Susan Panuccio
Chief Financial Officer at News
Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon to everyone. As Robert mentioned, we had a strong second quarter, resulting in first half year-over-year improvements in both profitability and revenues. We continue to transform the company and move towards higher recurring and digital revenues, together with exercising strong capital allocation discipline and balancing reinvestment across the portfolio with ongoing fixed cost reductions.
Our second quarter total revenues were $2.6 billion, up 3% compared to the prior year, an increase from the 1% growth delivered in the first quarter. Adjusted revenues grew 2% compared to the prior year. Total segment EBITDA was $473 million for the quarter, up 16% compared to the prior year, driven by strong performances across our three key growth pillars: Book Publishing, Digital Real Estate Services and Dow Jones, which all posted double digit profit gains. In fact, in the aggregate, those key segments delivered 24% profitability growth this quarter. Our second quarter total segment EBITDA was also the highest in two years. Adjusted total segment EBITDA grew 14% versus the prior year. For the quarter, we reported earnings per share of $0.27 compared to $0.12 in the prior year. Adjusted earnings per share were $0.26 in the quarter compared to $0.14 in the prior year.
Moving on to the results for the individual reporting segments, starting with Digital Real Estate Services. Segment revenues were $419 million, up 9%, a notable improvement from the first quarter rate and a return to revenue growth for the first time since the fourth quarter of financial year 2022. On an adjusted basis, segment revenues rose 8%. Segment EBITDA rose an impressive 15% to $147 million due to a higher contribution from REA Group, partially offset by revenue headwinds at Move. Adjusted segment EBITDA rose a healthy 16%.
REA had another very strong quarter, with revenues rising 22% year on year on a reported basis to a quarterly record of $292 million with minimal impact from foreign exchange. Growth was again primarily driven by residential yield increases, improved growth in national listings, favorable geographic mix, and customer contract upgrades. Overall, new buy listings rose approximately 8%, with Melbourne up 24% and Sydney up 22%. Please refer to REA's earnings release and their conference call, which will commence directly after ours for more details.
Move's revenues of $127 million were down 13% compared to the prior year, with declines moderating from recent quarters. For the quarter, real estate revenues fell 14%, driven by lower lead and transaction volumes, reflective of the broader industry trends. Lead volumes fell 7% year over year, with December improving to down just 2%, benefiting from a combination of easier comparisons as well as recent declines in mortgage rates. Average monthly unique users for the quarter were flat compared to the prior year at 66 million.
The U.S. housing environment remains tough, with existing home sales hitting 30-year lows, although we are hopeful the market will start to show improvement in the second half given recent declines in mortgage rates. That said, irrespective of any market considerations, we are determined to strengthen Realtor.com's product and content offering, so it's best positioned for success when the housing market improves.
To that end, the Realtor.com team is focused on executing several key strategic priorities, which include modernizing the technology platform to help with unifying the customer experience across all platforms, creating unique and scaled data for proprietary content to assist with increased personalization, leveraging News Corp's network in relation to AI initiatives and capturing audience share, and accelerating the diversification of revenues with a greater focus on the sell side offering.
Turning to the Subscription Video Services segment. Revenues for the quarter were $470 million, up 2% compared to the prior year. On an adjusted basis, revenues rose 3% versus the prior year. Streaming revenues accounted for 29% of circulation and subscription revenues versus 26% in the prior year. Total closing paid subscribers across the Foxtel Group were over 4.3 million at quarter end, flat with the prior year. Total paid streaming subscribers were 2.8 million, increasing 4% versus the prior year, although declining sequentially due to seasonality at Kayo, tougher financial conditions caused by the inflationary environment for consumers, and a weaker sports cycle.
Foxtel ended the quarter with 1.3 million residential broadcast subscribers, down 9% year over year. Broadcast churn was flat at 12.9% despite the final migration off cable in October, while broadcast ARPU rose 3% to approximately AUD86, helped in part by a price rise for non-Platinum subscribers implemented in July. Segment EBITDA in the quarter of $77 million was down 14% versus the prior year, driven by contractual price escalators in Foxtel sports rights agreements and $10 million related to the upcoming launch of Hubbl, partially offset by higher revenues and lower technology and marketing costs. Adjusted segment EBITDA declined 13%.
Moving on to Dow Jones. As Robert mentioned, the second quarter results delivered the highest quarterly revenue and segment EBITDA performance since the acquisition of Dow Jones over 15 years ago. Dow Jones delivered revenues of $584 million, up 4% year over year, which made Dow Jones the highest segment revenue contributor for the quarter for the first time since it was resegmented. Digital revenues accounted for 78% of total revenues this quarter, up two percentage points from last year. Circulation and subscription-based revenues represented almost 76% of total revenues, up approximately two percentage points from the prior year, reinforcing the stability and recurring nature of the revenue base. On an adjusted basis, revenues grew 3%. We saw very strong growth at PIB, with revenues rising 13% year over year, including 16% growth at Risk & Compliance to $72 million and 15% growth at Dow Jones Energy to $62 million. Factiva again posted growth benefiting from a new licensing deal. Total PIB retention rates remain very strong at over 90%.
We are continuing to review our disclosures with the primary focus on increasing transparency to help the market appropriately value Dow Jones. To that end, we are now providing revenues for both Risk & Compliance and Dow Jones Energy in the 10-Q. Within the Dow Jones consumer business, circulation revenues were flat versus the prior year, with digital-only subscriptions growing 15% year over year or by 135,000 sequentially, driven by an increased focus on the Dow Jones bundling offer as they look to better leverage subscription acquisition costs across multiple products, capitalize on minimal overlap between products, and drive greater engagement. Bundling accounted for over 70% of the incremental digital-only volume growth in quarter two.
Advertising revenues declined 4% to $126 million, relatively stable with first quarter rate, although digital returned to year-over-year revenue growth for the first time since the first quarter of financial year '23, rising 1% driven by strength in the technology and auto categories. Print declined 11% due to weaknesses in financial services. Digital represented 62% of advertising revenues, up from 59% last year. Dow Jones segment EBITDA for the quarter grew 17% to $163 million and was the largest segment EBITDA contributor with margins improving 320 basis points to 27.9%, driven by the strong B2B performance, which remains on track to be the largest contributor to Dow Jones profitability in fiscal 2024. Costs declined about 1%, driven by headcount reductions and lower newsprint production and distribution costs, in addition to phasing of sales and marketing expenditure.
At Book Publishing, financial performance again meaningfully exceeded our expectations, particularly in profitability. Revenues were $550 million, up 4%, while segment EBITDA improved 67% to $85 million compared to the prior year. Margins increased by almost 600 basis points to 15.5%. The strong performance this quarter benefited from the success of some key frontlist titles, as Robert mentioned, and saw improvement in backlist sales, including a notable increase from Christian publishing. Return rates again improved materially due to better sell-through compared to last year, while inventory levels appear to have normalized across our distribution network. Inflationary costs moderated with lower manufacturing costs, helped by product mix and lower freight and distribution costs this quarter.
The backlist contributed 60% of revenues, up from 57% last year, while digital sales rose 15% this quarter and accounted for 21% of consumer sales. Downloadable audio accounted for nearly 50% of digital sales, a record high, and we are pleased with the early positive signs from our partnership with Spotify, which generated incremental digital revenues and EBITDA this quarter. As way of background, Spotify is a usage-based model, not a pooled model. On an adjusted basis, revenues gained 2% and segment EBITDA rose 65%.
Turning to News Media. Performance in the segment was more challenged. Revenues were $563 million, down 3% versus the prior year, while adjusted revenues declined 5%. Advertising declined 9% and was down 11% in constant currency, while circulation and subscription rose 5% and was up 2% in constant currency, benefiting from cover price increases. Advertising remained particularly challenged, with digital advertising trends again negatively impacted by the lower traffic at several mastheads related to changes in algorithms at the large platforms. That said, as Robert noted, encouragingly, we are seeing some recovery in recent weeks, particularly at The Sun in the U.S. Segment EBITDA of $52 million declined $7 million, which was due to the lower revenue, partly offset by lower print volume and newsprint expense and lower spend at TalkTV. Adjusted segment EBITDA declined 15%.
As for the outlook, similar to our comments last quarter, it is challenging to forecast in the short term, albeit economic conditions vary across markets. Looking at each of our segments. At Digital Real Estate Services, Australian residential new buy listings for January grew 12%. Please refer to REA for more specific outlook commentary. At Move, we hope to see continued improvements in lead volumes with January up 1% year over year, given recent declines in borrowing costs, albeit off low prior year comparisons. As we mentioned last quarter, we are expecting some reinvestment in marketing and product development in the second half, increasing from depressed levels last year, which will be partially offset by cost reductions elsewhere.
In Subscription Video Services, as mentioned last quarter, we continue to expect modestly higher expenses for the full year, ongoing inflationary pressures, fewer new releases across entertainment due to the writers' and actors' strike, and a weaker summer sport schedule has created some softness in streaming revenues, which may impact full year profitability in local currency. At Dow Jones, we expect strong revenue and profitability performance underpinned by the transformation of our B2B offerings. And as mentioned previously, we continue to expect modestly higher overall expenses for the full year. At Book Publishing, overall industry revenue trends remain relatively stable, and we are encouraged by the strength in the downloadable audio. We continue to expect margins to improve versus the prior year. At News Media, advertising revenue trends remain challenging, particularly in Australia, and we will continue to focus on ongoing cost efficiencies. Finally, given the current spot rate for the Australian dollar versus the U.S. dollar, we do expect some negative translation in the third quarter.
With that, let me hand it over to the operator for Q&A.
