether our customers use legacy systems or new AI models. They will require reliable and trusted data either way. We believe that the need for Dow Jones, therefore, will only increase. Now, today, we are a global company that excels in both media and information services, and that's fundamentally different from who we were five years ago when we became a separate segment of News Corp. Back then, we promised we would become a digital-first company by a wide margin, part of the company-wide transformation that you heard Robert just talk about, and we delivered.
For example, we more than tripled our digital subscriptions since 2018 and doubled them since we resegmented in 2020. Back then, we also made a goal for ourselves internally that we would sharply increase our focus on B2B, and we delivered and then some. For fiscal 2025, over 80% of our total revenue was recurring, and that compares to 69% in fiscal 2018. The majority of our EBITDA was driven by B2B. The result of this transformation speaks for itself. Since 2018, we have nearly doubled our EBITDA margin and more than tripled EBITDA overall. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the support of Rupert, Lachlan, Robert, our colleagues at News Corp. Thank you.
Clearly, we win by serving news, data, and analytics, and convening power to our audience, whether they are a consumer of The Wall Street Journal, an enterprise customer, or users of Risk and Energy. What allows us to do this so well? Where are we going to invest in order to win on our road to the $1 billion in EBITDA in five years? These are two questions that, needless to say, I obsess over, and these are the five pillars that are integral to delivering our plan. The first one is tech. Core technology is world-class at Dow Jones. Data. We've built a data platform that's perennially updating and upgrading itself, and the data connections, the all-important data connections amongst them. In the age of AI, this will allow us to help our customers better, more specific to their needs.
We are gonna continue to invest in modern and scalable infrastructure that connects our data and our assets, including an AI. We're not just deepening and connecting data and technology. We have created a high-value client sales group that spans all of our products. This facilitates upselling, cross-selling, as well as providing a methodical feedback loop for our biggest clients. That's critical. We're standing up adjacent verticals, we call them multiplier verticals, that are connected to our existing verticals. For example, geopolitics, very dynamic, is deeply intertwined with risk and energy. We're pushing relentlessly for efficiency to free up resources to invest in our growth areas. Everyday productivity contributes to increasing and improving our margin and fueling our capital expenditure options. AI is an accelerant to all of this.
It makes it easier to create new datasets, start new verticals, improve our customer experience through customization and new discovery tools, while at the same time improving productivity and efficiency. We're in the early stages with AI as an industry, but we are fully embracing the opportunities. Last, there is M&A activity. Since we completed several transactions since 2020. Our approach to M&A has been a critical part of our scale transformation. We have strategically focused on two areas, you see them right here, adding proprietary data and adding capabilities. Examples of capabilities that have been added include the acquisition of A2i, that's an AI technology company, while the addition of proprietary data includes the acquisitions of OPIS, CMA, Oxford Analytica, and Dragonfly. We've become adept at integration at a rapid clip.
We're successfully growing the business as we bring into the Dow Jones fold. They're not just sitting there. For example, OPIS, acquired four years ago, has nearly doubled its revenue growth since before joining Dow Jones. That brings us back to Dow Jones again as it is today. This slide I showed earlier, and it shows our three units. First, news. You're familiar with it. News is delivered to our consumer and to our enterprise audiences, and I'm gonna talk in greater depth in a moment about that. You'll soon hear from Emma Tucker, the editor-in-chief of our flagship The Wall Street Journal, and she's gonna be followed by Scott Havens, who has responsibility for driving the revenue from our consumer customer base, and then Lisa Fitzpatrick, who's responsible for enterprise news.
Now across the board, I'm excited about a lot, but I particularly like the progress that we have made and continue to make in terms of the B2B-ification of news. That's feeding information in customizable forms to large corporations and hyperscalers and other clients. Second and third are risk and energy verticals. They are our pure-play B2B engines, and they're adding to our growth. The financial contribution that Joel Lange at Risk and Sarah Cottle at Energy oversee, and we'll talk about, is emblematic of the scale at pace on display and our ability to outpace the market. You'll hear them shortly. Now let's unpack consumer news where, as an aside, I once worked as a reporter and editor.
As you know, our consumer brands are unrivaled in quality and reputation, and a quick thank you to you here because I know so many of you are customers. Survey after survey shows that our brands are trusted more than any other business publication. We are the number one global news source for C-suite executives, and we're a dominant force in the business and professional world. An average of 67 million monthly users reached us digitally every month in fiscal 2025. Our bright future predicts a further expansion of our subscription base, geographic expansion, greater video presence, a presence in more languages, and more coverage areas, just to name a few. Now, let's move to enterprise subscriptions. In the past, enterprise subscriptions might have meant dropping off a stack of Wall Street Journals and Barron's in the lobby of your headquarters. You might still remember that.
Today, this has turned into a sophisticated B2B information stream, where not only do we deliver WSJ subscriptions, but a customized combination of our news assets tailored to the client's needs. This is what I mean by the B2B-ification of news. Now reliable news has become the equivalent of proprietary data. News is data flowing into the systems of our clients, and that can be deployed by them in multiple ways. Let's break this down. Our clients include hyperscalers like Meta, large corporations, large financial institutions, hedge funds, companies really of any size in any industry. Each of them is able to get the best version of what we do tailored to their needs. The value of our services is evidenced by our high retention rates. By the way, our acquisition costs for this are low, and our margins are enviable.
We have a vast trove of data that we can slice and customize in any way that our clients and customers want, and even more so with the help of AI, which is, after all, this accelerant for us. Here comes the kicker. In the age of AI, demand for our type of reliable information has only been increasing. We're seeing more demand, not less. For example, customers are coming back multiple times to drive their Gen AI products with Dow Jones Factiva, just one example. All right. Let's take a look at our risk pillar. If you're not familiar with this product, let me highlight a few ways in which our products and services manifest in the real world. Big questions like, how do you know that the people that you're doing business with, or your clients are in fact legitimate?
Now, how do you verify the identities behind financial transactions? How do you avoid running afoul of a sanctions regime? These are questions that financial institutions and large corporations spend significant resources on. Our trusted data and intelligence helps them answer these questions and make sure that they are in compliance with complex and, frankly, ever-changing regulations. This is a market that we believe will grow over time. It will only grow over time. As AI puts pressure on existing SaaS models, our trusted data and intelligence gathered by countless researchers, countless data scientists, countless reporters, our data is agnostic to which models our clients use. New tools, old tools, they will require trusted data just the same if they want to be successful, if they want to see good outcomes.
Industry forecasts point to low double-digit average annual growth rates across the risk market, and we believe that we are well-placed to grow faster than the underlying market. You'll hear our team talk about this. Now, let's turn to a look at our energy pillar. Dow Jones Energy straddles real-time wholesale and pricing from the port to the pump for every type of refined fuels and also for retail fuel pricing. That means that all of you, in some way, you're actually using our Dow Jones Energy product. Dow Jones researchers and reporters inform the price you see at the gas pump, and we're likely to be part of the prices cited in the contract of any company or trading floor that buys or sells energy assets. Our pricing and data go beyond fuels, also to environmental commodities, renewable energy, EV data, and also fuel management.
For example, if you are searching for an EV charger while you're driving, chances are that Dow Jones data is helping you find one. What does that mean in practice? More than 5,000 businesses are using our news, data, and intelligence every day, every week, every month in Dow Jones Energy alone. They are subscribing to detailed data and pay us annual fees. This information is invaluable to their business and operations. Both the data collection and the intelligence are proprietary. Furthermore, we have 60 industry-adopted benchmarks and are one of a handful of price reporting agencies or PRAs. Sarah will tell you more about that in a moment. Again, this is where trust is at a premium and not likely to be eaten by AI.
In many jurisdictions, PRAs are even on top of all of this, formally regulated and supervised. Again, this is where trust is at a premium. You see the theme? Our retention rate is linked to this trust, around 90% strong yields, and we've earned the right to price our premium products in line with the value they provide to our customers. Now, this is a dynamic business which is only just scratching the surface of the possible. The energy market is slated to grow up to 10% per annum, and we believe that we are well-positioned to exceed that growth rate. When the world is volatile, people need Dow Jones more than ever, and our assets play to win. In concert, our assets create a powerful flywheel effect. Think about how our portfolio comes together for an executive facing a crisis.
They read the agenda-setting journalism of The Wall Street Journal to understand the macro trends. Their company uses Dow Jones Risk & Compliance, bolstered by our experts at Dragonfly and Oxford Analytica, to screen supply chains and anticipate geopolitical security threats. They rely on Dow Jones Energy and OPIS to understand how those threats impact global energy pricing. Finally, they may join peers at The Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute and our CEO Council Network to share insights and learn how to lead through disruption, working with their peers and my colleagues. We are building a full stack of services across news, data, analytics, and convening, and that is the flywheel effect in action.
In a world that is changing so rapidly, the true power of Dow Jones is how all of our assets and our amazing teams of reporters, researchers, experts, data scientists, engineers, our commercial teams, how they all play together. The ability to offer reliable news, data, intelligence, and convening power in key areas of the business world is what makes us truly indispensable and more vital in an age where reliable news and reliable data is in short supply, especially in the era of AI, where your outputs are only as good as your inputs. Truly trusted information is the key value that we offer to customers. This is our moment. Now speaking of our amazing teams, we have a world-class management team to walk you through each part of Dow Jones. The ones you see right here behind me will help me present the business today.
Each of them are exceptional leaders in their field, and I'm proud to be a colleague of those presenting, and I'm proud to be CEO for my wider team. To that wider team, if you're watching on the stream, let me just take a moment to thank you for your absolute commitment to maintaining that level of trust, which is the bedrock of our business. Lachlan, Robert, and I remain grateful to you for your important and hard work. Thank you. In a moment, we will be joined by Emma Tucker, Editor-in-Chief of The Wall Street Journal. Emma has led a remarkable transformation at The Wall Street Journal and is guiding the newsroom into an exciting new era. Here now is The Wall Street Journal. Thank you all.
The Wall Street Journal published a piece with this striking headline.
Step down. The Wall Street Journal reporting those efforts. The Wall Street Journal business columnist and CNBC.
Comes on the same night as that Wall Street Journal report. What is the president-
The Wall Street Journal, which details the pre-
The Wall Street Journal's editorial board even wrote, "Picking up Biden's.
Now, it's not in my habit to agree with The Wall Street Journal.
The Wall Street Journal's role as a credible, trusted source of key information is more important than ever.
I do not start the day without reading The Wall Street Journal because it is business news full stop.
New experiences, new data, new insights, new content, and that's why the smartest business people read the Journal.
The Wall Street Journal is truly an essential read for me every single day. Wake up, open my eyes, read the first article of The Wall Street Journal.
I don't think you can be successful in this country without having The Wall Street Journal as part of your required reading.
I've been reading The Wall Street Journal since high school, and I've been reading it every day since.
What makes The Wall Street Journal essential to me? Simple. I trust it.
Join me in welcoming the Editor-in-Chief of The Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker.
Thank you, Almar, and good afternoon, everyone. As we've been hearing, our journalism is the core of the global information powerhouse that is Dow Jones. It provides the integrity that drives every part of our business. I'll be honest, it is both a privilege and a great responsibility to be at the helm of The Wall Street Journal at what feels like a very pivotal moment in our history.
In a world defined by geopolitical volatility, economic shifts, huge uncertainty. Demand for clarity has never been higher. Now, at the Journal, we don't just report change, we provide the definitive record that global leaders rely on to navigate it. Editorial rigor is what earns us our place as the most trusted name in business news. As Scott and Lisa are going to tell you, this clear strategy and commitment to quality is translating directly into commercial growth. Now, what's true for Dow Jones is also true for The Wall Street Journal. We are the most trusted brand in business news. That's because we offer unbiased journalism that's always rooted in fearless expert reporting. Now, high-stakes financial news demands discipline, and our entire newsroom works to the highest standards. We pair the world's foremost talent with a stringent code of conduct and vigilant editing.
You don't just have to take my word for it. Survey after survey says that we are the number one news brand when it comes to trust. That trust very much underpins our growth. At The Wall Street Journal and Barron's Group, we've expanded our premium audience, and more than half of our subscribers have a net worth of over $1 million. Perhaps most importantly, we are the number one source for C-suite executives, a position that directly fulfills our mission to empower leaders with the clarity they need to make critical decisions. I'm happy to report at The Wall Street Journal, our audiences are becoming younger. We're actively capturing the next wave of decision-makers through an audience segment that we refer to as the pre-suites. Now, these early career professionals make up 22% of our subscribers, and they are our most engaged audience.
They're driven by a first-to-know mindset as they climb the corporate ladder. We've also seen significant growth in direct subscribers under 40, as well as reaching an even younger audience across our offerings. When it comes to AI, just like any industry, we're using AI tools for greater efficiency. Our teams have built a variety of tools in-house. One of my favorites is called Orca, and Orca was designed to help our journalists parse through information from podcasts with greater depth, speed, and efficiency. As you know, there are countless shows with dozens of new episodes every day. No one person can listen to all of that, so we built something that does. Our news offering is distinct and unique.
In a world of instant commoditized information, we emphasize the importance of standing out by doubling down on exclusivity and delivering the truly new in a market saturated with the already known. It's this unwavering focus that has driven a tremendous rise in engagement, as well as direct visits to The Wall Street Journal. We believe you simply cannot run a high-performing LLM without our data. While AI models are trained on the past, we are reporting the present in real time. In an automated world, human triangulation is the ultimate premium, and that's why our direct traffic is growing. When the world is flooded with AI-generated noise, audiences have come straight to us for the signal they can trust. Now, this commitment to delivering reliable, trusted news to our audience has been a differentiator for the Journal and for the broader collection of Dow Jones newsrooms.
Together, we've more than tripled digital subscriptions to our consumer news publications since 2018. Of course, our newsrooms are one part of a holistic Dow Jones offering that includes everything from The WSJ Leadership Institute to the many experts across all our verticals, an offering that is more than the sum of its parts. We have a strategy, the strategy is working, and we have a clear plan for the path ahead, both for our journalism and our commercial success. Now, Scott Havens, our Chief Growth Officer and Global Head of Consumer, will take you through the growth we have seen across our consumer news business, how we continue to innovate for our customers, and our gro wth strategy. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Emma. If you've opened the Wall Street Journal app recently, you've seen it changing. This isn't a redesign, it's a continuous upgrade cycle. Consumer subscriptions and advertising represent the majority of Dow Jones' revenue, and the product experience is what protects and grows that base. We're adding features and formats as consumption patterns shift, and the data confirms it's working. Video engagement is up, connected devices are up, and search, historically underutilized, is growing fast. We're embedding AI where it actually changes behavior, surfacing relevant stories faster, personalizing the experience by portfolio or beat, and giving subscribers tools that make the product more engaging. We're also investing in a video as a platform, not just a format.
The way people consume business information is shifting towards social and streaming, and we intend to meet that demand with a video experience worthy of The Wall Street Journal brand. The goal across all of this is the same, build a product that's indispensable to daily habit because frequency and retention and engagement, and it drives long-term value. We have a premium product with real pricing opportunity, and we're getting smarter about how we use it. In the last two years, we have systematically moved pricing up across both digital and print without sacrificing volume. Wall Street Journal U.S. digital list price has gone from $38.99 per month in fiscal 2024 to $44.99 just last week in fiscal 2026. Wall Street Journal print has moved from $54.99- $64.99 over that very same period. Pricing's only part of the story.
We've also shortened some promotional offers to less than a year, and we've replaced standard step-ups with a data-driven retention and pricing strategy, meaning each subscriber gets priced based on their engagement and value they receive. It's not simply a blanket increase. The result? It's a smarter, more dynamic approach to ARPU, one that captures more value per subscriber without sacrificing retention. It's still early, but as our pricing strategy sharpens and the product gets more engaging, we believe there's meaningful room to keep improving. That discipline is possible because of what underpins it, trust, depth, and a product experience that justifies this premium positioning. At nearly $600 a year, The Wall Street Journal US Digital is priced among the top business news leaders in the space.
Just this week, we are launching our super bundle, a collection of all our digital consumer products for super users priced at $7,499 per year. The market is validating our position. As of Q2 fiscal 2026, digital subscriptions have grown 12% per year to 6 million. Digital direct subscription ARPU is up 6%, and digital circulation revenue grew 7%. We're growing subscriptions, pricing, and ARPU simultaneously because the model is reinforcing itself. This product depth is driving frequency, that frequency is driving retention and engagement, and that retention and engagement is enabling pricing. But we're not just at a premium price, we're earning the right to raise them through the proprietary journalism, deeper product utility, and engagement that compounds over time. We believe there's a long runway ahead.
Robust subscription growth is not the only driver of our revenue. Ad revenue has held steady while we've shifted our mix toward higher-value formats, with 65% of fiscal 2025 ad revenue now coming from digital. Under the leadership of Josh Stinchcomb, right over here, last quarter was our best quarter ever for digital ad revenue. Custom video and audio revenue has tripled since fiscal year 2018, and CPMs are up 1.5 times over the same period. In addition, the team hosted 179 events in fiscal 2025, and event revenue nearly doubled since 2018. Importantly, open market programmatic advertising now represents less than 3%, certainly of fiscal year 2025 ad revenue. We are deliberately leaning in to direct multi-platform premium formats that insulate us from the decline in open market CPMs. Our advertisers are buying a premium audience, not simply impressions.
That same premium positioning extends across the portfolio. The Barron's Group, Barron's and MarketWatch, plus Investor's Business Daily, is our focused wealth and investing portfolio, and it's become a real growth engine for us since the acquisition of IBD in 2021. Of course, collaborating across our business units creates more value. We're building beyond our core, launching products like the Barron's Investor Circle, Barron's Energy Insider, and we're launching Barron's Global Signals, which is gonna be a collaboration with Oxford Analytica. These are targeted high-intent offerings for audiences willing to pay for differentiated insight. The demand is there. Subscriptions to Barron's have grown nearly 200% since June 2018 to almost 1.5 million. Digital subscriptions up around 600% over that same period.
Perhaps the clearest proof point is MarketWatch, recently rebranded, re-platformed, relaunched our highest ARPU product before the super bundle at $1,411 per year. Again, clear evidence sophisticated investors will pay for advanced tools and proprietary data. Growth from here is about expanding where we already have credibility and demand across three primary vectors. International, we're under-penetrated relative to our brand strength. Less than 20% of total digital subscriptions are international today, giving us significant room to grow. Regional products, automated local language support, partnerships, selective localization will let us scale internationally without rebuilding the newsroom market by market. Verticals. We're working closely with editorial to extend into new coverage areas. Wealth and leadership have been natural moves so far, with more to be released in the coming months. Formats, video, audio, events.
This is how we deepen frequency, deepen habit, meeting our audience in more moments of their day. Across all three vectors, the principle is the same. Build on what we do brilliantly, extend into new platforms, new audiences, and new markets. That's our growth model. With that, let's turn to the exciting growth in our enterprise news business. Please welcome the General Manager of Industries, Lisa Fitzpatrick. Thank you.
Thank you, Scott. Hello, everyone. As Almar said earlier, Dow Jones is a news, data, and intelligence powerhouse. The Wall Street Journal, combined with other Dow Jones news coverage and practitioner commentary, gives professionals insights and context they need. Dow Jones Newswires capture real-time developments that are powering professional trading and investing decisions. Our Factiva team provides company and market intelligence from tens of thousands of sources globally. In aggregate, these three product lines contributed $352 million to Dow Jones revenue in fiscal 2025, and they are growing. Jointly, we call them the enterprise news business because each of these product lines delivers news and must-have intelligence to a wide range of corporate clients.
A key driver for growth is our ability to tailor our news, data, and information to the exact needs of the end user and deliver it in any way that a client prefers, whether that be through APIs, AI connectors, or through new products we create in partnership with our clients. We currently have a good foundation of corporations that license one or more of our enterprise news products. In this age of constant change, demand for reliable information has been increasing, and we see an opportunity to take enterprise news into thousands of corporations as we target the Russell 3000. Additionally, only about 10% of our current revenue comes from outside the United States, so we see tremendous growth potential in international markets in the years ahead.
Our belief is strengthened by the widespread adoption of generative AI, which has created greater demand for our trusted news and data. Our existing and prospective corporate clients need reliable information and data for their models in order to achieve reliable outcomes. Not only do we see this as an opportunity to win new clients, but it's an opening to build deeper, more lucrative relationships with our existing customer base. We believe AI is making our growth opportunities in the corporate market even greater than before. While companies are spending less on developing tools, they're spending more on targeted information they can trust. Ultimately, we are agnostic to which models and work tools our customers choose to use. AI is a driver for us. It is enabling deeper integration across three categories of enterprise news products.
The first is bespoke news products, and a great example of that is our partnership with Yomiuri Shimbun. Here, we deliver our news and intelligence on a custom-built tech stack that gives their clients context around developments. Based on their needs, we combine our intelligence with Yomiuri's reporting in Japan, we leverage AI to translate our content into Japanese, and we tailor the presentation. The second category is custom news feeds. We are seeing strong demand for these news feeds in the financial services market, where Factiva and Newswires are leveraging AI to power deals across hedge funds, financial platforms, and institutions. These businesses rely on high-quality trusted sources for investment decision-making, and our combination of news, analysis, and market information helps them mitigate risk and identify new opportunities.
Firms are building their own internal research and trading systems that leverage Dow Jones data, and AI is enabling and delivering datasets that are tailored for specific funds and strategies. Finally, our third category is AI connectors, which bring our products and our data into LLM platforms. For example, we just launched the Factiva ChatGPT connector in collaboration with OpenAI. Factiva's trusted licensed content is integrated for Factiva subscribers directly into the enterprise ChatGPT environment. This allows Factiva enterprise customers to leverage ChatGPT to access licensed, reliable, and trusted detail and insight, all of which link insight back to our owned and operated Dow Jones Factiva platform. Customers are required to have a Factiva subscription in order to unlock its data and content on ChatGPT. The Factiva connector is featured in the ChatGPT app store and serves as a funnel to Factiva itself.
As I said earlier, the corporate market needs and wants the news, data, and intelligence we provide. They want it tailored, curated, and delivered for their own needs in increasingly focused ways for different categories of end users. We will continue to deliver and seize on this opportunity to expand our footprint in the corporate market. What you've heard and seen from Emma, Scott, and me is a comprehensive growth story built on three interconnected pillars. Trust, it's the foundation that enables everything we do. It gives us permission to charge premium prices and win enterprise and direct consumer relationships. Growth in subscriptions and revenue proves the market values what we deliver, and we're improving the quality of that revenue with higher ARPU, better margins, and more predictable streams.
Unlocking new value and opportunities through AI, international expansion, and enterprise embedding means we're, we believe we're just scratching the surface of what's possible. The principle across all three pillars is the same, build on what we already do brilliantly, connect our news, data, and intelligence in relevant and impactful ways for our clients, and then extend it into new formats for new audiences and new markets. That's our growth model for news. In a moment, we'll be joined by Joel Lange, the General Manager of Dow Jones Risk, to share the incredible work our teams are doing to provide proprietary data and intelligence to customers as they navigate an increasingly complex risk environment. First, here's a look at Dow Jones Risk. Thank you.
U.S. officials have suggested the conflict could last weeks.
White House's ability to impose sweeping tariffs under emergency powers.
Every year, the world's most important institutions pay billions in fines for sanctions failures, financial crimes, supply chain violations, and more. Preventing these fines requires the best data and intelligence. Today, knowing who you're doing business with isn't discretionary. It's the law in every market on every continent, and the exposure runs through every vendor, every partner, every swipe of a credit card, every transaction in your supply chain, and the rules are constantly changing. Dow Jones Risk & Compliance is the world's most comprehensive risk and compliance intelligence operation. Reporters, researchers, and data scientists gathering hard-won, real-time information that exists nowhere else. Customers that range from global banks to the world's largest companies and international institutions. Our products and services, from our watch list to due diligence reports to Integrity Check, catch threats before they become headlines, compliance violations, or worse.
Dow Jones Risk isn't where institutions go when something goes wrong. It's why it doesn't.
Please welcome the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Dow Jones Risk, Joel Lange.
Good afternoon, everyone. Before delving into the details of our business, let me share a story that shows why what we do matters. Let me take you back to the 24th of February, 2022. You may remember where you were when tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border and missiles rained down on airports and cities across the Ukraine. Hours later, the U.S. government unleashed a sanctions package it had been preparing with G7 countries for months. Over the coming days and weeks, the names of banks, oligarchs, and Vladimir Putin himself were placed on lists to block them from the global financial system. At the same time, our world-class data team were ready. Using both technology and people, we processed this data, transferred it into proprietary formats. We researched any company that was owned or controlled by those listed oligarchs and banks in any country in the world.
The same data-gathering process has been used in relation to Iran, Venezuela, and any other terrorists or money launderers listed on major sanctions lists. This proprietary data now numbers over 50,000 companies around the world. To get this right, and to the satisfaction of the world's leading banks and corporations and their regulators, we need the right people. The best and brightest experts interact daily with customers and regulators, anticipating the next geopolitical rupture. Our people are unsurpassed. They take high-quality data, align it with exact regulatory expectations, and deliver it to our customers. This is the skill set of what powers a high-margin recurring subscription business. Let's delve into the risk business, where we are providing this market-leading data in a growing industry delivered directly into critical workflows.
Our customers face a myriad of risks, and Dow Jones Risk provides the proprietary human intelligence needed to power efficient results. The bedrock of our business is premium proprietary risk data, created and curated by a global team of subject matter experts. We do this through our frequent communication with regulators and close relationships with the world's largest regulated companies. As risks and detailed regulations increase, so does our customers' demand for solutions to keep their names out of the headlines, prevent fines, and prevent business loss. Dow Jones is a data solutions provider. We integrate our data into whichever tools our customers choose to use. The acceleration of AI and agentic frameworks offer a unique opportunity and sales channel for us to deliver. The stakes are so high for our customers. Lives are saved, fines are avoided. This works in two ways.
First, imagine if a risk is missed and a terrorist or money launderer accesses a bank. At best, this could mean a fine. At worst, the bank could be used in a financial crime or even a terrorist act. Second, if a customer or supplier is mismatched with bad data, it could lead to a wrongful debanking lawsuit or a data privacy inquiry. We take great care when we label a person or a company as having been involved in criminal activity. The sources are reliable, protected by copyright, and compliant with data privacy laws. We combine our deep customer relationships with our journalistic intelligence gathering. This allows us to both identify risks and regulations before they are published in any open-source documentation. Take the Department of Commerce's affiliates rule from last September. It blocks any company owned by someone on their watch list.
We saw this coming, and we acted. We provided a solution to customers before the legislation kicked in. Now, this involved researching 3,000 companies across multiple jurisdictions, companies that are often obscured and complex using non-Latin scripts. We have the contextual and cultural understanding to do this. We created a database of 24,000 exclusively researched companies, which we delivered directly into customer systems. This drove over $1 million of new subscription revenue in just two weeks. Our customer base is diversified over regions and sectors. The common denominator is trusted data built not just around written regulation, but around how regulators actually interpret and enforce the rules. Many of our top customers make regular trips to our Barcelona hub to discuss data sets and review our intelligence gathering processes.
Our relationship with banks using our data for anti-money laundering checks goes back over 25 years, and our corporate customers go back over 15 years and use our data to comply with a myriad of risks and regulations. If you saw us in 2011, we worked primarily with banks, but now corporates make up 44% of our revenue, driven by demand for data to comply with anti-corruption and sanctions legislation. We deliver our data and intelligence for specific regulatory compliance needs. Global banks are required to understand their exposure to politicians and criminality to ensure that their organizations aren't used for money laundering. Both banks and corporations are required to check customers and suppliers against sanctions and export control data. Again, not just the names on the list. They must also find the companies owned by listed people and by listed companies.
When doing supplier checks, corporations need to check for any signals in the news that may be red flags. Now, with our acquisitions of Oxford Analytica and Dragonfly, we help customers anticipate risk and keep their people safe by tracking key risk indicators in 25 country categories in nearly every country in the world. Let's unpack what makes our data proprietary and how we build it. Data requirements mandated by regulators are sometimes clearly laid out, but often they're based on loose guidance and definitions communicated in audits, sometimes even verbally. Our risk data ranges from the aggregation, consolidation, and enrichment of government lists to deep research on ownership. We do access open-source registrars, but we also access registrars that are opaque, protected, and offline. This is constantly changing complex data.
By tracking global elections and political changes, we navigate the complexity of different global politically exposed person legislation. This creates a proprietary Dow Jones definition that customers can hang their hat on and meets regulatory expectations. Where global media is required for negative signals on people and companies, we have unique access to Factiva and its thousands of licensed media sources. This data is structured in an adverse media taxonomy, which is again, unique to Dow Jones. Let me give you three quick case studies out of the thousands that we have. The first relates to our human intelligence. We had a customer trying to identify Russian connections with two separate companies.
Our thorough data analysis did not yield any initial connections to Russia, but when evaluating the English translations of both passport copies of the company's CEOs, our team identified that both had been certified based on a translator's stamp on the same day by the same sworn translator based in Moscow. This highlighted a Russian connection which the customer had not previously seen. In another report, we had a subject where there was a blog post on an ongoing investigation. However, that post was taken down. Our proprietary archive meant we retained that information, and we were able to help our customer identify this ongoing investigation. Then there are our proprietary Dow Jones watch lists. Now, I mentioned earlier our work on the Department of Commerce affiliate rule.
Some of those 24,000 companies we found for that data set were found in corporate registrars, but many of them come from our expert digging into news sources. In this example, we were able to verify a subsidiary of a listed Chinese company not available in corporate registrars. It is these data sets that drive our recurring revenue, which I'll take you through next. Our revenue performance has been powered by a recurring subscription model, leading to an 18% CAGR. We have approximately 90% retention rates, responsible price increases, and we're regularly adding new data sets and products through organic and inorganic investment. As the market for this data has increased, so have the use cases. Our customers use our data in on-premise software and cloud applications to screen their clients, but we now offer direct API connections into the enterprise.
We believe the rise of new AI algorithms and plugins offer yet another opportunity and sales channel for our data to drive increasingly effective and efficient outcomes. Now, our market is large at nearly $4 billion and growing, as we have seen with increased complexity in global regulations and compliance needs. Our suite of products provide structured, contextualized, and proprietary data. We've stayed true to our core Dow Jones mission, providing high-quality data for critical business decisions and constantly improving the delivery of our data to customers. Now, we recently signed one of the top five Australian banks who are using our generative AI due diligence solution, Dow Jones Integrity Check. Get a demo in the hall after. They're using that in their financial intelligence unit, where they're accelerating the process of due diligence reporting from five days down to 15 minutes.
We also have an opportunity to capitalize on trends in the market, which I'll unpack next. First is the growth of the corporate market. Now, while banks are more mature than corporates, Dow Jones Risk has taken a relatively stronger market share with corporate customers. We have built data specifically for this market. Now, yes, it helps them comply with sanctions and anti-corruption legislation. Beyond that, it protects their reputations and their supply chains with adverse media signals on suppliers, because corporate risk is no longer siloed. From sanctions exposure to physical security threats, companies need integrated intelligence. With our acquisition of Dragonfly and their focus on enterprise risk, we are uniquely positioned to serve that convergence. We expect significant upside in the use of our data for trade, export control, supply chain, and corporate security.
Next is the growth of the market for our services outside the United States. We have customers in over 160 countries, and the majority of our people and revenue are outside the United States. Our team of almost 400 subject matter experts natively speak 54 languages. Our globalized news bureau infrastructure and localized research teams have enabled us to expand into new markets. In these countries, we have deep relationships with global customers and regulators, and I'm confident that we are well-positioned to grow in these markets. A few takeaways to leave you with. We are set up to capitalize on market dynamics and differentiate. We have continued to grab market share through the trusted proprietary data I've described today. Almar mentioned our world-class convening power with risk summits and chief compliance officer councils. We also have our news and expert interactions.
Together, this means we offer a unique ability to anticipate regulations, interact with regulators, and build the valuable data sets of the future. This data is delivered flexibly for high-volume screening in any new or existing technologies that customers choose. The workflows we wire into are critical for our customers, and they're under constant regulatory audit. Finally, our trusted brand. When chief compliance officers say to regulators that they use Dow Jones, it fills them with confidence. Put another way, no compliance officer has ever been fired for buying Dow Jones data. Threats are growing from reputational damage to large fines or loss of funds due to onboarded fraudsters. We give our customers the peace of mind that their businesses are safe, that our data is best in class, unique and proprietary. As complexity increases, trusted data becomes the foundation and Dow Jones Risk delivers.
Now, another area where trusted intelligence is absolutely critical is the energy market, where billions of dollars of transactions depend on reliable pricing and market data. That's exactly what our energy business provides, as you'll hear from Executive Vice President and General Manager of Dow Jones Energy, Sarah Cottle. First, a video. Thank you.
Let's shift our focus now to the war's impact on the global energy market.
Oil markets are moving. We've seen attacks on oil infrastructure, energy infrastructure.
The global energy market moves billions of dollars every day, and the world's most important companies, traders, and industrial buyers depend on reliable pricing, news, and analysis to navigate an ever-changing landscape. That's Dow Jones Energy. We are the standard the industry runs on.
Dow Jones OPIS alone settles hundreds of billions of dollars in fuel contracts every year, referenced on every major exchange monitored by the U.S. government. When the market needs a number it can stand behind, it uses ours. We're more than pricing. Our reporters, analysts, and consulting teams help companies deliver unique data and intelligence that no algorithm could resolve alone. As energy demand surges and shifts, Dow Jones Energy is the intelligence layer for what comes next. The world runs on energy. The energy market runs on Dow Jones.
Join me in welcoming the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Dow Jones Energy, Sarah Cottle.
Hello, everyone. Dow Jones Energy is a trusted price reporting agency fortified by deep research, proprietary data, world-class news, and influential events. We're on a mission to grow market share by leveraging a rare combination, heritage authority and disruptor agility. We're designed to thrive in today's era of overwhelming data choices. Transparency and reliable pricing are essential to well-functioning commodities markets. For almost 50 years, we've been providing it. Our relationships are strong. We're a trusted provider to virtually all of the top oil, gas, and chemical companies in the world, and our reach extends beyond energy. From auto to technology to governments and professional services, our data is deeply embedded, and the price data we provide is key information for markets to function effectively. In fact, it's part of the market infrastructure.
Because of that, our customer relationships endure for the long term, and that's reflected in our retention rate, which is approximately 90%. One of our customers recently explained why we're so critical to their business, and he said, "You provide real-time, hyperlocal competitive intelligence." He said that Dow Jones Energy helps him optimize margins and understand elasticity of demand. Our capabilities help him perform disciplined, data-driven decisions. "But it isn't just about the data," he told us. "It's about the partnership." The Dow Jones Energy team, and I quote, "Operates as a true strategic partner, engaged, responsive, and invested in our success." With that better understanding of the value we bring, here is Dow Jones Energy's definitive growth story built on three solid pillars. First, the products. Energy and commodity benchmarks support a complex ecosystem. They're integral to the daily operations of thousands of companies around the world.
Markets just don't function without them, and that means pricing data is the very definition of proprietary data. Second, the people. Our people are true experts. Their judgment is a powerful differentiator for our business, giving our customers a tremendous advantage. Irreplaceable human judgment shields us from disintermediation by emerging technologies. Let's be very clear, AI is a channel and tool for us, not a competitor. Then thirdly, the sector. The energy information sector is large and growing, and at Dow Jones we have all the right ingredients to take full advantage of this expansion. In the world of the price reporting agency or PRA, achieving benchmark status means that our price assessment is used by buyers and sellers to settle their contracts. Once the industry aligns around a price and adopts it for regular use, it gets written into legal agreements.
Usage of that price then facilitates a long-term relationship with the market. We have won so far 60 of these benchmarks, which underpin billions of dollars in trade annually. When an exchange decides to list a benchmark, that's a further endorsement of its value to the market, a seal of approval for its trustworthiness, if you will. When this happens, market participants use that listed contract to manage risk through trading financial derivatives. We've secured 150 such exchange listings, and that number continues to grow. For us, winning benchmarks is the ultimate prize. Benchmarks drive more subscriptions, which drive more revenue. Every day our team comes to work unified around the single purpose of doing just that, by providing numbers that will win the trust of the market. How do we provide this powerful data?
Our pricing team spans the globe, living and working close to the markets they serve, and they truly understand the intricacies of everything from the impact of low water levels on the Rhine in Germany to unscheduled refinery outages in the U.S. Gulf Coast, rail track allocation in Australia, or even the ash fusion temperature of a cargo of coal. A niche perhaps to the outsider, but information that's critical in the fiercely competitive world of commodities trading. Our people do an outstanding job of collecting information that's really, really hard to find anywhere else. From South African coal deliveries to Chinese solar module production, we're connecting with countless market participants every day. That's how we discover bids, offers, and real traded prices in commodities. We then take the data we've gathered, apply a transparent methodology, and overlay that with our expert judgment.
We invest in this expertise, which helps us to attract and retain talent that are leaders in their fields. The output is market-reflective prices and breaking news that moves markets. To be without this news is to lack the competitive edge. We publish price assessments every day, and then every year we undergo a thorough audit, which maintains compliance with the highest industry standards. That further reassures the market of our trusted status. Dow Jones has been rewarded for all this hard work. We've become a leader in fuels pricing. We supply the price benchmarks and data for every stage in the fuel journey, from the refinery where the gasoline is produced, to the pipelines carrying that fuel across North America, to the trucks delivering it to your local gas station.
Our roots in fuels date back to the founding of the Oil Price Information Service, or OPIS, in 1977. Since then, we've only strengthened our position by adding A2i Systems in 2024, bringing AI technology capabilities to Dow Jones. Our strength is not just in fuels. We're a leading voice for what will happen next in chemicals supply and demand. Food manufacturers and candy makers have to plan their costs for packaging. Makers of toys and sporting goods need to decide when and where to ramp up manufacturing for the holiday season. These are the types of decisions that we inform. They turn to our outlook for hundreds of chemical prices. For more than 40 years, our Chemical Markets Analytics business has enabled thousands of clients to navigate these complex decisions through providing powerful proprietary data.
Of course, chemicals are the building block for modern life, alongside electricity, where coal continues to be a vital input. Contrary perhaps to public perception, the world still relies heavily on coal. The International Energy Agency estimates that coal demand hit an all-time record just last year. Global coal trade relies on Dow Jones. Since the 1990s, the McCloskey coal business has provided transparent prices for coal delivered to Europe. Our learning in coal is helping us work with our global mining customers to shape the future of metals pricing. Prices for metals are a critical input in the energy transition, where we're a leader in price data as well. Now, however energy demand develops in the future, we believe we're positioned to cover it. We serve markets for carbon, biofuels, and renewable energy, and our recent acquisition of Eco-Movement cements our leadership role in energy transition.
Eco-Movement is the leading platform for EV charging station data. OPIS, CMA, McCloskey, A2i, and Eco-Movement, we're uniting these powerful businesses under the Dow Jones Energy umbrella. Each has brought either new capabilities to Dow Jones or expanded the proprietary data we're able to offer our customers. This creates new opportunities to combine insights end to end across the value chain. This, alongside the power of the Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal names, is unlocking new customer segments across the globe. You can see how these capabilities come together when faced with global events. Take the war in Iran. As we are all aware, the conflict across the Middle East is having a significant impact on energy prices, and we've been closely monitoring the rapidly fluctuating fuel prices.
RAC Pro, built by Dow Jones, monitors the fuels pipeline network across the United States that is used to ship fuel from the refinery to the storage terminal tanks located around major metropolitan areas. This product is used by gas retailers to buy truckloads of fuel. This map shows where the difference between unbranded and branded prices is most extreme, indicating possible supply concern. Before the conflict, the fuel supply network across the United States was functioning normally, and there were minimal price impacts related to supply and demand. Now look at this. This is how the same map looked last Monday. As oil supply concerns shook markets, gasoline prices spiked. As you can see, the fuel infrastructure grid was covered with deep red circles, which indicate pricing impacts due to supply and demand factors.
These accurate real-time prices helped thousands of gas retailers navigate extreme volatility to make informed purchasing decisions. Our customers can rely on our data in a crisis, and that has helped our strong financial performance. We're very proud of our track record of delivering high-quality subscription revenue to Dow Jones. The energy business has been growing by double digits, a faster rate than the in-energy information market as a whole. That growth has been accelerated organically through the development of new price assessments that our customers need, and inorganically through key acquisitions like Eco-Movement. This performance in a fast-growing market gives us confidence that this business should deliver on its promise to gain market share. We've talked about our benchmarks and our experts. Let's turn now to that third pillar that will underpin accelerated growth for Dow Jones Energy, the large and growing energy information sector.
We operate in an $8 billion market, and that's projected to expand at 8%-10% annually over the medium term. Why is it expanding? Because every company is an energy company. In technology, data centers demand vast power resources. Airline profits swing mightily based on the price of fuel, and retailers are selling gas outside their storefronts. At the same time, wars, trade disputes, and diverging climate mandates are creating uncertainty in supply. Consider the geopolitical shocks just this year. Venezuela, Greenland, and Iran, as we've already demonstrated, have all shaken energy markets. Supply chain shocks and volatility are the new normal. Our customers, whether trading or transporting, planning or procuring, are telling us that they need more data flexibly delivered and adapted to their needs. That way, they say, they can more effectively navigate complex decisions in an uncertain world.
I'll finish by telling you why I'm confident that Dow Jones Energy is positioned to win significant market share. We currently have just 3% of the $8 billion market in energy information and an exceptional opportunity ahead of us. We believe we'll win because we are unique. Our data is foundational. In fact, almost all of it is proprietary. We're differentiated. We alone can leverage the Dow Jones network effect of world-leading news and unparalleled reach. We're integrated. We recognize our customers' changing needs and adapt to them. A large industrial segment customer recently told me that the integration of our API into their cloud environment was, quote, "seamless and a huge game changer." Lastly, most importantly, we are a trusted partner to our widening universe of customers.
Our flexible approach is a cornerstone of our philosophy and the reason for decades of trust that our customers have invested in us, and we will never take it for granted. In a world of misinformation and distrust, thousands of customers turn to us for clear, accurate, and actionable information. When we partner, we drive increased value by putting our proprietary data together with other Dow Jones products. We launched Barron's Energy Insider, and risk and energy colleagues work together on current affairs webinars. That's just two of many, many examples. A financial services customer said it best. The information we get from Dow Jones Energy is, quote, "indispensable when market disruptions occur." They said Dow Jones understands the relationships between markets and breaking news.
With that, I'm delighted to hand over to Jared DiPalma, outgoing Dow Jones CFO and now News Corp's Deputy CFO, who will take you through the numbers. Please welcome Jared. Thank you. Good.
Thank you, Sarah. Let me begin by reinforcing what you've heard today. We have a strong and consistent financial track record. It reflects deliberate portfolio shaping as a structural shift toward higher quality revenue streams. As we look ahead, we believe we are well-positioned to continue this strong financial performance. Let's begin with our progress since our earliest public financials as a separate segment in fiscal year 2018. Dow Jones has delivered, and since fiscal 2018, we have grown revenue $2.3 billion, representing a 6.5% annualized top-line growth over the period, and digital revenue grew 11%. Equally important is the improvement in revenue quality. In fiscal 2025, 82% of our revenue was digital versus print, 80% was recurring in nature, and advertising represented just 17% of total revenue. Each of these metrics has materially improved since fiscal 2018.
What this means is we are less cyclical, we're more subscription-driven, and we're more predictable. This mix shift underpins the durability of our improved growth profile. Over the same period, EBIT has expanded to $588 million. That's more than 3x our fiscal 2018 level. Margins have increased 2x from 12.9%- 25.2%. Equally important is our cash generation. In fiscal 2025, we converted approximately 70% of our EBITDA into cash flow. Strong cash generation provides flexibility for reinvestment and/or strategic M&A. This next slide highlights something fundamental to our model, sustained operating leverage. Since fiscal 2018, our costs have, on average, just grown 4%. Every day, we are deliberate about balancing investment with efficiency. Over the years, we've implemented multiple cost initiatives. These include outsourcing, simplifying organizational structures, or scaled centralization with News Corp.
All of these are designed to streamline our operations and align resources with our highest growth opportunities. At the same time, we continue to invest in areas that drive long-term value, particularly product and technology, new proprietary datasets, and AI tools to enhance our team's productivity. The result is a business where revenue is growing faster than expenses, and we're seeing steady margin expansion every single year. Now let me turn to how we think about growth going forward. Our risk and energy businesses remain core growth drivers. Both operate in large, growing addressable markets, and we expect to deliver strong performance in each market in three areas. One, product innovation powered by proprietary data. Two, thoughtful price focus on our yield optimization. And three, maintaining high retention rates through customer loyalty.
Industry forecasts through 2028 point to growth rates in the low double digits across the risk market and high single- to low double-digit growth rates across the energy market. Given our track record, our market positioning, we believe we are well-placed to continue to grow faster than the underlying market. Next up, digital circulation. This remains a key driver of our performance. Since fiscal 2018, digital circulation has grown 11%, and this is inclusive of a two point benefit from M&A and from partnerships. We have delivered sustained organic growth through a variety of measures, such as focused pricing strategies complemented by disciplined partnership, strategic M&A. At Dow Jones, we see our continued digital circulation growth driven by two primary drivers. One is expanding our enterprise news strategy, and two, it's our direct-to-consumer growth with new products, pricing, and international expansion.
Let me unpack these two in a bit more detail. Our ARPU strategy is deliberate, it's data-driven, and it's focused on long-term subscriber value, not just subscription growth, but high-quality revenue per subscriber. On the left-hand side of the page, there are four primary drivers of our digital direct ARPU expansion. First is product mix. We continue to see strong uptake of higher-priced offerings, including WSJ Plus and MarketWatch. These premium tiers deepen engagement and increase monetization per subscriber. Higher list prices and data-driven pricing are also helping us better align price to the value subscribers receive while maintaining strong conversion and retention metrics. Testing. We're currently testing shorter-term offers that enable us to accelerate the step-up to those higher price points. As we continue to roll out these initiatives, we are seeing encouraging traction with most recent second quarter ARPU increasing 6% versus prior year.
Collectively, we expect these initiatives will continue this digital direct subscription ARPU growth. When we look at the monetization of our news content to enterprises, it still represents a relatively small portion of total revenue, about 15% in fiscal year 2025. That said, we believe this is a meaningful opportunity. Dow Jones's premier business news and information content gives us a clear authority to expand penetration with corporate clients. We are already seeing success in early days, and the granting of AI rights, for example, has become a true incremental revenue driver, creating new ways for the enterprise clients to engage with our content. Equally important, the economics of our enterprise news products are very attractive. While ARPU is lower than our direct-to-consumer products, churn is lower, marketing costs are minimal, and the incremental content spend is negligible. This is a high-margin product.
Finally, as Almar mentioned, we are aligned around a clear financial goal within the next five years. $1 billion of EBITDA and continued margin expansion. This is grounded in four key areas. Risk and energies expansion and delivering margin growth, direct-to-consumer growth accelerated with new products and pricing, a renewed focus on enterprise news as a high-margin product offering, and continued cost discipline and operating leverage. With our trajectory, our portfolio mix, and the structural tailwinds, we believe the $1 billion in five years is ambitious but very much achievable. With that, I hand it back to Almar to bring everything together. Thank you.
All right. Well, thank you, Jared. Each of our leaders today provided an overview of the strong businesses that they oversee. I hope you enjoyed that. Dow Jones is even stronger when our teams work together, offering our clients and our customers a full suite of services where the sum is greater than the parts. We see a clear path ahead of us as we focus on our roadmap to $1 billion in EBITDA within the next five years. What we hope you take away from today, aside from this goal, is that Dow Jones is a news, data, and intelligence powerhouse, and that we see tremendous potential in our risk and energy businesses underpinned and intertwined with our world-class journalism. Thank you all for spending your time with us today.
We really appreciate your interest in Dow Jones and News Corp, and we're happy to take your questions right now on stage, and then over drinks. Please welcome back Global Head of Investor Relations at News Corp, Michael Florin. Michael.
Thank you, Almar, and the team. Thank you, Lachlan, and to Robert. We're gonna transition to the Q&A portion of the time this evening. As the management makes their way back on stage, just a couple reminders. We'll be taking questions from the guests in the room. If you have a question, just raise your hand, wait for the event staff, and they'll come by with a mic. Please state your name and your firm that you represent. To ensure that we get to as many questions as possible, we ask that you try to keep it to one question. With that, I think we are ready for our first. Well, we're waiting for management. They will come momentarily, I promise.
We do hope today we've been able to give you a little bit more information about Dow Jones and to show why we're so excited by Dow Jones and this wonderful team of executives.
All right. All right, let's hear it.
I think, Brent, your first question.
Hey, everyone. Thanks for doing this. This is Brent Penter with Raymond James. One theme that seemed to keep coming up was the opportunities that you've been able to take advantage of with inorganic growth. So I'm just hoping you could talk a little bit more about what else is out there in terms of inorganic growth. You talked about data capabilities and within which of your segments, energy, risk, news, do you see the most opportunity out there?
Yeah, good. I'll start with that, and Jared Ficklin will double-click and some of the general managers will as well. First off, you saw there are really two pillars for a focus. Adding capabilities, which is important, and adding proprietary data. It's important to underscore that sort of on this path to $1 billion, we're talking about a bolt-on M&A, so non-material, and this is separate from material M&A, where you've seen us acquire OPIS and CMA. We are constantly evaluating the landscape. Some of the philosophy came through in the presentation, and I want to point to the sweet spot for us is to look at areas that are nestled between two verticals where you can have a multiplier effect by adding new data.
We can do that organically, but certainly something like that can be boosted inorganically as well. Sort of bolt-on effort on that was geopolitics, Oxford Analytica, and Dragonfly. Why is that a sweet spot? Because it not only establishes that new, you know, very well-fitting area for our existing customer base, in this case, in this example, geopolitics, but that also lifts energy and it lifts risk and it creates this network effect of creativity and creating new products, et c. I think keep that in mind as we look at different areas that are important to us.
without specifically saying we can't obviously make forward-looking statements about M&A, but you know, areas that are really interesting that are sitting between those, like inorganically as well is, supply chain is really interesting, defense is really interesting. You know, these are areas that bring together energy and risk in different ways. Jared , do you wanna just overlay a little bit of financial-
Yeah. Just add two things. We have many filters when we look at our inorganic opportunities. The biggest one, though, is shareholder value and return. That's always top of mind with the leadership team, with our board as we go through our opportunities. Each of these operators on this stage keep a robust pipeline. They know their industries the best, and we're constantly reviewing it and excited about many opportunities out there.
Yeah.
Okay. We'll take our next question, please. Oh, David?
G'day. Dave Bucknall from Aitken Murray. I heard many times through the presentation you guys talking about the AI being an accelerator and an enabler of your business. Are you finding things to do with your data and finding data you didn't even know that you had probably? Can you give us a couple of examples of just how you're delivering things to clients that you just wouldn't have been able to do 12 months ago or even 6 months ago?
Good. I'll start, and then I think Lisa and Joel can double-click on that. We see an accelerated demand, growing demand on the client side for reliable information. One of the ways in which AI manifests for us is we can deliver a pipeline of news as data, and that's in Lisa's business. There was a reference in the presentation to 20 recent Gen AI deals. You should elaborate on that a little bit. Let's start there, and I'll come back to some other areas.
Okay. With our enterprise relationships, there are a number of those where we have these great partnerships with our clients. We've learned more about their needs, and then Dow Jones, we already have this incredible corpus of content, data, intelligence combined with our news. With AI, we've been able to really deliver that and tailor that for specific use cases within these organizations. I liken the use of AI here, what would've taken, you know, teams of people to bring this content together in a meaningful way. We've learned a lot about that from those clients, and we're also very, that makes us also very optimistic about what we can do in terms of, winning more corporate clients in those manners.
We also are finding new ways to deploy our data. And one great example is Integrity Check-
Yeah
the Dow Jones risk business. Maybe unpack that, Joel.
Sure. Absolutely. I mentioned in the presentation, but just double-clicking on it. We've been working on that for over five years now. It precedes the hype cycle around generative AI, and that was really around due diligence reporting and doing that faster, bringing together data, and delivering a report in a faster timeframe, really accelerating and supercharging that diligence process. I mentioned a top 5 Australian bank that's using that within their FIU, in their financial intelligence unit, taking the report time from five days down to 15 minutes. Another example, Almar Latour mentioned, the partnership we have with Ripjar on adverse media, and that's where we can extract from Factiva and create these adverse media profiles. We've cut down alert times by 50%.
We've really embraced AI at Dow Jones.
Yeah. I think your question goes to the heart of the matter, really. This is why we're excited about this moment. You know, Joel's business, and you know, some of you who followed it for a while may know this, but really it emerged out of data that we had sitting in Factiva and then just started building over time. What happened there in that microcosm of Dow Jones Risk, lucrative, fast-growing business, is really happening underneath all of Dow Jones, where we've brought together all of our data and are making connections that we couldn't make before. We're delivering that in customized form to those corporate customers that we mentioned in the presentation. There's a wide range of them.
Deploying it for Sarah's business, for Joel's business, and across the board for everyone really sitting on stage. That's one part of the AI equation. The other one is cost and efficiency, allowing us to just do things much faster or with much greater productivity. You see that Emma had this example for the newsroom that's not inconsequential, but you're seeing that across the board. Where we see savings at the moment, we're actually deploying them into generating a greater productivity. Anything to add there?
Yeah, I think when you think about investment in AI for Dow Jones, it's the investment we spent over the past 24 months on bringing all of our data and content together so we could quickly deploy to new products, or when we do these landmark deals, like with OpenAI, we're able to bring that content over to those platforms relatively seamlessly. That was a lot of this, the investment we've seen in the space.
Yeah, bringing together the first question and the second question really is, so AI also was part of a bolt-on acquisition. A2i was a company that Sarah referenced, which brought in a forecasting technology and AI-based. Sarah, you wanna unpack a little bit of what they're doing?
Sure.
Yeah.
A2i is an opportunity to power our fuel pricing with generative AI. The team there is hugely optimistic, not just about the capabilities that are housed in that specific product, but the scalability of that capability within and across the whole of Dow Jones. There's just a lot more opportunity for us to leverage their skills, their experience, much more widely.
All that IP is shared across Dow Jones. Scott's business is not untouched by this. I mean, you're doing data-driven pricing.
Yeah, yeah. We're leveraging AI to make sure, as I talked a little bit about, that all our offers for acquisition and retention are customized based on your engagement levels. We're not simply raising prices indiscriminately, and I think that gives us real upside. Frankly, we just rolled that out across the entire funnel. We expect to see some upside. Also on the product side, we're just scratching the surface. I think from the newsroom, Emma and the team's use of AI, we've got some developers working on the front end using the AI technology. We're embedding into search. We're gonna embed into more products, summarization of articles to speed up the consumption. We're super bullish on where we can take it on the consumer side.
Good. We could continue to talk about this, but I want to give other people a chance to ask a question. I'm sorry, you want-
Almar, may I just make a plug for we also have the AI connector for Factiva and Yomiuri. We have demos for you to see during the session after this. Just I'm so excited about what we're doing with Yomiuri because we're leveraging AI to do the translation into other languages, which helps us differentiate product. Also our engineering folks and product over here, Artem, like what they've built, we can then scale it for other types of clients based on their different needs. It's really smart.
Why don't we take, I think, David all the way in the back.
David Karnovsky from JPMorgan. On the Wall Street Journal price increase, it's a bit larger than what you've executed in the past, so I'd be interested to know kind of what underpins your confidence there, how much of the sub base actually sees that. Just on the video format, new coverage verticals, maybe you could speak to the opportunity in terms of engagement and advertising.
Scott, why don't you start with that?
Sure.
We'll take it.
The sheer fact is we've got the most premium product and have it for business executives. What underpins our confidence are a few things in raising the price a little bit further than we have in the past. One, churn rate has been going down, so it's at a recent low. Two, you, as you saw, subs, ARPU, and circ revenue are going up at the same time. We think we've hit that threshold. We've looked at some data. Again, this is list price too, right? We're using technology.
Both on acquisition, step up and retention to customize the pricing. We don't think necessarily we've pushed the limits because we're not seeing the negative reaction to the price increases.
Jared, you wanna-
No, I think Scott summarized it perfectly. I mean, it's you know, we have the tools and the science now also that give us that extra level of confidence to go harder, and we are.
Yeah. You see, premium news, premium data has premium value. We've really seen a fundamental shift across all of our businesses that fact is reflected. Scott's business is no exception. This is happening across the board. Thanks for your question.
We'll take our next question.
Right here.
Oh, Mario Gabelli.
Almar, your team has done a fantastic job, better than I've seen in a lot of road shows recently for IPOs. Your $1 billion, is that all organic?
You saw there the bolt on M&A on that schematic, and that is non-material.
All right.
Material M&A would be on top of this, and so it would make us go faster.
You don't have the balance sheet of Dow Jones itself. You upstream the cash flow up to the whole co.
There you go. Do you wanna overlay?
Yeah. I mean, Almar is spot on. There's no material M&A, like an OPIS or a CMA part of our billion-dollar estimate. News Corp's balance sheet is in a great position right now with cash balances.
That's fantastic.
Yep.
The question for me today, parachuting in, I was hoping that we would see some other discussions about, you know, spin-off because it, you know, with regards to the values and so on. Thank you. Well done.
Thank you, Mario. All right, we'll take our next question, please. Any other questions? Okay, well, I think we'll start reception sooner than we had expected. Guys, thank you all for coming today. Those on the webcast, thank you for joining, and we look forward to talking to you soon. Thank you to all. The insight and time from Almar and team and Lachlan and Robert, this was great to be able to do this, so thank you all.
All right. Thanks.
Thank you everybody.