The New York Times announced its earnings for the second quarter of 2017 on Thursday morning and the paper continues to show significant digital growth, bringing in $407 million in revenue for the quarter, beating Wall Street expectations.
The paper reported second-quarter net income of $15.6 million. On a per-share basis, the paper had profit of 9 cents. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, came to 18 cents per share. For the first time ever, digital-only subscription revenue of $83 million exceeded print advertising revenue of $77 million, the company announced.
President Trump called the paper “failing” in a Thursday morning tweet but the company added 93,000 digital-only news subscriptions, a 69 percent increase in the number of subscription additions compared with the same quarter last year; total advertising revenue grew for the first time since Q3 2014.
Digital advertising revenue in the second quarter rose 23 percent, to $55 million, the company announced. The figure represents roughly 42 percent of total ad revenue, compared with 34 percent in the same quarter last year.
“We had another strong quarter in which we grew revenue and profitability and made significant changes within the organization to ensure that the acceleration of our digital business continues in the long term,” President and CEO Mark Thompson said in a statement.
Thompson continued: “During the quarter, we surpassed two million digital-only news subscriptions, doubling our digital subscriber base over a two-year period.”
The current Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter was 13 cents compared with 11 cents reported in the year-ago period, according to Yahoo! Finance. Analysts polled by Zacks expected revenues of $394.4 million.