News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) (NASDAQ:NWS)’s spinoff company will receive $2.6 billion in cash and not be saddled with any debt, according to a regulatory filing released today.
The publishing company will be able to use the cash to acquire other companies or just to get its business in line during the transition.
The new company will include The Wall Street Journal and the U.K. newspaper the Sun. The business will be spun off in June, and it will also be able to access a revolving credit line. The spin off was announced with the company’s last weak earnings report, which came out in December.
Shareholders have been clamoring for News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) (NASDAQ:NWS) to break off its publishing company so that it could focus more time on its film and TV businesses, which are more profitable. The losses reported in December were largely due to the company’s publishing division.
Bloomberg reports that in all, the new company will have about $18.6 billion in total assets. The fact that it’s starting off with a clean slate in terms of debt pushes it ahead of The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT), which has about $163 million in net debt. Other publishers like Gannett Co. and McClatchy Co. are carrying more than $1 billion in debt.
The filing today shows that News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) (NASDAQ:NWS) will give $1.82 billion in cash to the new company, which pushes its cash holdings up to a total of $2.6 billion.
The publishing industry as a whole has been struggling recently as digital forms of media have taken over.
Shares of News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) (NASDAQ:NWS) are up more than 1 percent in late Friday morning trading.
