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Realtor.com parent company Move’s fortunes have finally turned around, according to the company’s latest earnings report on Wednesday.
Move’s revenues increased 2 percent year over year to $130 million during the second quarter — the first revenue increase in more than two years. The rest of the portal’s metrics were flat or down on an annual basis, due to continued market headwinds and affordability issues.
Real estate revenues, which account for 78 percent of Move’s total revenues, were flat compared to the previous year. The portal’s lead volume inched down 2 percent year over year, while average monthly unique visitors to Realtor.com’s web and mobile sites decreased 6 percent to 62 million.
Overall, News Corp’s digital real estate services segment performed well, with revenues growing 13 percent annually to $473 million. The segment’s EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) increased 26 percent annually to $185 million due to a strong performance at the Melbourne-based residential portal REA Group.
Unlike most U.S.-based companies, News Corp uses a reporting method that ends the year on June 30. What most companies call their fourth quarter is referred to at News Corp as the second quarter.
Robert Thomson
In a prepared statement before the company’s earnings call, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said the company had a “fruitful quarter” as its three main business pillars — digital real estate, book publishing and Dow Jones — posted meaningful EBITDA growth. The CEO said artificial intelligence will continue to be a major part of the company’s future growth while pointing to News Corp’s recent partnership with OpenAI.
“News Corp had a fruitful quarter, qualitatively and quantitatively. Revenues on a continuing operations basis, which excludes Foxtel, grew 5 percent to $2.24 billion, net income from continuing operations surged 58 percent to $306 million and Total Segment EBITDA rose 20 percent to $478 million,” he said.
“We are providing priceless content for Generative AI, and remain vigilant in our pursuit of degenerative AI. We are pleased with our partnership with OpenAI and hope that other companies in the segment take a similarly enlightened approach.”
In the company’s earnings call, Thomson and newly-appointed Chief Financial Officer Lavanya Chandrashekar were bullish about the company’s outlook, with both leaders casting President Trump’s tariff policy against Canada, Mexico and China — which has been temporarily paused as Trump negotiates with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum — as a minimal roadblock to the company’s overall goals.
“We are seeing a tangible increase in business confidence here in the U.S. since the election, the temporary turmoil of transactional tariffs aside,” Thomson said.
Thomson went on to talk about the political climate since the election, saying a new era without the “yoke of woke” is upon Americans.
“There is the confluence of economic optimism and a cultural awakening, with the yoke of woke having been lifted,” he said. “We believe these trends should lead to less superfluous gratuitous regulation, greater capital formation, increased opportunities for all Americans and more candid, creative, compelling conversations. Hopefully, an era of censorship and self-censorship is receding into the distance.”
Thomson didn’t expound what this era could mean for the company’s real estate segment, which includes Move.
However, Chandrashekar said Move is in a strong financial position to take advantage of an anticipated coming bump in for-sale and rental activity.
“Realtor continues to maintain strong audience share despite much higher competitive marketing spend, underscoring the strength and quality of their audience,” she said. “Realtor also continued to show strong traction on new revenues, as seller, new home, and rentals represented 20 percent of revenues, and we anticipate continued strong growth in these adjacencies going forward this fiscal year.”
The CEO ended the call by doubling down on News Corp’s commitment to Realtor.com, which has spent the past year navigating increased competition primarily from CoStar-owned residential portal Homes.com. The rivals have been locked in legal and regulatory battles over traffic claims and alleged theft of trade secrets.
At Inman Connect New York in January, Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales said he welcomed the pressure from CoStar, but considered Zillow the company’s main competitor to beat. “We love competition at Realtor.com. We think it’s our role to become better for our customers and for consumers through competing really aggressively and last year was a very aggressive playing field,” he said. “I’d like to think, though, that despite all of the investments that CoStar made in the industry, we fended them off … And today, we’re very focused on Zillow.”
“[We plan] to keep the cars in the garage,” Thomson said.
