Good day ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the News Corp Third Quarter Fiscal 2017 Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded. Media is allowed to join today's conference in a listen-only basis. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mike Florin, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, Matt. Hello everyone and welcome to News Corp's fiscal third quarter 2017 earnings call. We issued our earnings press release about an hour ago and it's now posted on our website at newscorp.com. On the call today, are Robert Thomson, Chief Executive, and Susan Panuccio, Chief Financial Officer. We'll open with some prepared remarks, and then we'll be happy to take questions from the investment community. This call may include certain forward-looking information with respect to News Corp's business and strategy, actual results could differ materially from what is said. News Corp's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings identify risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ and contain cautionary statements regarding forward-looking information. Additionally, this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measurements, such as total segment EBITDA, adjusted segment EBITDA, and adjusted EPS. The definitions and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation of such measures can be found in our earnings release. With that, I'll pass it over to Robert Thomson, for some opening comments.

Thank you, Mike. In the third quarter, we saw positive results in our ongoing mission to become increasingly global, digital and diversified to be resolutely cost conscious and to deliver enhanced results for our shareholders. There was robust growth in revenues and EBITDA, specifically a 5% rise in revenues to approximately $2 billion and total segment EBITDA of $215 million compared to a loss of a $122 million in the prior year, which included the News America Marketing settlement charge. Excluding that charge, total segment EBITDA in the quarter would have increased 36% compared to the prior year. We are pleased with the performance of many of our businesses, including at our digital real estate services segment, which continues to fly. We had indicated that the EBITDA contribution at Move would improve and that revenue growth would accelerate and I am pleased to report both goals have been achieved this quarter, though we will certainly not allow our compliance field smugness to be characteristics at realtor.com. While print advertising remains challenging, we saw some moderation and declines across mastheads this quarter. And notably the news and information services segment was a sort of growth this quarter, both in revenues and EBITDA, driven by the muscular performance of installed product revenues in News America Marketing, healthy circulation revenue gains at the Wall Street Journal and a thoughtful cost production program. Speaking of the Wall Street Journal, we continue to build on the momentum of digital styles, adding more than 300,000 subscribers year-over-year. Digital now accounts for 53% of total subscription, up from 44% last year and 38% two years ago. In fact we added even more subs this quarter than in the second quarter, suggesting that the appetite for premium news and thoughtful commentary is undiminished. This success also as a…

Thank you for those kind words Robert. I am delighted to be here today and looking forward to getting to know all of you in the very near future. This is the unique time for the company, as we continue the transformation to a digital first company and I am really excited to have taken a broader role across the company. While I am very new to this role, there are few observations, I would like to make. We are a company that has global scale, customers and data sets, that can be better monetize. As Robert mentioned, one need an initiative would be the launch of our global digital advertising platform in the coming months. But there is a lot more we can do including more effectively sharing the resources standardizing subscription strategies and better leveraging our content across the markets in the US, the UK and Australia. There is more we can do and are doing on cost. While we need to make sure, we continue to invest in digital initiatives, I also think there is plenty of room to improve efficiencies and remove legacy cost across the business and much of that is underway. Revenues from our printed news market is remains a very important source of revenues. However, we do need to be focused on driving incremental and higher margin revenue streams ranging from custom content to higher margin brand extension such as Sunbits [ph] in the UK. And finally I will be open to new ideas and new ways, that will drive higher growth and value per share in the long-term. With that of an introduction, I'll now turn to the operating results for this quarter. We reported fiscal 2017 third quarter total revenues of around $2 billion, up 5% compared to the prior year.…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] It's time we'll move to Entcho Raykovski with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi Robert, hi Susan. My question is around News and Information services and in particular where there any synergies that's being generated from the recent acquisitions of ARM and Wireless. Any particular, if I look at the News Australia operations that the cost reduction target of $40 million that you have in place at the moment. Does that take into account the benefits of the combination with ARM or do you think these say the cost benefit to come?

Just in relation to News Australia and the ARM acquisition, so I think what we'll find in the current year is that we will have integration cost largely offsetting any synergies that we will get, but we are expecting to see benefits coming through in this next financial year. So they are not included in the $40 million target that they are closing. So we are on track to deliver that $40 million target for this financial year. In relation to Wireless I'll now hand it over to Robert to talk about that integration.

Yeah thanks very much Susan. Entcho I think what we are seeing, is what we hope to see which is a real complementarity in the offering of the two. You've seen talkSPORT drive way to the Sun and the Sun drive business to talkSPORT. We're also seeing portfolio at pitches with the Wireless Group, the Sun, Storyful, Unruly, generating new business and obviously it's the early stage of the new partnership in UK. But Rebekah Brooks and the team are doing an excellent job in ensuring that the teams are talking to each other, working with each other and generating returns to shareholders.

Thanks Entcho. Matt, we will take our next question please.

Thank you. We'll now move to John Janedis with Jeffries.

Thank you. Rob, there is been a lot of discussion, as you know in the industry about the new cycle and the impact circulation. But based on what you are seeing at the Journal. How do you think about the medium term this type of opportunity, and can you talk about to what extent there is a some sort of positive cross platform advertising benefit?

John, we are standing in the middle of an interesting cycle, there is no doubt, a premium unpremium news and we are seeing that in the continuing growth in paid digital subs, the Wall Street Journal up 34% year-on-year. And for us there is an added benefit, which is we obviously see those news subscribers as a potential pool of our customers for an upsell to even more premium products, whether it be through to a high network individuals, semi-professional fund managers or those who are specialist like yourself in finance take commodities FX, whatever. So for us there is a double benefit, we are introducing a new generation of readers into the highest quality paid content and we are able to than bring them further into due diligence hold with our traditional professional information business products.

Thanks John. Matt, we will take our next question please.

We will now move to Kyle Baker with Guggenheim Securities.

Great, thanks for the question guys. I believe in her prepared remarks, Susan you said that the 53rd week will be a $112 million revenue impact, is there any way you guys can quantify the EBITDA impact of the 53rd week in the fiscal fourth quarter, as well as any color by segment if you have it? Thank you.

So I think we in previous calls we have obviously quoted the $112 million revenue number, but we don't talk about what the EBITDA impact is. I think that this way for you to look at that is to apply the normalized year-to-date margins and that would be view a good proxy to the EBITDA impact.

Thank you. Matt, we will take our next question please.

And the next question will be from Brian Han, with Morningstar.

Good morning. Can you please talk about the $10 million increase in EBITDA loss in the other division and is that an area that we should be focused on to see the progress of your cost drive across the group?

So the other division include, corporate cost now headquarter cost and our strategy team, but it also includes a severance amount this quarter as well which is what you are seeing and why you are seeing the increase coming through.

Thank you. Matt we will take our next question please.

And that will be from Craig Huber, with Huber Research Partners.

Yes, thank you. Just curious, any updated thoughts expectations here about the billion 85 of cash, it sits on the balance sheet here, I mean this there is a huge amount of cash on balance sheet for roughly four years its only changes here, is the mindset change it all here to potentially to buyback any stock or what's the game planning here, as I get this a question a lot from investors?

Thanks Craig and thanks for passing on the question Craig. It's a very silent one, it's a situation we constantly has under review as you know, we have a semi-annual dividend in place, the big buybacks up to around $71 million of provision for buybacks of $500 million. But we've divided, look really into three areas, opportunistic acquisitions, internal investment and capital. And if you look at the three main investments we have made which is realtor.com via Move, Harlequin and Wireless Group, you would have to agree that they played a crucial role in transforming our business. There is no doubt that if you noted out the $600 million we invested in Realtor has fundamentally transform the company and as you can see given the increasing growth in both revenue and EBITDA that I will say digital businesses in general and the ability that Harlequin has given HarperCollins, to move from one language to 17 languages is quite profound and that has also increased our digital footprint. And you can see the early signs in UK of the value of the Wireless Group. So we will continue to be opportunistic that we will continue to have the situation under review.

And Craig I think just to add Roberts thought from those matters, that I think just to reiterate my point that I made at the start of my statements. We will continue to look at opportunities that drive higher growth and value per share in the long term and we will look at everything.

Thank you Craig. Matt we will take our next question

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. We'll now move to Raymond Tong with Evans and Partners.

Good morning Robert and Susan. Just the question on Move and can you maybe talk a bit in more detail in the acceleration of the revenue growth at Move, sort of talked about some of the new products there and also a sense of just the EBITDA growth contributions from Move during the quarter please?

Ray the contribution to EBITDA growth was $22 million for the quarter, where we continue to expect EBITDA growth and revenue growth in Q4 without giving a detailed forecast. What we're seeing is that the traditional products like Co-Broke, which is up 34% year-on-year doing well, the newer products are also taking off, as well as our experience in advertising and in traditional media is enabling us to get better quality yields at Move. So there was a 33% growth in non-listing media revenues. So all-in-all that ability that we have to learn from our experience at REA, our ability to generate audience through marketed platforms, which gives us a marketing edge and our ability to create a site, that's not just a listing side for Realtor's and vendors but also a site that is holistic real estate experience with more news, more analysis than any other means that we certainly have a comparative advantage going forward.

Thank you. Matt we will take our next question please?

This will be a follow-up from Craig Huber with Huber Research Partners.

Yes hi. I was just curious, in the newspaper division, if you exclude the acquisitions and adjust for currency, how much was the cost down year-over-year please?

Excluding the acquisitions, we think the cost were down probably low-single digits, predominantly being driven by Dow Jones. So they've seen a good decreasing cost quarter-on-quarter year-on-year around 4%. We are also seeing some cost decreases coming through in relation to some of the other divisions within that segment, but it's predominantly being driven by the Wall Street Journal.

Sorry is that also adjusting for currency as well the down low-single?

Yes correct.

And also, if I could ask…

Matt we'll take our next question please?

We'll move on to Brian Han with Morningstar.

Thanks. Just one follow-up question, you guys mentioned before about opportunistic acquisitions, are there any such opportunities in Australia, if the recently announced media reform package gets passed?

We don't speculate on speculation. All I would say on the subject of media reform, is that really we do need comprehensive holistic wholesale media reform in Australia. We have a set of loads that are more for the Goldenberg [ph] era than the Zuckerberg era and as long as there is wholesale reform, we'll be supported by them.

Thank you. Matt we will take our next question please?

It will be from Eric Katz with Wells Fargo.

Thank you. Just touching on the digital sales and the news rental services, you've clearly gained a lot from newspapers over the last couple of quarters, and I'm wondering how that's impacting your advertising particularly CPMs inventory, just the what kind of momentum are you seeing? Thank you.

I think, it's a very good question and it's one that was spending a lot of time and energy across our market looking at our ability to increase yields as we identify reader demographics and that's obviously at the very heart of the new advertising platform that we're building here in the US. We know that across the U.S. monthly we on our sites including Realtor, we have around 220 million visitors combined with our newspaper mastered audiences that is a valuable source of audience for advertisers and we're doing our very best to monetize it in a way that make sense to advertisers, increasingly find themselves on third-party networks unable to be sure the company that they're keeping.

I think I'd also add that we are seeing good digital growth across some markets, so we are seeing growth across News Australia, News UK on a year-to-date basis for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. And also pleasingly we're seeing ARPU growing. So I think that equally is important on the circulation side as what is on the advertising side.

Thank you. Matt we will take our next question?

At this time, we have no further questions in the queue, so I'll turn it back over to you Mr. Florin for any additional or closing remarks.

Great thanks Matt. Thank you for all participating today. Have a great day and we'll talk to you soon.

And again that does conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation.