Twenty-First Century Fox Inc (FOXA): Gaining Australian Exposure Through News Corp (NWSA)

Print newspapers around the world have been on the decline though. Australia is no exception. Print advertising dollars for the overall Australian newspaper industry has declined over the past decade. That is not to say there are no opportunities for growth in the news business. While traditional print is down, online ad dollars have compounded 18% annually over the past five years. And with the largest mobile news network in Australia, News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this growing demand for online news.

No. 1 in Online Real Estate
The oddball of this media family, online real estate listings are generally not what one would consider as “media.” The REA Group is, nonetheless, Australia’s largest with 20.6 million visits each month (2.5 times their nearest competitor). Being a publicly traded Australian company, 61.6% owned by News Corp, the majority of the REA’s revenues are from its Australian operations. The company does have a growing international presence though, where they are the No.1 real estate site in Italy, No. 1 in Luxembourg and a major player in Hong Kong.

The REA Group is an extremely fast-growing subsidiary of News Corp. During fiscal 2013, the company grew revenues by 21%, earnings per share by 26%, cash balance by 42% and dividends per share by 26%. Country specific, the company grew revenues in Australia, Italy, Luxembourg and Hong Kong by 22%, 11%, 19% and 19% respectively. Clearly the REA Group has been killing it on all fronts, which is why shares of the company are up nearly 5,000% since 2000 and up 147% over the past 12 months (easily destroying the performance of the Australian S&P/ASX 200 stock index).

Foolish Bottom Line
Being America-centric in our investments need not exclude us from the opportunities the rest of the world offers. Gaining significant international exposure could just be a great American multinational company away. And for those looking for Australian exposure after the recent election results, it does not get much better than News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) with its large, diverse and absolutely dominant Australian assets.

The article Gaining Australian Exposure Through News Corp originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Matthew Luke.

Matthew Luke owns shares of News Corp Class B. The Motley Fool recommends Netflix. The Motley Fool owns shares of Netflix.

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