Due to advertising revenue not meeting market expectations in the fourth quarter, the stock price of The New York Times fell more than 10% during the day of its financial report release.
Prior to trading on February 7th local time, The New York Times (Nasdaq: NYT) released its fourth quarter results for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023, with revenue of $676.2 million, an increase of 1.3% from the same period last year, slightly lower than the market's expected $678.5 million; The diluted net income per share (EPS) under non GAAP is $0.70. The New York Times achieved a total revenue of $2.426 billion in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 5.1%. Digital subscription revenue reached $1.099 billion, breaking the $1 billion mark for the first time.
The New York Times predicts that in the next fiscal quarter, the company's digital subscription revenue will increase by between 11% and 14% year-on-year, and total subscription revenue will increase by between 7% and 9% year-on-year.
New York Times Performance Overview. Source: New York Times Financial Report
In the fourth quarter, although digital subscription revenue increased by 7.2% year-on-year to $288.7 million, the New York Times' total advertising revenue decreased by 8.4% to $164.1 million in the highly anticipated advertising revenue. Among them, digital advertising sales decreased by 3.7% to $107.7 million in the quarter, compared to $111.9 million in the same period last year; Print advertising sales decreased by 16.2%.
William Bardeen, Chief Financial Officer of The New York Times, stated in a conference call that the company's advertising market is expected to continue to face uncertainty, particularly in the decline in print advertising sales, and that "advertising and partnership revenue will be affected seasonally, with growth concentrated in the second half of the year.".
"Our digital product performance, including podcasts, has been influenced by market personnel avoiding some hard news topics, such as conflicts in the Middle East," said Meredith Kopit Levien, CEO of The New York Times, in a post earnings conference call
The New York Times reported that as of the fourth quarter of 2023, it had approximately 10.36 million paid subscribers, slightly lower than analysts' expectations of 10.37 million; Among them, the number of digital subscription users is about 9.7 million, with an increase of about 300000 in the fourth quarter; The company has set a goal to reach 15 million subscribers by 2027. The number of print media subscribers to The New York Times has dropped to 660000 by the end of 2023.
At a time when news media is experiencing difficulties, the New York Times has become a highlight in the industry by actively promoting digitization and strengthening digital marketing cooperation. In the past year, the stock price of The New York Times has risen by 51%.
On the 7th, the stock price of The New York Times fell by over 10% at one point; On February 8th, the company's stock price closed down 2.71% to $43.74 per share, with a total market value of $7.191 billion.
On December 27, 2023, The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, claiming that the defendants were responsible for "illegal copying and use of The New York Times' unique and valuable works" and related "legal and actual losses worth billions of dollars", and demanded that the two companies destroy any chatbot models and training data that use The New York Times copyright materials.