Fox Eyes M&A After Merger With News Corp. Scrapped: “Scale Is Important” – Lachlan Murdoch

deadline.com:

Fox will be actively pursuing M&A opportunities now that it won’t be merging with News Corp. Outside shareholders of both Murdoch family holdings had protested after patriarch Rupert Murdoch asked the respective boards to explore a combination, but then recently took that possibility off the table.

But Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch stressed a few times today on the company’s quarterly conference call with Wall Streeters that other deal or deals are likely because “I do think scale is important.” Fox reporter strong numbers for its fiscal second quarter as a defined focus on sports and news helped boost ad revenue in a soft market and has been keeping the stock a favorite with investors.   “We will be looking at M&A to deploy our capital.

We don’t have anything on the table today, but I think we are in a strong position to capture opportunities when they present themselves.

And, obviously, there are other companies in our sector that are not in as great a position,” Murdoch said. “We do expect that M&A will be a more important part of our toolkit.” He the scale and the depth of the Fox business is important “and we will be investing equally in both.” MORE By subscribing, I agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.