The New York Times added 300,000 digital subscribers in the second fiscal quarter of 2024, marking a 12.9% increase in digital subscription revenue year-over-year to $304.5 million. The increase was driven largely by bundle and multi-product subscriber additions, the company said on Wednesday.
Here are the top-line results:
Revenue: $625.1 million, up 5.8% from $590.9 million in 2023.
Earnings: Diluted earnings per share was $0.40, up from $0.28.
Subscribers: The company added 300,000 digital subscribers in the quarter to bring the digital subscriber total to 10.2 million. Total subscribers reached 10.84 million in the quarter.
“Our subscribers were deeply engaged in Q2,” Meredith Kopit Levien, president and CEO of the Times, said during Wednesday’s shareholders call. “We saw the share of subscribers on our site and apps each week hit another multi-year high. That’s a clear sign that we’re delivering unique value to users, and building long-term relationships.”
Even as the news media market continues to experience “significant audience headwinds” the Times has shown it can sustainably translate that interest into growing revenue and increasing profitability, Levien added.
Total advertising revenues ticked up 1.2% to $119.2. Print advertising revenues, which fell 10% in the quarter, were partially offset by a 7.8% growth in digital advertising revenues to $79.6 million. Digital advertising revenue increases were attributed to higher revenues from display advertising at both The Athletic and NYTG.
Importantly, digital advertising revenues grew 4.1% to 66.8% as a proportion of total advertising revenues versus print.
The Athletic, which the Times acquired in 2022 for $550 million, saw revenues grow 33.4% year-over-year in the quarter to $40.5 million. Subscription revenues increased 19.4% to $29.3 million, primarily attributed to subscription growth and the ability to bundle. Advertising revenues for The Athletic grew 30% to $7.1 million.
“The combination of our world-class news destination plus market-leading lifestyle products means we have complementary offerings in big spaces, each with multiple growth levers fueling multiple revenue streams,” Levien said. “Together we believe these make The Times resilient in a changing media landscape and well positioned for continued value creation.”
Affecting the results was $2 million of pre-tax litigation expense related to a copyright infringement lawsuit the Times filed in December against Microsoft and OpenAI. The suit marked the first major case from news publishers over generative AI capabilities and how tech companies have used news content to train chatbots, as the technology embeds itself in the media industry.
In the first quarter of 2024, the Times said it spent $1 million on the OpenAI and Microsoft lawsuit. Both Microsoft and OpenAI have sought to dismiss key elements of the lawsuit.
The company said it expected digital-only subscription revenues to grow 12-15% in the third quarter, and total subscription revenues to increase 7-9%.
