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Transcript Summary

The New York Times Company delivered a strong Q1 2026 performance, marked by a 16% increase in digital subscription revenue and 32% growth in digital advertising. Total subscribers surpassed 13 million, with 310,000 net additions in the quarter. Adjusted Operating Profit (AOP) rose 27% to $118 million, with margins expanding 200 basis points. Management highlighted the success of its multi-product bundle—including News, Games, The Athletic, and Wirecutter—and announced a major push into video journalism to drive engagement. A key focus was the scaling of "reporter video," which more than doubled in production, aiming to capture audiences shifting away from traditional linear TV. In advertising, the company exceeded expectations by leveraging its first-party data and expanding supply in non-news areas like sports and games. Regarding AI, CEO Meredith Kopit Levien emphasized the importance of fair value and content control in licensing deals. Despite headwinds from tech platforms impacting general traffic, the direct-to-consumer model remains resilient. The company provided a bullish outlook for Q2, expecting continued double-digit growth in digital subscriptions and high-teens growth in digital advertising, supported by robust free cash flow of $542 million over the last 12 months.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY: Intellectual Property Fortress Leveraging Litigation as a Growth Strategy

Full Earnings Call Transcript — Q1 • 2026-05-06

Operator: Good morning, and welcome to The New York Times Company's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Anthony DiClemente, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Anthony DiClemente: Thank you, and welcome to The New York Times Company's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. On the call today, we have Meredith Kopit Levien, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Will Bardeen, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that we will be making forward-looking statements, including about our business, strategy and performance based on our current expectations. Our actual results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties described in the company's 10-K and subsequent SEC filings. We will also be referencing non-GAAP financial measures for which there are reconciliations to GAAP measures in our earnings release at investors.nytco.com. And with that, I will turn the call over to Meredith.
Meredith Kopit Levien: Thanks, Anthony, and good morning, everyone. Q1 was another great quarter for The Times. We continue to see strong demand for the uncompromised journalism and premium lifestyle content that The Times is uniquely capable of delivering. We're able to meet that demand despite operating in a media environment dominated by a small number of tech companies whose moves continue to impact traffic to publishers. The Times isn't immune to that impact, but we also see real opportunity. We have a clear strategy and enduring advantages that we believe position us well for long-term growth. Let me remind you of those advantages. First, we've deliberately chosen to operate in big spaces with lots of running room ahead. Independent news coverage is a universal need and our lifestyle products each address large global markets. Today, we reached many tens of millions of people every week across our portfolio, and we see the opportunity to directly and deeply engage many tens of millions more. Second, we've built an unparalleled engine for creating original reporting and high-quality content in a rigorous journalistic way, doing reporting like this at scale and across a broad range of topics, essential to people's lives is hard as others do less of it, The Times continues to invest, which makes our news coverage and our lifestyle products increasingly rare and increasingly valuable. The Pulitzers awarded earlier this week were another indication of that value and saw The Times honored in multiple categories, including investigative reporting, breaking news photography and opinion writing, a deeply reported podcast from The Athletic network was also honored for the first time. Third, we know how to harness technology to continually improve how we reach and engage audiences through innovations in our formats, features, product experiences and proprietary data sets. Finally, we're able to monetize consistently high audience engagement through our multi-revenue stream model, which positions The Times for healthy long-term growth. We believe these four advantages are durable one, and we're confident they will enable us to continue building a larger and a more profitable company for many years to come. Now let me share a few highlights from the quarter. Digital subscription revenues grew 16%, and we added 310,000 net new digital subscribers, that brings our total subscriber base to over 13 million and puts us further down the path to our next milestone of 15 million and beyond. Subscriber growth in the quarter was driven by multiple products across our portfolio. Digital advertising grew 32% in the quarter. This performance exceeded our expectations and was the result of a clear strategy, capable execution, strong marketer demand and high engagement across the portfolio. Affiliate, licensing and other revenues also grew in the quarter. Finally, we stayed disciplined on costs while making focused strategic investments into our journalism and product experiences, including video, which we expect to underpin our long-term success and strong market position. Before I wrap, I'll note that we've made progress against all of our priorities year-to-date. We continue to cover the world's most important stories from every angle. Journalists around the globe reported on the Iran war and its fallout unpacking the military strategies along the Strait of Hormuz, the political calculations in Washington, Tehran and Jerusalem and the economic implications for Americans. We brought people aboard the inspirational voyage of Artemis II with interactive graphics and video. And we published the results of a 5-year investigation into misconduct by civil rights icon Cesar Chavez, the kind of patient public-minded work that few can do like The Times. We presented our journalism and lifestyle products in an increasing array of formats, especially video, where we see an opportunity to better engage current audiences and bring millions of new people into The Times orbit. Our signature reporting now regularly comes to life in reporter videos from John Kerry's journey to unmask the Bitcoin creator, to Climate Reporter, Raymond Zhong's 2-month expedition to Antarctic. We're continuing to scale output here and more than doubled production of reporter video in the first quarter. We also continue to drive real impact with our trademark visual investigations, which in the first quarter, examined the U.S.'s role in the bombing of an elementary school in Southern Iran. We also added value in every part of our portfolio in the form of new and expanded shows, features, coverage and more. In Q1, we officially launched our first multiplayer game called Crossplay. We added a regular Sunday edition of The Daily focused on culture and debuted a new true crime podcast from Serial. The Athletic released the latest addition of authoritative NFL draft guide, The Beast. And just last week, we convened an illustrious group of music industry leaders to name the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters in a multimedia package that included a rare interview with Taylor Swift, among others. Continuing to execute against these priorities is how we plan to get millions more people to have direct relationships and daily habits with The New York Times. And as we do that, we expect 2026 to be another year of revenue growth, AOP growth, margin expansion and strong free cash flow. And with that, I'll turn it over to Will.
William Bardeen: Thanks, Meredith, and good morning, everyone. As Meredith described, our first quarter was a strong start to 2026. Year-over-year, consolidated revenues grew 12%, AOP grew by approximately 27% and AOP margin expanded by 200 basis points. We saw healthy increases across our multiple revenue streams and continue to make disciplined investments aimed at further differentiating our high-quality journalism and digital products. Now I'll discuss the first quarter's key results, followed by our financial outlook for the second quarter of 2026.  Please note that all comparisons are to the prior year period unless otherwise specified. I'll start with a discussion of subscription revenues. Digital-only subscription revenues grew approximately 16% to $389 million. We added 310,000 net new digital-only subscribers in the quarter and digital-only ARPU grew 2.4%. Total subscription revenues grew 11.3% to approximately $517 million, which was above the guidance range we provided for the quarter. We're focused on healthy long-term growth of our digital subscription revenues, and that is a function of both our overall digital subscriber base and ARPU. While subscriber net adds and ARPU can fluctuate in any given quarter for a variety of reasons, including subscriber mix and product pricing, we remain confident in the health of our subscription revenue drivers. We are adding significant value to our products and engagement remains strong across the portfolio. We continue to be pleased with the performance of our news-centered bundle as well as with performance at our pricing step-up points. Now turning to advertising. Total advertising revenues for the quarter were $127 million, an increase of approximately 17%, which beat our expectations. Digital advertising revenues also came in above the guidance range we provided increasing approximately 32% to $93 million. The growth in digital advertising was due mainly to strong marketer demand and growth in advertising supply. Affiliate licensing and other revenues increased approximately 8% in the quarter to $68.5 million, primarily as a result of higher licensing revenues. This was in line with our guidance. Adjusted operating costs grew 9.4%, largely as a result of higher compensation and benefits expenses, which included investments in our video journalism. Growth in sales and marketing costs included both marketing expenses and higher costs associated with our advertising revenues. As I mentioned at the top, AOP grew 27% in the quarter to approximately $118 million and AOP margin expanded 200 basis points to 16.6%. Adjusted diluted EPS increased $0.20 to $0.61. I'll note that our effective tax rate in Q1 benefited from stock awards that settled in the quarter. Going forward, we expect an annual effective tax rate between 25% and 26% with some variability around the quarterly rate. I'll now look ahead to Q2. Digital-only subscription revenues are expected to increase 14% to 17% and total subscription revenues are expected to increase 10% to 12%. Digital advertising revenues are expected to increase high teens and total advertising revenues are expected to increase high single digits. Affiliate licensing and other revenues are expected to increase low single digits. Adjusted operating costs are expected to increase 8% to 9%. We intend to continue operating efficiently while making disciplined investments in our high-quality journalism and digital product experiences that add value for our audiences and help reinforce and expand our competitive advantages. As we've discussed, video in particular, remains an important area of strategic investment being reflected in our results and in our guidance. We are confident in our ability to generate strong returns over the long term as we grow the amount and impact of video journalism in news and across the portfolio. Our business continues to generate strong free cash flow. In the last 12 months, we generated $542 million of free cash flow enabled by robust AOP and our capital-efficient model. I'll note that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act resulted in lower cash tax payments of $65 million for fiscal 2025 and that the sale of some excess land at our printing plant generated $33 million of cash in Q1 of 2025. Looking to full year 2026, we expect to benefit from the tax bill of approximately $60 million to operating cash flow. We do not expect the majority of this cash flow benefit to recur beyond fiscal 2026. In summary, our strategy continues to work as designed. Our strategic priorities are all aimed at building a larger and more engaged audience over time, growing our subscriber base and powering our multiple revenue streams. We continue to expect 2026 to be another year of healthy growth in revenues and AOP, margin expansion and strong free cash flow generation. We also remain on the path to achieving our midterm targets for subscribers, AOP growth and capital returns. With that, we're happy to take your questions.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Benjamin Soff with Deutsche Bank.
Benjamin Soff: I wanted to first ask about the digital subscription revenue. It came in really strong this quarter. And I was hoping you could unpack some of the main drivers of that performance. And in particular, could you discuss how the bundle category performed given the change in disclosure? And then I have a follow-up.
William Bardeen: So I'm happy to take that. Yes. We're very pleased with the performance in the quarter for digital subscription revenue. As we know, looking to Q2 as well, we provide quarterly guidance on that line. And what we're doing there is we've talked about in that over the long term is focusing on the function of both our subscriber base and our ARPU. So the subscription growth in the quarter in any given quarter can fluctuate for a variety of reasons, subscriber mix, product pricing, so we're pleased with that result. And looking forward, you see the guide of 14% to 17%. So now as it relates to that sort of the drivers there, ARPU was driven specifically by subscribers transitioning from promotional to higher prices and the impact of some price increases. I mentioned that a bundled price increase on the last call. All of this is part of an ongoing approach to pricing designed to address the whole demand curve based on how much value people are getting from the products. And so I think the key thing there is multiple products across the portfolio as we add significant value to our products, we're continuing to see really strong audience and subscriber engagement, and we were really pleased in the quarter with the performance at our pricing step-up points.
Benjamin Soff: Got it. And then on the ad business, one of the drivers of digital ad growth going back to last year has been introducing new supply on the platform. It looks like you're continuing to get good results from that. Can you share how you're thinking about balancing revenue growth with increasing ad load? And are you still adding new ad inventory to spaces that don't have ads today? Or is the incremental new supply coming from growing ad load on the platform?
Meredith Kopit Levien: Yes. I'll take that one. It's a great question. I'll just say it was a great quarter in advertising and the underlying drivers of the business feel really strong. I'm as optimistic as I've been about our ad business and that the real -- the biggest driver is we are in big spaces where there's real marketer demand, and we have big and engaged audiences in those spaces. To your point, I'll note that last year, we really benefited from an increase in supply, particularly in the second half of the year and particularly in games and sports and that continued into Q1. This year, we will keep adding supply. We'll do it more incrementally and we'll do it across the portfolio. And it's also worth saying our ad products really work for marketers. We've got these kind of big beautiful canvases where you asked about ad load. We're very deliberate about how many of them we put on each page because it's really meant to be a consumer-first experience. That's kind of the magic of the model. That's why the ads work so well. And we've got very powerful data now that we've been building for years to help marketers target those ads. So they perform and marketers come back.
Operator: The next question comes from David Karnovsky with JPMorgan.
David Karnovsky: Maybe a follow-up on digital ads. Meredith, your results have consistently kind of exceeded your outlook on what looks to be an accelerated pace. And I'm curious, when you look back and you see the outcome relative to your forecast, I'm curious what's generally been driving that better-than-expected kind of digital advertising result relative to what you had forecast. Like where is that kind of incremental demand coming from?
Meredith Kopit Levien: Yes. It's a good question. I'll say a few things. They won't be a ton different from what I just said. But I do think now that the sort of structural advantage we've built in advertising is that we play in side spaces that marketers want to be in. And even within news, our news product is a really broad product with a lot of different kinds of journalism and there's a lot for marketers there. And obviously, sports and games are big. And cookie and wirecutter are really compelling for marketers. So that's kind of the big underlying driver is big spaces, lots of audience engagement in those spaces, really powerful ad products relative to, I think, what another publisher might be able to do because we have so much first-party data. All of that is working. I'll add two more things, which is -- we've been in the ad business a very long time. The marketers who already run with us, who've been with us for years, there's opportunity to do more with them because we're in so many spaces, and we're on multiple different kinds of platforms, multiple different kinds of ad products so we can get sort of more share of wallet from marketers. And then I'll add that, particularly because of games and sports and recipes and shopping advice. We can just bring in more different kinds of marketers, and that's -- we're really sort of evolving the ad business to be able to do that. The last thing I'll say because you're pushing on our sort of prediction ability. I've been around our ad business for a very long time, it remains harder to predict than the subscription business, I think, for obvious reasons. But we're kind of broadly optimistic about it.
David Karnovsky: Maybe just kicking on this topic. When you look at the news flow in March, very much dominated by the Iran conflict, I think historically, investors would kind of look at that and say, "Oh, this content is a negative for advertising." But I'm curious, is that kind of still the right way to look at it that, that type of content is a challenge for marketers to put their brand next to?
Meredith Kopit Levien: I'll say two things about that. We really benefit now from having this wide portfolio of products with a lot of audience engagement in each of those products. So there are lots of places for a marketer to be. And we did this kind of step function increase in supply in the second half of last year in sports and games and you're seeing us continue to benefit from that now. I'm going to say about news, though, which remains kind of our -- by far, the most important thing we do in terms of value creation and really important for marketers. News is a big word with a lot of meaning and it's not just -- we're in politics. We're super proud of the coverage we've been able to do on the War in Iran. I called it out in my prepared remarks. But within our news report, we -- I mentioned the 30 greatest living songwriters in America, and we -- if I think about our is just the sort of the work we do in science-backed, health and wellness or culture more broadly, that there are so many other topics and places we have incredible style coverage. There are so many places for a marketer to be associated with The Times, do work with The Times, but they go beyond kind of some of the things that are less desirable in terms of places for a marketer to be. We really benefit from that.
Operator: The next question comes from David Plaus with Bank of America.
David Plaus: Just on the video initiative, which is clearly, a big focus and investment area. Is there anything you can share around early engagement metrics? Is there a certain type of content that's generating outsized viewership or certain venues on or off platform? And how should we think about the strategy and timeline of monetization there?
Meredith Kopit Levien: Yes. I'm happy to take that. It's a great question. Listen, the most important thing to say is we see video as a big long-term opportunity for The Times. And what we're really aiming for here is to establish The Times as a preferred brand for watching news and the other things we do in addition to reading and listening. And to your point, our efforts here are really meant to grow and deepen engagement with the audience we already have and also to reach net new audiences. As I said in my prepared remarks, Q1 was a period where we saw a lot of increase to production and that is a big focus right now. We more than doubled the production of reporter video. We've ramped up video news clips, I mentioned visual investigations, which are really different at The Times and have a lot of impact. And then I'd say we have a lot of momentum around our shows portfolio. So shows covering the biggest ideas and politics on both sides of the isle, culture, AI. We've got an interview show with very newsworthy figures. You've got a show in shopping. We have sports highlights now. And a lot of that is getting real traction. You asked about engagement specifically. I would say we've seen really great engagement with video. It is early. That's the most important thing I could say. It is early here, but we've seen great engagement on our site and our apps and that includes our live coverage includes the homepage. And you'll remember, we launched a watch tab in our app sort of across the destinations, we're seeing real engagement from it. But it's early days. I think you asked about monetization. You can regard us as sort of thinking about this as a three-step strategy first, increase production. We've got a lot of inherent advantage there because we've got reporters sort of everywhere are poised to go where the story does, and we're adding a video capability layer to that, but we're in a phase of really scaling production. As we do that. We are also building engagement, audience where we have and net new audience. And I think The Times has a very good track record of as we scale engagement monetizing in all the ways we monetize advertising. Ultimately, it makes the subscription more valuable and potentially even licensing. So the monetization sort of follows production and engagement, and we like -- it's early, but we like where we are.
Operator: The next question comes from Kutgun Maral with Evercore ISI.
Kutgun Maral: I wanted to ask about AI licensing. And now that we're approaching the roughly 1-year mark with the Amazon deal, I was wondering if you could expand on how that relationship has progressed and whether your experience with that agreement has impacted your broader philosophy with AI platforms? And how should we think about the opportunity for maybe multiple AI licensing partnerships as we move forward? And maybe if there's any color you could provide on how those conversations are progressing, that would be helpful.
Meredith Kopit Levien: Yes. I'll take that one. I think we've sort of said all along. We are open to doing deals that sort of meet our conditions, which are -- is a deal or a partnership here consistent with our long-term strategy? Does it ensure sustainable fair value exchange. And do we have control over how our content is used. And I would say we've done a partnership with Amazon because it met those conditions. And so far so good when we're learning a lot there. And I would just say, like broadly, The Times has a good track record of doing deals when the terms are right. We also continue to believe that enforcing our rights is really important to ensuring sustainable fair value exchange over the long term. And ultimately, we believe we make journalism that is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable at real scale, and that's going to be valuable to everyone. The consumers and the LLMs, who need high-quality work, powering their systems.
Operator: The next question comes from Cameron Mansson-Perrone with Morgan Stanley.
Cameron Mansson-Perrone: Congrats on the Pulitzer recognition. I have two high-level ones on the video initiative. First, Meredith, you've talked in the past about capturing viewership from linear TV news declines. I'm wondering if you see that as a natural more proactive consumer shift as folks leave that ecosystem? Or  what you think you need to do to attract that viewership to digital news and to The Times specifically? And then I have one more.
Meredith Kopit Levien: Yes. It's a great question, and thanks on the Pulitzers. Listen, we want to win the moment when something big is happening in the world and people are looking for where do we get the high-quality information on what's happening here, what facts are what this means, we want to win that moment. And we are endeavoring to do that in every way we possibly can. Ideally, at our destinations, but in general, that's the aim. The thing that I think we have really -- that you can now see if you are someone who uses our apps or goes to our site is we can just show you more of the news than we've been in a position to do in a really long time. And the -- we do that with many more news clips than we've previously used. But the real unlock, I think, so far, has been reporter video where you've got somebody who goes out and report deeply on the story, just to give an example of this, David Sanger, who is an expert on geopolitics who's been with us for 4 decades. We go to War in Iran and David Sanger reports very deeply on what he thinks the dynamics are between Washington, Jerusalem and Tehran. And then we shoot a short video where he describes that. And for the consumer, they may get all they need in that short video or it may prompt them to go and like read the long form piece. But what we know that it does is it's trust building. You sort of see the guy, you see there's a human reporter, you understand the expertise he brings to it. So we think it's a really big opportunity. As to where the viewer is now, for all that I said about cable and broadcast, it still commands big audiences, and we are very interested in being a preferred brand and preferred place for people to see and watch what's happening.
Cameron Mansson-Perrone: That's interesting. One follow-up on the short-form side, which is just -- I'd be curious for your thoughts on how you view YouTube as either a potential partner given its distribution scale, in terms of surfacing Times content or as a potential competitor as you continue to kind of get more active in the digital video space.
Meredith Kopit Levien: Yes. I'll say broadly, we endeavor to have the best possible experience you could have as a news reader, watcher, listener or consumer and in all the other spaces we play in on our own destinations. And actually, the Songwriters project that we did, if you wanted to watch that Taylor Swift video, you came to us in the beginning to watch it. It will ultimately be other places, but you came to us to watch it. That said, I think we recognize, as we always do, in each sort of phase of technological change, we exist in an operating environment and an ecosystem that is shaped by other big players, YouTube as a very big player. And so it is a way for us to also build audience and awareness. We're early here, and we're building audience and awareness for The Times as a preferred place with great stuff to come view. And that's particularly important as we have shows, long-form shows. That -- where we're early in building audience.
Anthony DiClemente: Great. Thanks so much, Cameron. Operator, let's take one last question, please.
Operator: And that question comes from Doug Arthur with Huber Research Partners.
Douglas Arthur: Yes, last, hopefully not least. Meredith, I know you don't break out The Athletic anymore. Can you discuss the impact it had on the quarter in terms of digital advertising, sort of disentangling that from underlying core growth? Is there any way to do that?
Meredith Kopit Levien: Never least, Doug, and I will say we don't break it out, but I'm going to reiterate something I think I've said in multiple quarters, which is we are thrilled to be in sports. There's so much marketer interest in sports. And I think The Athletic is a real source of net new audience, and it can be a source of audience growth, and it's a very compelling product for advertisers. And we believe it will continue to be and has the opportunity to be an even more compelling product for advertisers over time. I'll point to the fact that we just in the back half of last year added highlights from some of the leagues, including the NFL, and it's really early there. We're in the build engagement phase. But over time, we're very happy with The Athletic as an ad performer. And over time, we're optimistic it will continue to be a big part of the story.
Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Anthony DiClemente for any closing remarks.
Anthony DiClemente: Great. Thanks, everyone, for joining us on the call, and have a great day.
Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.