NY Times posts quarterly loss as costs rise...digital subscriptions increase
New York Times beats as digital subscriptions surge,
shares rise
Laharee Chatterjee FEBRUARY 8, 2018 / 5:43 AM / UPDATED 2
HOURS AGO
(Reuters) - The New York Times Co pleased investors with
market-beating profit and revenue as digital subscriptions surged, underscoring
the turnaround in its fortunes that had wavered as fewer people bought
newspapers.
The publisher’s shares jumped as much as 13.8 percent to
$25.20, their highest since July 2007.
New York Times has been discounting heavily to lure more
paid subscribers to its online content and is packaging its subscriptions more
attractively, with access to sought-after daily crossword puzzles and cooking
recipes.
The company added 157,000 digital subscribers in the
quarter ended Dec. 31, taking its total subscriber count to above 2.5 million.
Revenue from its digital-only subscription products, including news as well as
crossword and NYT Cooking Recipes, increased 51.2 percent to $96.3 million.
“The New York Times, for its digital subscriptions, is
night and day ahead of its peers in the publishing industry,” said Craig Huber,
analyst at Huber Research Partners.
This success comes amid a change of guard at the
newspaper.
The newspaper, known as “The Gray Lady” said in December
that long-time publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was passing the reins to his
son, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, who was long-groomed to take over the business
his family has owned since 1896.
NYT has faced frequent criticism from U.S. President
Donald Trump who has called it “failing @nytimes” on Twitter and accused it of
bias.
This has, however, resulted in a bump in subscriptions at
the publisher, which is building on the online readership it gained during the
2016 presidential election by marketing unbiased reporting as a sales strategy.
“We believe there remains a large opportunity to continue
to extend our subscription reach and will continue to invest in areas of the
business that will allow us to achieve that growth,” NYT Chief Executive Mark
Thompson said in a statement.
Still, New York Times’ print business continued to
decline in the fourth quarter.
Print advertising revenue fell 8.4 percent even as
digital advertising revenue rose 8.5 percent in the fourth quarter.
Total revenue rose 10 percent to $484.1 million.
The company posted a net loss of $57.8 million, compared
with a year-ago profit of $37.6 million, mostly due to higher costs and pension
settlements.
Excluding one-time items, the company earned 39 cents per
share. Analysts’ on an average estimated a profit of 29 cents per share on
revenue of $467.3 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by
Savio D'Souza and Sayantani Ghosh
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