Report Date: Thursday, August 6, 2026, before market open (call at 8:30 AM ET) | Period: Fiscal Q4 2026 (quarter ended June 30, 2026)
FOX heads into this print in an unusual position: the underlying business has been firing on all cylinders, but the stock's entire narrative has been hijacked by one event — the June 15, 2026 announcement that FOX will acquire Roku for ~$22 billion. That deal, not the quarter itself, is likely to dominate the call. Shares are still down roughly 25% from January highs and trade well below where they sat before the Roku announcement, even after a partial recovery tied to blowout World Cup ratings and Fox One subscriber growth.
| Current price (8/5/26 close) | ~$58.70 |
| 52-week range | ~$48 (June low) to $76 (Jan. high) |
| Consensus rating | Buy / Moderate Buy (mixed after Roku deal) |
| Consensus EPS (Q4 FY26) | ~$1.15–$1.34 (estimates cut sharply into the print) |
| Consensus revenue (Q4 FY26) | ~$3.6–3.64B |
On June 15, Fox Corporation and Roku announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which FOX will acquire Roku for $160.00 per share in a combination of cash and FOX Class A common stock, valuing Roku at approximately $22 billion in enterprise value. The structure: each Roku share converts into $96.00 in cash plus 0.9693 shares of Fox Class A common stock, which at Fox's reference price totals $160.00 per share, with the actual value floating with Fox's share price until closing.
Financing and leverage: FOX expects to fund the cash portion with a combination of new debt and cash on hand, and has obtained $12.0 billion of fully committed bridge financing from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, with pro forma net leverage at closing expected to be approximately 2.8x, inclusive of 50% credit for run-rate cost synergies. Pro forma, existing Fox shareholders would own roughly 73% of the combined company and Roku shareholders would own about 27%, and Fox will issue approximately 152 million Class A shares to Roku shareholders as part of the transaction. Fox is guiding to approximately $400 million of run-rate cost synergies with additional revenue upside, accretive to free cash flow per share by the second full year after closing. The deal is expected to close in the first half of calendar year 2027, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.
The market's initial verdict was brutal: Fox Corporation shares plummeted 16.07% the day of the announcement, marking the stock's worst single-day performance on record, as investor concerns centered on significant shareholder dilution from the stock component of the deal, the hefty acquisition premium, and a lengthy timeline before expected synergies materialize. Strategically, analysts are split — some see it as primarily an advertising play, with one analyst noting it "isn't necessarily that surprising that Fox would see that as an attractive way of growing and expanding their ad business" — while others question whether Fox's ownership of Roku will negatively impact the platform's appeal among other content owners, given Roku's attraction has come from its "neutral infrastructure." Notably, FOX explicitly reassured investors that the shareholder capital return program would continue uninterrupted while maintaining its current investment-grade rating.
What to listen for: Expect management to spend significant call time on deal rationale, synergy specifics, integration planning, regulatory timeline/antitrust risk, and reiteration of the capital-return commitment. Watch for any update on financing terms (permanent debt vs. bridge take-out) now that the S-4/proxy process is underway.
The last reported quarter (fiscal Q3, ended March 31, 2026) set a high bar. FOX reported $3.99 billion of revenue and adjusted EBITDA of $954 million, up 11% year-over-year — a record third quarter — with adjusted EPS of $1.32 versus $1.10 a year ago. Distribution revenue grew 3% (Cable Network Programming distribution up 5%), and while headline advertising revenue fell 24% against the Super Bowl LIX comp, management said advertising revenue excluding the Super Bowl would have grown double digits, with strength continuing into Q4. Fox News posted record third-quarter advertising revenue and finished as the most-watched cable network in total day and prime, while Tubi revenue grew 23% with view time up 19%.
Management's framing heading into Q4 was unambiguous: momentum would be "supplemented" by two outsized catalysts — the FIFA World Cup and the ramp toward midterm political advertising.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup (hosted in North America, June 11–July 19) was the single biggest swing factor for the quarter, though only the first ~3 weeks fell inside fiscal Q4 (through June 30) — CFO Steve Tomsic told investors on the Q3 call to expect the tournament's financial impact to split roughly 50/50 between fiscal Q4 and fiscal Q1 FY27, skewing revenue/EBITDA-accretive on broadcast and less so (and not EBITDA-accretive) on the cable-net side.
The ratings results were historic: the tournament finished as the most-watched FIFA World Cup in U.S. history, averaging 7,737,000 viewers across 104 matches on FOX, FS1 and Tubi — up 116% vs. the 2022 tournament and up 179% vs. 2018. The final alone averaged 38.9 million viewers, making it the most-watched soccer telecast in U.S. television history, and combined with Telemundo/Peacock reached more than 62.8 million viewers, the most-watched World Cup final and soccer telecast in American history.
Streaming was the bigger surprise for investors: Antenna data found Fox One gained nearly 3 million new subscribers in June alone thanks to the tournament — 2.8 million new sign-ups, making it the single largest customer acquisition month in the streamer's brief history, and 93% of these additions were new subscribers, with only 7% being reactivations. That's on top of Fox One's already-encouraging trajectory: three months post-launch, third-party research firm Antenna estimated Fox One had attracted around 2.3 million subscribers.
Key question for the call: retention. Fox One's first anniversary is August 21, 2025→2026, and the real test is whether World Cup sign-ups stick once the tournament ends and before NFL kickoff bridges the gap — history (e.g., Peacock's post-Olympics churn) suggests risk here, though management noted on the Q3 call that Fox One churn to date has been better than expected, helped by news content (over half of Fox One viewing being news).
Management entered the upfront season confident, citing low ad-option cancellations, healthy scatter pricing, and growth in pharma, tech and finance categories. The bigger tailwind is political advertising: on the Q3 call, Lachlan Murdoch flagged third-party estimates of an $11 billion midterm political ad market — a potential midterm record — with Fox positioned well given its stations in battleground states like Florida and Georgia, plus issue-advertising exposure in states like California. Management said it was already seeing record political revenue for an "off year." Expect an update on how political dollars are pacing into the fall as we get closer to the November 2026 midterms.
Fox News ratings remain the linchpin of the Cable segment story. The network extended its ratings dominance — Fox News dominated all of basic cable in Q2, averaging 2.5 million primetime viewers to extend its streak to 98 consecutive quarters atop the ratings over ESPN, MS NOW and CNN — though there are early cracks: Fox News was the only one of the three major cable news networks to have lost viewers year-over-year in July, dropping 3% in total viewers and 21% in the demo during primetime, largely reflecting tough comps against a newsier 2025. Pricing has more than compensated — management noted national CPM pricing at Fox News was up over 45% year-over-year as of the Q3 call, with a large gap remaining versus broadcast CPMs.
FOX added two incremental NFL games for the 2026-27 season (a Munich international game creating a Week 10 triple-header, plus a Week 15 Saturday game), and Lachlan Murdoch downplayed reports of tension with the league over rights, noting FOX has four years left on its current NFL deal with no substantive renegotiation talks underway as of May. However, the landscape has shifted since: the NFL reportedly wants to renegotiate its ~$110 billion domestic broadcast agreements before the 2026 season, taking advantage of the reset in the market from Paramount-Skydance's acquisitions, and notably, LightShed Partners analysts suggested the Roku deal could "embolden" the NFL to negotiate out post-2029 media rights options before year-end 2026, given the strength of Fox's balance sheet. Any commentary on NFL negotiation status will be closely watched, especially given how it interacts with new leverage from the Roku deal.
Cable distribution revenue growth has been resilient — up 5% in fiscal Q3 — with management citing sub-erosion stabilizing below 6.5% for several quarters (excluding Fox One adds), continued affiliate pricing gains, and early positive signs from skinny bundles. CFO Steve Tomsic flagged that roughly one-third of distribution income is up for renewal in fiscal 2027, skewed toward Television, and that TV distribution revenue (roughly flat in FY26) is expected to return to growth in fiscal 2027. Watch for confirmation of this inflection and any update on Fox One's contribution to distribution economics now that a full sports-content cycle (NFL through World Cup) has passed.
FOX has been an aggressive repurchaser — cumulative buybacks reached over $8.5 billion (~36% of shares outstanding) since the 2019 program launch, including a completed $1.5 billion accelerated share repurchase. The company ended fiscal Q3 with ~$3.6 billion in cash and $6.6 billion in debt. Post-Roku announcement, FOX explicitly said the capital return program would continue "uninterrupted" while preserving investment-grade ratings — but with $12 billion of new bridge financing layered on and pro forma leverage targeted at ~2.8x, investors should press for clarity on the pace of buybacks/dividends between now and deal close, and how free cash flow generation (which was very strong last quarter at $1.77 billion) will be allocated between debt paydown, buybacks, and integration costs.
Fundamentally, FOX's core content engine — live sports, Fox News, Tubi — has rarely looked stronger, and the World Cup and looming midterm election cycle provide real, visible tailwinds into fiscal 2027. But this earnings report will be read through the lens of the Roku acquisition: investors want reassurance on leverage, dilution, synergy credibility, and capital-return continuity far more than they need confirmation that the underlying media business is healthy. A "beat and raise" quarter on the operating metrics may be overshadowed if management can't give the market more comfort on deal execution risk and the path to de-leveraging — and conversely, any incremental clarity on Roku (financing terms, revenue-synergy specifics, regulatory timeline) could matter more for the stock than the headline EPS/revenue print itself.