News Corp Stock Jumps 6% on Cost Cutting Efforts Despite Revenue Declines

thewrap.com:

Shares of Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch owner News Corp. rose 6.5% in morning trading after the news and book publisher posted a slight decline in revenue for its fiscal third quarter as the advertising market softened, but reported progress on cost-cutting measures it said would save $160 million this year.Shares gained $1.02, or 6%, to $17.85, in morning trading after earlier reaching as high as $18.68.

News Corp. shares closed Thursday at $16.83, down 9% since the start of the year.The New York-based company, which also owns the New York Post, a host of British and Australian newspapers including the Sun and the Times of London, Harper Collins Publishers and realtor.com, said revenue for the three months ended March 31 fell 2% to $2.45 billion, from $2.49 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Net income plunged to $59 million, or 9 cents per share, from $104 million, or 14 cents per share, last year.Revenue declined across all of the company’s units except Dow Jones, which houses the namesake business newswire and other professional information businesses, along with The Journal and its other market-focused publications.

The company said the acquisitions of the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS) and Chemical Market Analytics (CMA) last year helped drive revenue gains for the unit.“In a period in which advertising was clearly insipid in certain parts of the world, our core non-advertising revenue has been particularly robust,” CEO Robert Thompson said in a statement.