NEW YORK – The New York Times Company announced fourth quarter results and says it has surpassed 10 million paying subscribers for the company’s newspaper and other products with a new goal of 15 million subscribers.
In the fourth quarter, the Company posted 375,000 net new digital subscriptions, 171,000 of which came from News. The Company also reported that it achieved $2 billion in annual revenue for the first time since 2012.
Total revenues for the fourth quarter of 2021 increased 16.7 percent to $594.2 million from $509.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. Subscription revenues increased 11.2 percent to $351.2 million, advertising revenues increased 26.9 percent to $176.8 million and other revenues increased 22.1 percent to $66.3 million. Compared with the fourth quarter of 2019, total revenues increased 16.9 percent, as subscription revenues increased 27.6 percent, advertising revenues increased 3.2 percent and other revenues increased 7.3 percent.
Subscription revenues in the fourth quarter of 2021 rose primarily due to growth in the number of subscriptions to the Company’s digital-only products, which include our News product as well as the Games, Cooking, Audm and Wirecutter (to which a subscription option was launched during the third quarter of 2021) products (“other digital-only products”), and a benefit from subscriptions graduating to higher prices from introductory promotional pricing. Subscription revenue from digital-only products increased 23.1 percent, to $205.5 million. Print subscription revenues decreased 2.1 percent to $145.7 million, largely due to lower single-copy revenue, as well as lower domestic home delivery revenue, which declined 1.0 percent.
Meredith Kopit Levien, president and chief executive officer, The New York Times Company, said, “Our performance in 2021 demonstrated the power of our digital-first, subscription-first approach as we posted our second-best year ever for net subscription additions and strongest operating profit and adjusted operating profit in many years, which was a result of our consistent strategy and focus. Since we launched our current strategy in 2015, we’ve been investing steadily into a once-in-a-generation opportunity to pioneer the development of a large and growing news and information market at a time when habits are up for grabs. Our priority from here is to continue this momentum by further penetrating our growing total addressable market and leveraging both our unique platform and the deliberate investments we’ve made in our journalism, technology, and adjacent products to build a larger and more profitable New York Times Company. For the third time in six years, we are setting a new, more ambitious target as we pursue the next phase in our growth journey.
“Our latest audience research suggests there are now at least 135 million adults worldwide who are paying or willing to pay for one or more subscriptions to English-language news, sports coverage, puzzles, recipes, or expert shopping advice. This large and growing addressable market, combined with our unique platform,
gives us great confidence in our ability to continue to grow.”
Kopit Levien also announced with the acquisition of The Athletic, the Company surpassed 10 million subscriptions, well ahead of its stated goal of reaching that milestone by 2025. Separate and apart from The Athletic, the Company believes it would have reached this target well before 2025 on an organic
basis.
To further penetrate the market, the Company is focused on becoming the essential subscription for every English-speaking person seeking to understand and engage with the world. That entails continuing to provide the highest quality, expert journalism on the broadest range of subjects while also meeting major daily needs around people’s lives and passions. The Company plans to increasingly promote a high-value New York Times bundled digital subscription, and has set a new goal of at least 15 million total subscribers to The Times by year-end 2027, a number that would be larger if expressed in individual subscriptions. With this, the Company will begin reporting the number of unique subscribers in the first quarter, while continuing to also report on individual subscription growth.
