NY Times gets a boost from its 1m subscribers
THE NEW York Times Company beat analysts’ expectations yesterday, reporting a 78.5 per cent rise in profit in the second quarter thanks to cost-cutting measures and an increase in digital advertising revenue.
The company has been slashing costs and investing in its online and mobile platforms in recent months to offset falling print ad revenue, which the company said yesterday had dropped for the fourth straight quarter.
The company’s digital ad revenue, on the other hand, rose 14.2 per cent to $48.3m (£31.1m) in the second quarter, accounting for about a third of the company’s total advertising revenue.
Overall, advert revenue, however, fell by 5.5 per cent, as operating costs fell 4.9 per cent to $344.8m.
A bright spot for the news organisation was its circulation figures. Circulation revenue ticked up, helped by a 13.8 per cent rise in revenue from digital-only subscriptions, and senior management said yesterday it had reached a landmark of one million paid digital-only subscribers last week.
In a call with investors yesterday, New York Times chief executive Mark Thompson – a former BBC director-general – said that international readers make up 13 per cent of the total number of the newspaper’s digital subscribers Thompson said that figure had room to grow.
Shares in the New York Stock Exchange-listed company closed down 2.96 per cent at $12.80.