This interview by Simon Middelboe, Chair, LegalTechTalk, and Flume, is adapted from Monetising B2B Information & Events, in London this month.
Sarah Cottle is EVP and General Manager of Dow Jones Energy. Since starting out at Dow Jones, she has worked as a reporter and editor for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNBC and S&P. She eventually became Global Head of Data and Insights for S&P Global Market Intelligence, before rejoining Dow Jones in 2025.
What persuaded you to return to Dow Jones, 30 years after you started there?
Going back to Dow Jones was really a homecoming. The CEO, Almar Latour, and I have tracked each other’s careers for many years. It’s been very exciting to go back and be part of the transformation Dow Jones is undergoing within News Corp. The business is evolving from a traditional media company into something much more B2B and B2C combined. Earlier panels talked about the “flywheel effect” of having proprietary data, news, analytics, events and trusted brands all working together. Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal sit right at the centre of that.
We work very closely across those assets to make sure we’re leveraging them properly. For me personally, going back was also about my passion for news. In this era of misinformation, trusted journalism carries a premium. It’s incredibly important to be associated with trusted brands. So, it really was a no-brainer. The first six months have been extremely busy, but an absolute joy.
What had changed during that time and, perhaps equally important, what had stayed the same?
I’ll start with what stayed the same, which is trust. That has always been there. Like many of the major financial media organizations, we have the privilege of being able to open doors that smaller companies simply can’t. Whether it’s CEOs, world leaders or government officials, the relationships and access our teams have are extraordinary. The brand itself carries weight and trust.
What has changed is, of course, technology. When I started at Dow Jones, we literally ripped stories off a telex machine and handed them to editors. That’s how old I am!
The way we publish, distribute and consume information has completely transformed. And, honestly, that’s another attraction of being back. The challenge now is how businesses like ours stay ahead when everything is changing so quickly. The arrival of AI in publishing and information services is an extraordinary opportunity, provided companies approach it the right way.
What is the magic of Price Reporting Agencies?
First of all, I wish it were magic. In reality, it’s huge teams of deeply specialised experts whose knowledge of these markets is incredibly niche and incredibly important. There’s no magic. There’s expertise and a great deal of hard work.
What makes the PRA model so interesting is that it’s essential infrastructure for global markets. PRAs provide transparency into markets that would otherwise be highly opaque. Much like ratings agencies, they are part of the ecosystem that allows global trade and capital flows to function.
This is not “nice-to-have” information. It’s “must-have” information.
Dow Jones Energy operates as a PRA. We generate proprietary data because commodities and energy price discovery require proprietary market intelligence. Our teams are out there every day discovering prices, understanding supply and demand dynamics and breaking news about energy markets. When you combine that proprietary data with trusted journalism, analytics, events and the Dow Jones brand, the result is a business that serves a genuinely critical market function. We create a level playing field where both large and small participants can operate with transparency.
It’s both a privilege and a huge responsibility. Billions of dollars trade against our benchmarks every day. We have to ensure those benchmarks are as accurate and representative as possible.
Part of the ‘magic’ of PRAs is their profitability, isn’t it?
Our day-to-day activity is about being deeply embedded in markets, understanding what’s happening and making sure we bring the best information back into the pricing process. When a benchmark becomes adopted by the market, that’s effectively the holy grail. It means the market trusts your methodology and your price assessments enough to use them in transactions and contracts. Once that happens, you can partner with exchanges, list benchmarks and become part of the infrastructure of the market itself.
At that point, benchmarks become very difficult to displace because they’re written into workflows, contracts and trading systems. But I constantly remind my teams that there can be no complacency. In journalism, we say you’re only as good as your last headline. In a price reporting agency, you’re only as good as your last published price.
You have to remain completely focused on accurately reflecting market sentiment every single day. That trust and embededness are incredibly valuable. But they can never be taken for granted.
Last year, former Argus Media CEO Neil Bradford was here at Monetising B2B describing his General Index PRA startup. His proposition is that data combined with algorithms and methodologies creates a more robust and transparent process than traditional price discovery driven by expert reporters speaking to market participants. How much truth is there in that? And is that a broader trend you’re seeing across markets?
For me, there is a sweet spot, and it’s about combining human expertise with AI – in the right way.
AI can absolutely help make processes more efficient. It can improve checks and balances. It can remove some of the more mundane parts of the workflow. But we still believe there is no substitute for human interaction within markets. AI can gather prices where there’s a fixed set price. But can it have a conversation with a trader and analyse whether they are revealing everything they know, or perhaps holding something back because they want the market to move in a certain direction? That remains much harder for AI to do effectively.
That said, I think General Index has introduced some genuinely interesting ideas into the market. I’m a great admirer of what Neil Bradford has built. It’s healthy for the industry to be challenged. It forces all of us to think carefully about our business models and our methodologies and make sure we are adopting the most efficient approaches possible while still reflecting the market accurately.
What does AI mean for your business more broadly? Is it the existential threat people talk about, or is it more of an opportunity? Julie Harris, CEO Expana, was today discussing how AI is helping with forecasting, scenario planning and cost modelling. What are you doing at Dow Jones to develop better and more sophisticated products?
Dow Jones has been very clear internally and externally about how we view AI. We see it as an accelerant. It helps us reach answers faster. It’s a tool, but it’s also a distribution channel. It allows us to make our data available in formats and environments that integrate more naturally into the systems our customers already use.
We don’t view AI as competitive with what we do. Quite the opposite.
Everyone in this room understands that AI is only as valuable as the quality of the data being fed into it. We are fortunate because we have extensive proprietary data and decades of trusted information assets. That means we can organise and structure our data in ways that work effectively with platforms such as Snowflake and other environments. We can then use agentic AI internally across our products so customers can query huge archives of historical text and data through natural language interfaces and receive answers based on real historical facts and verified information.
Public-domain AI is still relatively weak when it comes to trust and factual accuracy. That gives us a strong position.
One of the attractions of AI is, of course, the speed of experimentation. Things which once took months can now be built in days. How are you experimenting and what are the rules of engagement internally?
Like everyone else, we’re experimenting constantly. Some things will succeed, others won’t. But we’ll learn from all of them.
Shortly before I rejoined the company, Dow Jones had acquired a Danish business called A2i Systems. Visiting that team has been fascinating because they’ve built an AI-driven platform that helps fuel retailers optimize margins around gasoline pricing. One of our major brands in Dow Jones Energy is OPIS, which operates across the chain from refinery pricing through to the retail gas pump. Historically, we provided extensive pricing data and analytics into that market, especially in North America. But this AI-powered system fundamentally changes how fuel retailers can operate. It transforms what was previously a fairly manual process into something dynamic and highly responsive.
What’s exciting is not just the technology itself, but the opportunity to scale those capabilities across the broader organization. The business may be based in Odense, Denmark, but its impact is global. And we’re not limiting those capabilities purely to energy. Dow Jones also has major risk and compliance businesses, focused on geopolitics and country risk, so we’re constantly thinking about how these capabilities can create value across the wider portfolio.
Honestly, the scale of AI-related work happening across Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal right now is enormous.
Bloomberg recently suggested you could buy a barrel of oil in Kansas at one price and the same barrel in Sri Lanka at a dramatically different price. Does that make your job much harder, or is volatility actually an opportunity?
First of all, enormous credit goes to our teams, because they are effectively operating around the clock right now. This is exactly the kind of moment their expertise exists for. During periods of geopolitical instability, the market’s reliance on trusted pricing and intelligence becomes even greater.
Our methodologies are built to handle volatility. They’ve been developed over decades in close consultation with traders and major market participants. So we remain confident in our ability to reflect prices accurately, even during extreme market fluctuations. The bigger challenge is operational intensity. Some of our teams are physically based in the Gulf region, so our first priority is always making sure they are safe and supported. At the same time, the demand for intelligence and direct customer conversations rises enormously during periods like this. Policymakers, corporations and traders all want clarity. It’s in moments like these that the true value of trusted benchmark pricing and trusted news becomes most visible.
But when you see such wide regional price differences, what actually is “the” price of oil?
Well, whatever the price was when I sat down here has probably changed already, so I’m certainly not going to try to quote it. But this is precisely why robust methodologies matter. Our pricing processes are grounded in decades of market experience. They are designed to withstand volatility because they were built alongside the market itself.
The real challenge today is not simply reflecting prices. It’s cutting through noise and disinformation and identifying what genuinely matters to customers at any given moment. That means delivering news and benchmarks that are accurate, timely and trustworthy, while filtering out distractions that don’t actually help customers make better decisions.
We focus relentlessly on those fundamentals. We are impartial. Our responsibility is simply to publish the most accurate reflection of the market based on everything we see and hear through our reporting and pricing processes.
Flashes & Flames comments
In 2024-5, DJ Energy was the $278mn-revenue PRA division of the $2.3bn Dow Jones, which itself accounted for 28% of the parent News Corp’s $8.5bn. Dow Jones is its most profitable unit.
In a diverse and egregiously undervalued News Corp (which includes newspapers, book publishing and digital real estate), it’s easy to see why Dow Jones – with its 82% digital revenue, 80% subscriptions and just 17% from advertising – is tipped to be demerged or IPOd at some point. A recent Dow Jones presentation to investors made the point that it had trebled digital subs since 2018 and increased its share of subscribers under 40 by 57%. The claims seemed like nothing so much as prep for an eventual separation.
Its parent company is certainly talking up the growth.
Dow Jones is forecast to almost double its $588mn EBITDA (25% margin) by 2030, mostly due to the fast-growing B2B (as opposed to the “consumer” news of Wall Street Journal, Barrons et al) which currently accounts for almost 50% of revenue. Perhaps some kind of demerger awaits a big PRA acquisition in the UK, maybe ICIS (from RELX) or the pe-owned Fastmarkets? Is a merger with the $500mn-revenue PRA Argus Media beyond reach or reality?
While Dow Jones is some 40% of News Corp’s total EBITDA, it may already be worth at least 60% of the parent’s $16bn enterprise value. Although this c$10bn DJ valuation is “only” double the $5bn that Rupert Murdoch paid for Dow Jones back in 2007 (yes), the group that News Corp describes as “a news, data and intelligence powerhouse…with Outsized Growth in Risk and Energy” is one for the likes of S&P Global, Thomson Reuters, RELX and Bloomberg to watch.
