The New York Times Company added 350,000 digital-only subscribers in the last quarter, the company said Wednesday, pushing the total subscriber count to more than 11.4 million.
The new subscribers helped increase overall revenue to $726.6 million in the last three months of 2024, up 7.5 percent from a year earlier. Annual revenue for 2024 was $2.6 billion, up from $2.4 billion in 2023.
Adjusted operating profit for the fourth quarter increased 10.7 percent, to $170.5 million. Adjusted operating profit for the full year was $455.4 million, up 16.8 percent from 2023.
Meredith Kopit Levien, the chief executive of The New York Times Company, said in a statement that the quarter “capped another strong year for The Times.”
“Altogether, this momentum gives us confidence that we can deliver another year of healthy growth in subscribers, revenue and profitability, as well as strong free cash flow,” she added.
The Times added more than 1.1 million net digital-only subscribers in 2024, it said, and continued to increase the number who were subscribed to more than one Times product. The company offers the news report, recipes, games, the Wirecutter product review site and The Athletic, a sports news site.
Subscription revenue grew 8.4 percent to $466.6 million in the fourth quarter, driven by an increase from digital-only products.
Total advertising revenue in the quarter was largely flat at $165.1 million, with digital advertising revenue up 9.5 percent year over year and print advertising revenue down 16.4 percent.
Although the number of digital subscribers continues to increase, the number of print subscribers to The Times is declining fast. It fell to 610,000 at the end of last year, down from 660,000 at the end of 2023 and 730,000 at the end of 2022.
Operating costs grew 6 percent to $580 million for the quarter. The Times said it had spent $10.8 million in 2024 on litigation costs relating to a copyright infringement lawsuit it filed in December 2023 against OpenAI and Microsoft.
The company had $911.9 million in cash and marketable securities at the end of 2024, it said, up from $709.2 million at the end of 2023.
The Times said on Wednesday that its board had approved a new $350 million class A share repurchase program. It also announced a quarterly dividend of 18 cents a share, up 5 cents from the previous quarter.
The company said it expected digital-only subscription revenue in the current quarter to increase up to 17 percent from a year ago, with digital advertising revenue rising in the high single digits.
Shares of The Times were down more than 11 percent on Wednesday afternoon.
