The New York Times Company Adds 180,000 Digital Subscribers

The company’s strategy centers on bundling its digital products, which include Cooking, Games, Wirecutter and now The Athletic, alongside its core news report. It hopes readers will pay more by subscribing to more than one offering.

ValueAct, an activist investor, announced in August that it had bought nearly 7 percent of The New York Times Company’s common stock and would push the news organization to push its bundled subscription more forcefully.

Ms. Levien said The Times had passed a milestone of one million bundle subscribers.

The company has added 180,000 net digital-only subscribers of all kinds in two consecutive quarters. The Times now has 9.33 million total subscribers, who have 10.75 million paid subscriptions across print and digital, and remains on its pace to reach its goal of 15 million total subscribers by the end of 2027.

“The biggest story of our third quarter was continued progress on the bundle, with mounting evidence that our strategy is working,” Ms. Levien said in a statement. “It was our best quarter yet for bundle net additions.”

Operating costs at The Times increased 9.5 percent from a year earlier, to $503.8 million. The company spent 24 percent more on product development than in the same quarter last year, while sales and marketing costs dropped 22.7 percent to $64.7 million. The company also hired additional newsroom employees.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/business/media/nyt-q3-2022-earnings.html