$787 Million isn't as much money as.....

[brooklynite]

...$787 Million PLUS what they'll end up paying SmartMatic PLUS what they'll end up paying their shareholders for damaging the share price.

[alwaysinasnit]

1. It seems like Dominion cracked the nut and SmartMatic will pry it open. (I hope.)

[Bobstandard]

2. Aren't these deductible business expenses?

Won’t Fox get to deduct this on their taxes?

[Ocelot II]

3. There has been some discussion of insurance coverage for the settlement,

and I'm sure Fox has business liability coverage - a lot of it - but would it cover liability for intentional defamation? If someone slips and falls on your icy sidewalk your homeowner's policy will pay up if they sue you because that's just negligence, but if you go out and beat them up, typically there's no coverage - usually, liability coverage excludes intentional torts, and actual-malice defamation is exactly that. Depends on the details of the policy, of course; but it would serve Fox right if their business liability insurer told them to pound sand. There is such a thing as media defamation coverage, though; if anyone needs it, it would be Fox.

[onenote]

4. It's actually quite a bit of money.

Last quarter, News Corp's net income was $313 million. So we're talking about the equivalent of going without income for more than a half year.

And last quarter wasn't really that much of an anomaly -- over the past 18 quarters, the company has averaged 381 million in net income per quarter. It's highest total during that time was 1.10 billion -- that was the third quarter of 2020, where election advertising and increased viewership drove revenues. The lowest net income was the third quarter of 2021, when the company actually had a net loss of 85 million. Looking just at 2022, the company's net income per quarter was $376 million -- a number that is somewhat inflated by the fact that election-fueled revenues in the third quarter of 2022 were $605 million, while the average for the other three quarters was only $300 million.

Most companies would not regard going income-free for half a year to be a good thing.