Key Stats for News Corp Stock
- Current Price: $28.29
- Target Price (Mid): ~$35
- Street Target: ~$35
- Potential Total Return: ~25%
- Annualized IRR: ~6% / year
- Max Drawdown: 27.81% on 2/12/26
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What Happened?
For a year, News Corporation (NWSA) has asked investors to buy a thesis with thin numbers behind it. CEO Robert Thomson keeps repeating that editorial content is an input for artificial intelligence, as essential as semiconductors or energy, and that AI labs will pay for it. Bulls believe him. Bears note that belief is not revenue, and that a media company trading near 36 times trailing earnings needs more than a slogan to hold that price.
On July 20, 2026, that argument got a useful piece of context. A federal judge gave final approval to the largest copyright settlement in United States history, a case that turns on exactly the kind of content News Corp publishes. Thomson has already told investors the company expects to share in the proceeds. It does not transform the financials, but it validates the framework the whole thesis rests on, and it lands with the stock sitting near the top of its 52-week range.
A Landmark AI Settlement Put a Price on Stolen Content
On July 20, 2026, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted final approval to Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement, the largest of its kind ever recorded. The case was brought by a class of authors, not by News Corp, and it resolves claims that Anthropic trained its Claude models on roughly 500,000 pirated books. It pays out about $3,000 per work to the authors and publishers who hold the rights.
News Corp’s HarperCollins is one of the largest trade publishers, so the company sits inside the benefiting class. Its specific cut has not been disclosed and is best treated as small: the pool is split across hundreds of thousands of works and many claimants, and this is a one-time payout, not a licensing contract. Thomson himself flagged it modestly on the earnings call, saying the company expects “to receive our fair share of the proceeds of the $1.5 billion settlement with Anthropic starting later this calendar year.”
The value is the signal, not the check. Thomson frames News Corp’s AI opportunity as a mix of “wooing and suing,” licensing content to willing partners and litigating against those who take it. A record settlement sets a market price on unlicensed use of published work, which strengthens the company’s hand in the licensing talks it says are underway. Thomson made the same link himself, warning on the call about “dodgy digital firms scraping illicitly, illegally, our precious content.” A $1.5 billion number attached to that behavior is the strongest evidence yet that the “suing” half of his strategy carries real leverage.
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The Paid Deals Exist, but They Have Not Moved the Needle Yet
The licensing side is further along than the litigation side. News Corp has a content agreement with OpenAI and has sold Dow Jones AI rights to Bloomberg, and Thomson said the company is “in the midst of advanced negotiations with several companies,” with the impact showing up in the accounts “over the next few years.”
That timeline is the honest tell. The deals are real and recurring, but still small against a business that generated $8.5 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025. For AI licensing to move the valuation, the “multiple meaningful agreements” Thomson describes need to arrive in volume, and the larger AI labs need to sign the substantial deals he keeps hinting at. None of that has landed yet. What has landed is a core business strong enough to fund the wait. Beyond Dow Jones, Realtor.com is quietly gaining ground: management said it averaged 5.3 visits per unique user last quarter, against 3.5 at Zillow and 2.9 at Redfin, positioning it to capture demand when mortgage rates ease. That engagement edge, plus steady free cash flow generation, is what buys management time to let the licensing thesis mature.
Management Is Buying Stock Hand Over Fist. The Multiple Suggests Caution.
The clearest read on how management values its own shares is the buyback. Under a $1 billion repurchase program authorized in July 2025, with Goldman Sachs as broker, News Corp has bought back roughly $361 million of stock and has been running daily purchases at an accelerated pace, a cadence it confirmed again in an exchange filing on July 21. CFO Lavanya Chandrashekar told investors the stock “remains materially undervalued relative to its net asset value,” and the pace backs that conviction with cash.
The market disagrees. Shares trade near 36 times trailing earnings and about 10 times forward EV/EBITDA, rich for a company whose top line has barely grown: continuing-operations revenue rose only about 5% in the latest quarter, and reported fiscal 2025 revenue fell after the Foxtel business moved to discontinued operations. Against broadcast peers, the premium is stark: Nexstar sits near 6 times forward EBITDA and Sinclair around 6.5 times, versus News Corp’s 10 times. The market is paying up for the Dow Jones data engine and the real estate assets, treating News Corp as better than a legacy publisher. Whether that premium is deserved depends on whether AI licensing and Dow Jones growth compound fast enough to grow into it. At $28.29, closer to the 52-week high of $31.61 than the low of $22.20, much of that optimism is already priced.
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TIKR Advanced Model Analysis
- Current Price: $28.29
- Target Price (Mid): ~$35
- Potential Total Return: ~25%
- Annualized IRR: ~6% / year
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TIKR’s mid-case values News Corp near $35 per share, about 25% total upside, and roughly 6% per year over the next several years. That return is respectable but not thrilling, and the reason is instructive: the model assumes revenue growth of only about 2% a year. The value comes almost entirely from margin expansion, with net income margin modeled to climb toward roughly 9%, plus the shrinking share count the buyback delivers.
- Revenue driver 1: Dow Jones, where Risk & Compliance and energy data grow double digits.
- Revenue driver 2: Digital Real Estate Services, where Realtor.com gains share ahead of a housing recovery.
- Margin driver: operating discipline lifting net margin toward ~9%.
- Primary risk: AI licensing stays episodic rather than recurring, leaving a premium multiple with nothing to grow into.
The upside case: the horizontal AI deals Thomson references arrive at scale, and the multiple re-rates higher. The downside case: a frozen housing market and licensing that never compounds leave the shares expensive and range-bound, exactly where they have spent the past year.
Conclusion
The next real test is the fiscal fourth-quarter and full-year earnings, due around August 6. Management has already guided to “another record fiscal year of profitability,” so a beat alone is not the bar. Watch two things: whether Dow Jones segment EBITDA margin holds its momentum, since that unit carries the premium valuation, and whether management finally puts a real, recurring number on AI licensing instead of describing it. Name that number with Dow Jones margins still expanding, and the premium starts to look earned. Deliver another quarter of “advanced negotiations” with nothing signed, and the stock has little room and a lot of optimism to defend.
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Should You Invest in News Corp?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
