The charge will be taken in the quarter ending June 30 and could effectively wipe out News Corp's profit. Analysts were expecting News Corp to report a pretax profit of $1.4 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Earlier on Friday, News Corp said its board authorized a $500 million stock repurchase program for the publishing operation, partially answering the question of how the new News Corp will use $2.6 billion in cash it will have when the spinoff takes place, expected to occur on June 28. News Corp is preparing to hive off its publishing assets as newspapers around the world face unprecedented challenges because of plunging advertising revenue and readers who increasingly prefer to read news on smartphones and tablets. News Corp publishes 140 newspapers in Australia including The Australian. Its U.S. assets include the New York Post, Dow Jones' The Wall Street Journal and the coupon insert company News America Marketing and the book publisher HarperCollins.