Fox Fiscal Q1 Earnings Preview: What To Expect?

21^st Century Fox (NYSE:FOX) is scheduled to announce its fiscal first quarter results on Wednesday, November 8. The company reported mixed fiscal fourth quarter results, as its earnings per share came in ahead of expectations but revenues missed. In Q4, Fox’s overall revenue increased 2% year-over-year (y-0-y) to $6.7 billion, driven by affiliate revenue growth at the Cable Networks segment. However, this growth in revenues was partially offset by lower content revenues at the Filmed Entertainment segment and flat advertising revenues at the Television segment.

Our $32 price estimate for Fox’s stock is around 25% ahead of the current market price.

In the upcoming quarter, Fox will benefit from Fox News, which continued to see strong ratings in the quarter. These solid ratings should help boost advertising revenues in the quarter. In addition, Fox Studios grossed around $216 million at the U.S. box office during the September quarter, led by the success of War for the Planet of the Apes. To add to that, the studio’s performance was fairly strong in this quarter as compared to the prior year quarter, which should boost its year-on-year studio revenue for the fiscal first quarter.

Fox News Continues To See Strong Ratings

Fox News remained the most-watched cable news network in the September quarter. However, the network was down 3% y-o-y in total day and declined 12% y-o-y in total viewers, due to a difficult comparison to Q3 2016 performance, which was dominated by the election. ^[1]

In the upcoming earnings, consensus estimates forecast revenues of $6.7 billion and earnings of 48 cents per share in the fiscal first quarter. 

Have more questions on 21st Century Fox? Please refer to our complete analysis for 21st Century Fox 

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1. Q3 2017 Ratings: 15 Months at No. 1 for Fox News, Adweek, September 2017 [↩]