The New York Times Company looks to have enjoyed a Trump Bump during election season, with the paper reporting on Wednesday morning it added 350,000 new digital subscribers in Q4 — its best quarter in terms of net digital subscribers in years.
Those new subscribers helped push NYT to 11.43 million total subscribers at the end of 2024. The 350,000 new digital subscribers were also the most the company has added in a single quarter since mid-2021, although its quarter-over-quarter growth was only marginally better than in Q3. The digital gains helped offset a decline in subscription revenue and ad revenue tied to its print business.
Conspicuously, while the paper’s fourth quarter coincided with the 2024 presidential election, The Times did not mention the election, Donald Trump or Kamala Harris as drivers of its strong Q4 in its earnings report on Wednesday.
At the same time, the paper continued to spend money on its legal battle against OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and Microsoft.
The Times’ spent $3.2 million on legal fees in Q4 related to its copyright infringement lawsuit against the tech companies, which the paper filed in late 2023. For all of 2024, The Times spent $10.8 million on legal fees tied to the lawsuit, the paper reported on Wednesday.
The Times’ lawsuit claims OpenAI unlawfully used the paper’s content to improve its AI models and products. Those illegal moves, The Times argued, “threaten high quality journalism.” CEO Meredith Kopit Levien did not mention the lawsuit on the NYT Q4 earnings call on Wednesday morning.
Here are the top line results from The Times’ Q4 report, which covers October through December 2024:
Revenues: $726.6 million, up 7.5 % year-over-year and slightly ahead of analyst estimates of $725 million from Zacks Investment Research. Sales from its digital-only products increased 16% annually to $334.9 million, a noticeable jump from the 7.2% year-over-year growth the company reported during the fourth quarter a year prior.
Total subscribers: 11.43 million at the end of Q4, up 10.3% from the 10.36 million subscribers the year prior and up 3% from Q3 2024. As usual, the vast majority of those subscribers — 10.82 million — are digital-only readers.
The NYT’s 350,000 new digital subscribers marked the best quarter in terms of total digital subscriber growth since Q3 2021, when the paper added 455,000 digital customers. In terms of quarter-over-quarter growth, the Times’ digital subscriber base grew 2.5% in Q4, which was a slight increase from Q3.
Net income: $123.7 million, up 12% from the same period a year prior.
Earnings Per Share: Adjusted EPS of $0.80 was better than the $0.74 analysts had estimated.
Heading into Wednesday morning, The Times’ share price has been flat since the start of October, trading at $55.89 when markets closed on Tuesday. The Times’ stock is up 18% from the same time a year ago.
While The Times enjoyed a big quarter in terms of digital growth, that was offset slightly by a decline in its print business. The paper reported $132 million in Q4 print subscription revenue — down $10 million from the year prior. Its print advertising business also took a hit at the same time, seeing a 16.4% year-over-year decline in print ad sales ($56 million to $47 million in Q4 2024).
The Times reported an operating profit of $146.6 million for the quarter, an increase of 13.6% from the year prior. And the paper’s board approved a $350 million share buyback program and a 5 cent increase to its dividend, pushing it to $0.18 per share.
Kopit Levien, on the company’s earnings call Wednesday, said games like Wordle and Letter Boxed help “bring a lot of new people” in as subscribers. Levien added The Times has a “robust pipeline” of games in development, but did not offer further details.
The CEO also noted that with the digital gains, the company is on its way toward its goal of reaching 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027.
As for The Athletic — the digital-focused sports outlet NYT bought in 2023 — Kopit Leveien said company executives are “pleased” with its growth. The Athletic reported its second straight quarterly profit in Q4, with an operating profit of $3.5 million — up from the $2.6 million reported in Q3. A year prior, The Athletic lost $4.4 million. Moving forward, Kopit Levien said the paper will be “very focused” on “making sure people know The Athletic exists.”
