Today, 21st Century Fox announced its fiscal year and Q4 2017 financial results. Shortly after the company’s earnings were announced, Executive Chairman Lachlan Murdoch and CEO James Murdoch sent this internal memo to 21CF colleagues and colleagues across all its global businesses:
Dear Colleagues:
This was a big year for us in so many ways.
We just announced our Fiscal Q4 and full-year results, officially closing our 2017 financial year. Our strong performance over the last year reflects healthy gains and great progress on multiple fronts. Importantly, it sets us up for the next year and beyond. We encourage you to read our announcement and listen to our investor call.
The pace of transformation in our industry continues to accelerate in exciting ways. IP delivery is driving what technological advances have always done — richer experiences for customers, and compelling new ways for our stories to reach them.
It also means we live in a world of unfettered access and unprecedented choice and competition, so we need to always be creating better things — better stories, better products and, as long as we nurture our zeal for change and guard against our own incumbency, a better business.
For the last few years, we have talked a lot about investing in our distinctive video brands. It has proven to be the right strategy by virtually any measure, and it is paying real dividends for the business.
We delivered industry-leading growth in affiliate revenues, meaning what we create is fundamental to any consumer platform, established or emerging. We once again demonstrated our ability to buck the broader industry trends of multi-channel subscriber declines, and we grew our year-over-year advertising revenues on the strength of our news and sports programming.
What drives this success is a creative outlook that we work at every day. Fundamentally, it is what allows us to create and deliver deeply resonant programming to help shape the future of video entertainment. Over the last year, there was no shortage of examples across our businesses of path-breaking stories that were uniquely ours to tell.
But we know creativity and innovation don’t just happen. We need to have the right kind of organization to make it happen. Culture is critical. All the traits that have made us who we are today – a commitment to great stories, to breaking barriers, an aversion to bureaucracy and to the status quo – these are characteristics that are uniquely 21CF.
Moving forward we aspire to put an ever greater focus on embracing our differences, listening to each other and celebrating the huge swath of diversity that is 21CF. We are committed to being an organization where anyone, from anywhere, feels welcome and can thrive.
Storytelling demands open minds, to one another and to our audiences and the world around us. Achieving this balance and how we translate it into our day-to-day behaviors for the best collective outcome is work we are deeply focused on.
Over the coming year, you’ll hear more about these commitments, as well those we are making to the communities where we live and work. We have made an increased investment in our Social Impact efforts and are proud of what we have already achieved in this area.
In closing, we are grateful to you for what we have accomplished together. And we are excited about what’s to come.
Best,
