Fox (FOXA) News Digital Rides on Multiplatform Views in 2023
Fox Corporation FOXA-owned Fox News Digital and FOXBusiness.com had a successful year in 2023, outperforming some of their key competitors in terms of multiplatform views, minutes and engagement on social media.
FOX News Digital ended the year as the top-performing news brand in terms of multiplatform views and minutes, experiencing growth of 9% in views and 6% in minutes year over year. The company secured 20.2 billion multiplatform views, more than 36.9 billion minutes and averaged 93.7 million monthly unique visitors. In comparison, Warner Bros. Discovery WBD-owned CNN and The New York Times experienced a decrease in these key performance indicators.
FOX News Mobile App averaged 6.1 million monthly unique visitors in 2023. It also emerged as the most engaged news brand on social media throughout the year, with more than 315 million social media interactions, including 81.6 million on Facebook and 198.9 million on Instagram, both owned by Meta Platforms META. On Alphabet GOOGL-owned YouTube, FOX News drove more than 2.3 billion views, securing the top spot in the news competitive set.
FOXBusiness.com also had a record year in 2023, earning 1.9 billion multiplatform views, the highest ranking since its launch in 2007. The company witnessed increases over the prior year, while other business news brands experienced decreases.
FOXBusiness.com secured 3.2 billion multiplatform minutes and averaged 23.2 million monthly unique visitors for the year. On YouTube, it was number one in the business news competitive set, driving 748 million views.
Fox Corporation Price and Consensus
Fox Corporation price-consensus-chart | Fox Corporation Quote
Fox Sees a Slowdown in Growth Due to Cord-Cutting
Cord-cutting due to the shift in consumer viewing patterns toward subscription-based video-on-demand services does not bode well for Fox, which is predominantly a linear television content provider.
Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have lost 9.2% in the past six months against the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector’s decline of 1%. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
As of the third quarter of 2023, traditional pay TV subscribers declined to 51% year over year, while 35% of total U.S. Internet households have dropped their traditional pay TV subscription without replacing it, per S&P Global report.
What further escalates the threat for FOXA is the decline in ad revenue growth as advertisers are contending with rising costs amid record inflation, which has led to cutbacks in spending on advertising.
In first-quarter fiscal 2024, advertising (37.4% of revenues) declined 1.6% year over year to $1.2 billion as continued growth at Tubi was more than offset by comparably lower political advertising revenues at the FOX Television Stations and the impact of elevated supply in the direct response marketplace at FOX News Media. This trend is likely to continue in the near term.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter fiscal 2024 advertising revenues is pegged at $2 billion, indicating a decline of 19.9% year over year.
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