The New York Times saw an increase of roughly 180,000 net digital-only subscribers in the second quarter of this year, but generated less digital advertising revenue, as it reported on Wednesday.
The Times now has 9.17 million paid subscribers. Its target is to reach 15 million by the end of 2027.
The company reported US$ 76 million (R$ 402.8 million) in adjusted operating profit, 18% less than in the same quarter last year. It generated total revenue of US$ 555.7 million (R$ 2.94 billion), an increase of 11.5% over the previous year. Digital subscriptions accounted for US$238.7 million (R$1.26 billion) of this revenue, an increase of 25.5%.
The impact on operating profit was primarily from losses at The Athletic, the sports news site that the Times bought in February for $550 million. Adjusted operating losses at The Athletic were $12.6 million (BRL 66.7 million) this quarter from April to June, down from $19.4 million (BRL 102.8 million) in the first quarter. .
“We are on track to reach our next milestone of 15 million subscribers by 2027,” Meredith Kopit Levien, president and chief executive officer of The New York Times Co., said in a statement.
The Times reported 9.1 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2022. That number has been revised up in this quarter’s results to 9.01 million.
A key part of the Times’ strategy is to distinguish between subscribers and subscriptions. A subscriber may have a subscription to more than one of the company’s products, which include The Athletic, Cooking and Wirecutter. The Times is betting on adding digital offerings to its journalism to reach new audiences with diverse interests.
In the second quarter, the company had its highest number of new subscribers to the All Digital Access tier, which includes news from the Times, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, Levien said.
The net gain of 180K digital-only subscribers was a 70% increase over Q2 2021. The company added a lot more in Q1 of the year, 387K, but that was mostly a one-time boost from The Athletic. The sports site contributed a net increase of 50,000 standalone subscribers in the most recent quarter.
The vast majority of Times subscribers pay only for digital access. The number of print subscribers continued to decline in the second quarter, down nearly 7% from a year earlier to about 761,000.
Times Co.’s digital advertising revenue. in the quarter fell 2.4% year-on-year to US$69.3 million (R$367.29 million), as the marketing sector reduced its spending in the face of economic uncertainty. Print advertising rebounded 15.1% to $48.1 million from the year-ago quarter as the entertainment and luxury categories began to recover from the pandemic.
Total operating costs increased 19.6% to US$504 million (R$2.67 billion). The company also reported a gain of $34.2 million on the sale of land at the Times’ printing facility at College Point in the borough of Queens, New York.
The company said it expects third-quarter digital subscription revenue to increase 21% to 25% from a year earlier. The company said it expects flat or slightly declining advertising revenue and a 9% to 13% increase in adjusted operating costs over that period.
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