(TheWrap/Christopher Smith/The New York Times Co.)
The New York Times added 230,000 digital-only subscribers in the second quarter of 2025 for a total of 11.3 million. Of that total, approximately 6.02 million were bundled and multi-product subscribers. When including print, the company has a total of 11.9 million subscribers.
Total subscription revenues grew 9.6% to $481.4 million, with digital-only climbing 15.1% to $350.4 million due to an increase in bundle and multiproduct revenues and an increase in other single-product subscription revenues, partially offset by a decrease in news-only subscription revenues. Digital-only average revenue per user grew 3.2% to $9.64, driven by subscribers transitioning from promotional to higher prices and price increases on certain tenured subscribers.
Print subscription revenues fell 2.8%to $131.1 million, primarily due to lower domestic home-delivery revenues.
NYT’s total ad revenue jumped 12.4% to $134 million, with digital up 18.7% to $94.4 million due to new advertising supply in areas of strong marketer demand and print down 0.1% to $39.6 million. Affiliate, licensing and other revenues rose 5.8% to $70.5 million, driven by higher licensing revenues and Wirecutter affiliate referral revenues.
Here are the quarterly results:
Net income: $82.9 billion, up 26.6% year over year, compared to $65.5 billion a year ago.
Earnings Per Share: Diluted earnings per share of 50 cents. Excluding certain items, adjusted EPS came in at 58 cents per share, compared to 51 cents per share expected by analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance.
Total Revenue: $685.9 million, up 9.7% year over year, compared to $669.7 million expected by analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance.
Out of the New York Times’ many products, The Athletic brand had an especially strong quarter. The sports-focused vertical increased its revenue by 33.4% year-over-year, hitting $54.0 million during the quarter. This was partially due to growth in the number of Athletic subscribers, which grew thanks to bundling subscriptions. Subscription revenues increased 18.1% to hit $34.6 million during the quarter. Advertising revenues also increased by an impressive 98.8% to hit $14.1 million due to due to higher revenues from display advertising.
Looking ahead to the third quarter of 2025, the company plans to combine its two segments — The New York Times Group and The Athletic — to be one reportable segment.
But as is the case with nearly every company’s earnings these days, one of the main topics of Wednesday’s call was AI. The second quarter of 2025 included $3.5 million of pre-tax litigation-related costs that were related to the New York Times’ copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft Corporation and Open AI Inc. The second quarter of 2024 also included a special item of $2.0 million related to generative AI litigation costs.
As for the company’s AI licensing deal with Amazon, that began at the end of May and was included in the company’s guidance for the second quarter of 2025.
“We don’t break out revenue by deal,” William Bardeen, executive vice president and chief financial 0fficer, said during the call. “We are showing an acceleration in the affiliate licensing other revenue line in Q3 to high single digits from what was 6% in Q2. That will be the first full quarter with that Amazon agreement, which is playing a role in that line. Just always remember with affiliate licensing and other revenue, it has a lot of moving parts that can create some lumpiness.”
“I would say the deal is consistent with our long-held principles about how we work with big tech companies and platforms. It provides fair value exchange in a way that feels sustainable, gives us control over how our work is used and it’s consistent with our long term strategy, which is about the Times being more essential to more people,” Meredith Kopit Levien, president and CEO, explained of the company’s decision to partner with Amazon. “The deal reinforces our principle that our journalism and everything we do is worth paying for, and our intellectual property should be valued as such.”
Levien also noted that she’s not worried about the increase of AI overviews in search engines, a growing trend that’s taken away traffic from publishers. “We have spent many years executing on the strategy of building coverage and products that are worthy of direct relationships and daily habits. Our success in that has made us resilient in a dynamic ecosystem. I’m confident that we’re going to continue to demonstrate that resilience,” she said.
Looking ahead, Levien noted that the New York Times is “open” to doing more deals with tech companies as long as those deals are consistent with the company’s goal to be more essential to people, represent a fair value exchange and give the company control over how its content is used. The executive continued by saying the NYT is “very, very open” to deals with big tech companies and “pleased” with its current Amazon deal.
The CEO also noted that the organization’s goal to hit 15 million subscribers by 2027 “remains very much our aim.” Levien plans to achieve this by making the new organization’s products and coverage more accessible and valuable to people, such as it’s currently doing by scaling up its video offerings. She also noted that the audience of people who come to the New York Times website on a weekly basis is “much larger” than its current subscriber base.
“We have a lot of opportunity to call them back to us, call them to action and ultimately convert them,” Levien said.
