Twenty-First Century Fox 2007 Annual Report Download - page 9

Download and view the complete annual report

Please find page 9 of the 2007 Twenty-First Century Fox annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.

Page out of 135

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49
  • 50
  • 51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • 62
  • 63
  • 64
  • 65
  • 66
  • 67
  • 68
  • 69
  • 70
  • 71
  • 72
  • 73
  • 74
  • 75
  • 76
  • 77
  • 78
  • 79
  • 80
  • 81
  • 82
  • 83
  • 84
  • 85
  • 86
  • 87
  • 88
  • 89
  • 90
  • 91
  • 92
  • 93
  • 94
  • 95
  • 96
  • 97
  • 98
  • 99
  • 100
  • 101
  • 102
  • 103
  • 104
  • 105
  • 106
  • 107
  • 108
  • 109
  • 110
  • 111
  • 112
  • 113
  • 114
  • 115
  • 116
  • 117
  • 118
  • 119
  • 120
  • 121
  • 122
  • 123
  • 124
  • 125
  • 126
  • 127
  • 128
  • 129
  • 130
  • 131
  • 132
  • 133
  • 134
  • 135

In our Magazines and Inserts segment, News America Marketing had another
successful year as North America’s largest in-store consumer advertising and
promotion network. News America Marketing delivered brand messages to more
than 200 million shoppers each week last year.
Meanwhile, in Book Publishing, HarperCollins published many fine books but
had a relatively flat year for profits, with operating income slightly down from
the previous year.
We achieved significant strategic milestones in fiscal 2007. We agreed to exchange
Liberty Media’s 16.3 percent stake in News Corporation for our stake in DIRECTV,
three regional sports networks, and approximately $588 million in cash. When this
transaction is completed, which should be later this calendar year, we will have
locked in a tax free gain of roughly 50 percent generated since we acquired our
DIRECTV stake in December 2004, as well as effectively buying back approximately
16.3 percent of our own stock.
We also completed the sale of our stake in SKY Brasil for $302 million and a part
of our investment in Phoenix Satellite Television Holdings for $164 million, adding
cash to our balance sheet. In addition, we decided to sell nine of our smaller local
TV stations and announced that we would explore strategic alternatives for our
holdings in News Outdoor and support Gemstar’s decision to look at its own strategic
alternatives.
There has been an understandable focus on our planned acquisition of
The Wall Street Journal, the world’s pre-eminent business newspaper, but
Dow Jones has a plethora of prestigious brands and a range of content
that will provide us with a remarkable opportunity to take advantage of
the two most profound social and economic trends of our age, globalization and
digitization. We are at a moment in history when there is a confluence of content
and of digital delivery and of increasingly sophisticated micropayment systems,
meaning that the value of analysis and intelligence to a business user can be
far more accurately reflected in the price of that content – that trend is as true
for a businesswoman in Bangalore as it is for an investor in Idaho.
8