News Corporation NWSA
News Corp's REA stake alone is worth $8B of its $12B EV — separating Digital Real Estate would expose Dow Jones and surface ~50% upside to ~$33/share.
Thesis
News Corp trades at $12B enterprise value, but its 61% stake in Australia's REA Group is already worth ~$8B in the public market — implying the rest of the company (Dow Jones, HarperCollins, News Media, Foxtel, Move) is valued at only $4B, or ~4x FY24E EBITDA. Starboard argues Dow Jones alone is a higher-quality business than The New York Times Company on digital mix, subscription mix, and EBITDA margin (21% vs. 15%), yet NYT trades at >15x NTM EBITDA. At the same multiple, Dow Jones would be worth $7B+. Separating the Digital Real Estate assets (REA and Move) from RemainCo would force the market to re-rate each piece, yielding a sum-of-parts value of ~$33/share versus the ~$22 current Class B price — roughly 50% upside.
SCQA
News Corp is a $12B-EV global media conglomerate spanning Dow Jones, HarperCollins, News Media mastheads, Foxtel, and a 61% stake in Australia's leading digital real estate portal REA Group.
The $8B public value of the REA stake implies the rest of News Corp trades at just 4x EBITDA — even though its crown jewel Dow Jones is a better business than NYT, which trades above 15x NTM EBITDA.
Separate the Digital Real Estate businesses (REA stake and Move) from RemainCo so each asset is valued on its own merits, allowing Dow Jones and the rest of the portfolio to re-rate toward peers.
A sum-of-parts value of ~$33 per share versus the ~$22 current price — roughly 50% upside, including ~$14 from REA, ~$3 from Move, ~$12 from Dow Jones, and ~$4 from the remaining assets.
The three reasons
- 1
Excluding the $8B REA Group stake, News Corp's other businesses trade at just 4x EBITDA
- 2
Dow Jones is a better business than NYT yet NYT trades at >15x NTM EBITDA vs. implied ~4x here
- 3
Sum-of-parts value is ~$33/share vs. ~$22 current, ~50% upside from separating digital real estate
Primary demands
- Separate News Corp's Digital Real Estate businesses (REA Group stake and Move/realtor.com) from the rest of the company
- Re-rate Dow Jones to a premium multiple closer to The New York Times Company (>15x NTM EBITDA)
- Surface the embedded sum-of-parts value of the portfolio to shareholders
KPIs cited
Pattern membership
Where this document fits across the library's 12 rhetorical / structural patterns.
Notable slides (6)
Notes
Starboard presentation at the 2023 13D Monitor Active-Passive Investor Summit (October 2023). No stake disclosed in the deck and no named villain — a 'stub' / hidden-asset SOTP thesis rather than a governance attack. Core rhetorical move: strip out the publicly-traded REA stake to expose that the rest of the company, anchored by a higher-quality Dow Jones, trades at only 4x vs. NYT's >15x. The $33/share waterfall on p.21 and the NYT peer-gap chart on p.13 are the strongest slides. No closing 'ask' slide beyond the last content page (p.21) and a plain Starboard logo (p.22-23); the ask is inferred from the separation narrative.