New York Times Co. shares
NYT,
-0.58%
jumped 1.7% in premarket trade Wednesday, after the newspaper group beat earnings estimates for the second quarter, as subscription and ad revenues gained. The company posted net income of $54.3 million, or 32 cents a share, for the quarter, up from $23.7 million, or 14 cents a share, in the year-earlier period. Adjusted per-share earnings came to 36 cents, ahead of the 27 cents FactSet consensus. Revenue rose 23.6% to $498.5 million from $403.8 million a year ago, also ahead of the $488.0 million FactSet consensus. Subscription revenues rose 15.7% to $339.2 million, ad revenues rose 66.4% to $112.8 million and other revenue rose 8.7% to $46.5 million. Compared with the second quarter of 2019 before the pandemic, revenue were up 14.3%. Subscription revenues "rose primarily due to growth in the number of subscriptions to the Company's digital-only products, which include our news product and our Games,
Cooking and Audm products, as well as a benefit from subscriptions graduating to higher prices from introductory promotional pricing," the company said in a statement. The company added 142,000 net digital subs with 77,000 in news and 65,000 in cooking and games, said CEO Meredith Kopit Levien. "We now have more than 8 million paid subscriptions across our digital and print products - a testament to the success of our strategy, the strength of the market for paid digital
journalism, and our unique opportunity to meet that demand," she said. For the third quarter, the company is expecting sub revenues to climb 13% to 15%, and for ad revenues to rise about 30% to 35%. Shares have fallen 16.5% in the year to date, while the S&P 500
SPX,
+0.82%
has gained 17.8%.