The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) reported Q4 EPS of $0.41, $0.12 better than the analyst estimate of $0.29. Revenue for the quarter came in at $508.4 million versus the consensus estimate of $503.72 million.

Mark Thompson, president and chief executive officer, The New York Times Company, said, “2019 was a record setting year for The New York Times’s digital subscription business, the best since the Company launched digital subscriptions almost nine years ago. That success is a testament to the extraordinary work of Times journalists around the world and also to the radically different way that we’re running digital operations at the company, with cross-disciplinary teams who enjoy significant autonomy and access to the machine learning, engineering and testing capabilities they need to move our business forward.

“As a result, we’re seeing an acceleration in our digital growth. As we said a few weeks ago, in 2019, we added more than one million net new total digital-only subscriptions and as of year end, have 5,251,000 total subscriptions across our print and digital products. In Q4, we added a total of 342,000 net new digital-only subscriptions, of which 232,000 were to our core news product, the balance to Cooking and Crosswords, with Cooking in particular having a spectacular end to a strong year with 68,000 new subscriptions in the quarter. The 232,000 net new subscriptions to our core digital-only news product were 35 percent more than in Q4 2018, and 134 percent more than in Q4 2017.

“This week we begin to roll-out a price rise to a subset of our tenured digital-only news subscription base, which is the first price rise since the launch of the pay model in 2011. Since then, we’ve not only seen nine years of rising prices, but also unprecedented investment by The Times in its journalism and digital offerings and we believe that our loyal subscribers know that their financial contribution plays an essential role in maintaining the quality, breadth and depth of the report they value so much.”

Outlook
Total subscription revenues in the first quarter of 2020 are expected to increase in the mid-single digits compared with the first quarter of 2019, with digital-only subscription revenue expected to increase in the high-teens.

Total advertising revenues in the first quarter of 2020 are expected to decline approximately 10 percent compared with the first quarter of 2019, with digital advertising revenue expected to decrease in the mid-single digits.

Other revenues in the first quarter of 2020 are expected to increase approximately 15 percent compared with the first quarter of 2019.

Operating costs and adjusted operating costs in the first quarter of 2020 are expected to increase approximately 5 percent to 7 percent compared with the first quarter of 2019 as a result of continued investment in the drivers of digital subscription growth.

The Company expects the following on a pre-tax basis in 2020:

• Depreciation and amortization: approximately $60 million,
• Interest income and other, net: $10 million to $15 million, and
• Capital expenditures: approximately $50 million to $60 million.

For earnings history and earnings-related data on The New York Times Co. (NYT) click here.