Twenty-First Century Fox is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings after the market close Wednesday, as investors look for updates on a pending sale of most of the company.
Here’s what Wall Street expects:
- Earnings: 53 cents per share, forecast by Thomson Reuters
- Revenue: $7.40 billion, forecast by Thomson Reuters
In December, Fox’s board approved Disney’s $52 billion stock bid to acquireFox assets including television and film studios, cable channels including FX and National Geographic, and 22 regional sports networks.
While Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger said he’s confident that the Fox deal would close, Comcast is interested in those same parts of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. CNBC reported Monday that Comcast plans to make a competing all-cash bid for Fox if the Justice Department approves AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner.
If a sale is completed, Fox would also shed international properties and its stake in Hulu. Fox’s management is said to believe that a smaller company focused on news and sports would be more competitive in the current media landscape.
Fox News has dominated Nielsen ratings, consistently ranking as the most watched cable news network in America. And Fox Sports said in January it would pay more than $3 billion to broadcast “Thursday Night Football” for five seasons.
CNBC previously reported that fear of being outspent on content was one of the main reasons Murdoch considered selling much of Fox. Tech giants like Netflix and Amazon have committed billions to licensing and producing content for their streaming services, making the bidding wars increasingly competitive.
Keeping up with Silicon Valley-style cash burn requires a certain footprint that Fox doesn’t have. In November, CNBC also reported that Fox’s senior management didn’t see a way to gain the necessary scale through acquisition.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
— CNBC’s David Faber and Alex Sherman contributed reporting
Disclosure: Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC and CNBC.com. Comcast is also a co-owner of Hulu.
