New York Times' slower subscriber growth in busy news cycle sparks share selloff

By Jaspreet Singh

Aug 5 (Reuters) - The ‌New York Times ​added digital ​subscribers more slowly in the second quarter despite a busy news cycle that included the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and the FIFA World Cup, ‌worrying investors who sent its shares down more than 13%.

The newspaper added ⁠about 280,000 digital-only subscribers in the second quarter, lower than an estimate of 295,300 from Visible Alpha ‌and the 310,000 it added in ‌the previous quarter. Its total subscriber count now stands at 13.35 million.

The results show declining search and referral traffic from Google is hurting even the Times, long seen ​as the standard in digital publishing due to its success in building a vast subscription business around news and lifestyle content.

"We delivered our second-quarter results against the ⁠backdrop of a rapidly changing information ecosystem shaped by a small number of big tech companies whose moves continue to ​result in less traffic to publishers," CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said in a post-earnings call.

"The Times isn't immune to that impact," she said.

The ​company has a goal of hitting 15 million ‌subscribers by the end of next year, which would require it to add an average of 275,000 subscribers per quarter for the next ⁠six quarters.

The slower second-quarter subscriber growth came even after it had dropped its paywall for all FIFA World Cup coverage on The Athletic and introduced new coverage formats, helping the sports website ⁠draw its "biggest audiences ever."

NYT also said it expects digital-only subscription revenue to slow to between 12% and ​15% in the third quarter, the mid-point of which was below the estimate of 14.2%.

Looking ahead, Kopit Levien said she expects the advances made in its sports coverage to power success in the ‌NFL season and that video was a "long-term opportunity," even though it was playing a relatively minor role in the ad growth so ‌far.

The New York Times' flagship app features a TikTok-style vertical video feed in its Watch tab, ⁠complemented by a Shows section that ‌offers the company's longer-form, episodic ​video series for on-demand viewing.

Total advertising revenue rose by 11.3% to $149.1 million, beating an estimate of $146.4 million.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by ‌Pooja Desai)

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