Publishing giant News Corp (NWSA), and Media giant CBS Corp (CBS) reported earnings after the bell today. Both posted mixed results.
News Corp posted an EPS of $0.01 below the Zacks Consensus Earnings Estimate of $0.04, and well below the $0.48 EPS a year ago. Revenues came in at $2.19 billion, just above the Zacks Consensus Revenue Estimate of $2.179 billion, but lower than the year ago number of $2.257 billion.
The major issue facing this publishing company is revenues from advertising. After the earnings announcement, management stated that advertising saw a decline in revenue in Q4 2014, and more importantly they stated that revenues have declined 4% year over year.
CBS Corp posted an EPS of $0.78, above the Zacks Consensus Earnings Estimate of $0.72, and +2.6% above the year ago numbers. On the Revenue side, CBS missed the Zacks Consensus Revenue Estimate of $3.305 billion by posting Q2 2014 Revenues of $3.19 billion, below the year ago revenues of $3.699 billion.
CBS management announced that they approved an increase in their share buyback program; jumping from $3 billion to now $6 billion. Further, the company is increasing their dividend payout by 25% from $0.12 per share to $0.15 per share. This would indicate that their Free Cash Flow is very strong.
In afterhours trading, CBS is trading down just over 2% on mild volume, and NWSA is up slightly (below 1%) on very light volume. Tomorrow, Zacks will publish a detailed earnings report on both companies.
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