Murdoch’s News Corp. poised for a split

LOS ANGELES — Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is preparing to spin off its newspaper business into a separate company, an acknowledgment that the printed page that gave rise to a media empire will never again be central to its future.

Mr. Murdoch’s plan to split his company represents a break from the past. The 81-year-old billionaire built the company from a single Australian newspaper he inherited from his father. And through the years, he maintained a fondness for newspapers even as he purchased entertainment companies and assembled a global conglomerate with a market value of $52 billion.

The Wall Street Journal, News Corp.’s flagship newspaper, reported late Tuesday that News Corp.’s board of directors will consider the plan Wednesday and possibly announce its approval Thursday morning.

Under the proposal, newspapers will be shunted off into a separate publicly traded entity, which Mr. Murdoch will control along with a second company that comprises News Corp.’s entertainment business. That portion of the company includes Fox News Channel, its broadcast TV network and the 20th Century Fox movie studio.

Investors hailed Tuesday’s announcement that News Corp. is considering a split, sending the stock up $1.68, or 8.3 percent, to close at $21.76 Tuesday. During the day, the stock was as high as $21.89, its highest level since hitting $21.90 on Oct. 25, 2007.

Analysts said the newspaper and book publishing division could be worth about $5 billion - what Mr. Murdoch paid the Bancroft family for Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, in 2007.

News Corp. investors have never liked that acquisition and over the past five years the stock price has stagnated, hurt by fears Mr. Murdoch would overpay for other newspaper assets.

In contrast, investors are very high Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey, who along with Mr. Murdoch’s son James, the deputy COO, has been steering the company toward a future based on expanding profitable pay TV operations around the globe.

The split could be beneficial for both companies. Part of News Corp.’s problem in recent years is that it has been trying to please two kinds of investors with different, and somewhat conflicting, demands: Those looking to make a killing on a rising stock price and more conservative ones who like less-risky, more predictable companies that pay generous dividends.

News Corp. has failed to please either. Its stock is no higher than it was five years ago, and it pays a dividend of just 17 cents a year, or 0.8 percent of what it costs to buy a share. The average company in the S&P 500 stock index pays its owners cash each year equivalent to 2 percent of its stock price.

A spin off might change this. It would free the TV and film business from the drag of the slower-growing publishing business. And it would allow the publishing business the freedom to raise its cash payout.

“News Corp. has one of the best TV businesses, but some people like musty, dusty publishing companies that pay great dividends,” said Barton Crockett, an analyst at Lazard Capital. “It’s a good thing for shareholders.”

Mr. Crockett said newspapers have been raising dividends lately, and he thinks a separate News Corp. publishing business could do the same, possibly to 6 percent, which is what rival Gannett Co. pays.

News Corp.’s move comes as Britain’s communications regulator, Ofcom, enters the final stages of its review of whether satellite TV firm British Sky Broadcasting is “fit and proper” to hold a broadcast license. News Corp. holds a 39 percent stake in BSkyB, but its ownership is in jeopardy because of the hacking probe.

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