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Fox (FOXA) Adds Fox Weather to Fios TV & Amazon Freevee

Fox Corporation FOXA recently announced that its Fox Weather is now available on Fios TV and Amazon Freevee.

Fox Weather will be available to all Fios TV subscribers on channel 113 (SD) and channel 613 (HD), and on Amazon Freevee, viewers can access Fox Weather, a free ad-supported television channel through the app, or within the "Live TV" tab through Prime Video.

In a short span since its launch, Fox Weather has added several distribution partners including The Roku Channel, fuboTV, YouTubeTV, Amazon News, DIRECTV STREAM, Xumo, WOW! and Vidgo.

The growing popularity and rapid expansion of Fox Weather have been beneficial for Fox News Media, which is its parent company.

Fox Gains From Growth of Its Multiple Business Units

Fox News Channel (“FNC”) has been performing well as it once again closed August as the best-performing news brand for 18 consecutive months, reaching more than 2.9 billion total multiplatform minutes, 1.5 billion total multiplatform views and 77 million unique multiplatform visitors, per Comscore data.

The Cable Network Programming segment, which generates 44% of Fox’s revenues, witnessed 7% year-over-year growth as affiliate and advertising fees increased.

The increase in advertising revenues was primarily due to higher pricing at FOX News Media and an increase in the number of live events at the national sports networks.

FNC has also been benefiting from Fox Nation as its original content like Duck Family Treasure, Sharon Osbourne: To Hell & Back, the upcoming Yellowstone: One-Fifty with Kevin Costner and a comedy show named A Roseanne Comedy Special, featuring Roseanne Barr, is gaining traction.

Fox Nation has increased FNC’s subscriber base by approximately 80% in fiscal 2022. The conversion rate of trialists to paid subscribers has been high and retention rates were above industry averages.

Fox’s growing user base is not only driven by Fox News but also Fox Business, which drove 151 million multiplatform views as of last month. Fox Business surpassed CNN Business and Comcast’s CMCSA MSNBC in multiplatform views for the fifth straight month.

Comcast’s MSNBC lost 19% of its prime-time viewers in the first half of 2022. Per Nielsen data, its ratings have plummeted ever since The Rachel Maddow show shifted to a once-per-week format from four times per week.

Fox’s investment in Flutter has benefited its sports business division as well. Together they entered into a national media and sports wagering partnership in the United States. The partnership offers the FOX Bet Super 6 national free-to-play game, which has generated a user base of more than 6 million registered accounts as of June 2022.

What Lies Ahead for Fox?

Fox’s shares have declined 14.8% year to date compared with the Zacks Consumer & Discretionary Sector, which fell 38.9%.

However, Fox’s cable TV business faces a serious threat from OTT platforms due to cord-cutting and changing consumer preferences. This cord-cutting does not bode well for Fox.

In fourth-quarter fiscal 2022, Cable Network Programming EBITDA decreased 6.8% year over year to $628 million. The EBITDA margin contracted 520 bps to 43%.

Fox also faces competition for ad dollars, which forms its main source of revenue. This is intensified by offerings from tech giants like Meta Platform’s META Facebook, Twitter TWTR, Google, YouTube and Amazon, as they too have been fighting for ad dollars.

Meta benefits from increasing mobile ad revenues and growing adoption of stories by advertisers across Instagram. Twitter’s initiatives to add features and focus on effectively tackling abuse issues are helping it to expand the monetized user base, thereby driving ad revenues.

However, Fox, which currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), remains confident for fiscal 2023 as the financial tailwinds from Super Bowl 57, the early exit of Thursday Night Football, the momentum heading into November's midterm elections and the start of its next major distribution cycle are expected to deliver record revenues and EBITDA.

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.


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