The New York Times Company said on Wednesday that it added 250,000 digital-only subscribers in the last quarter, and that digital subscription revenue during the period jumped more than 14 percent.
Those results helped drive adjusted operating profit 21.9 percent higher from a year earlier, to $92.7 million in the quarter. Total revenue rose 7.1 percent, to $636 million.
The Times had 11.66 million total subscribers at the end of the first quarter, the company said, including 600,000 print subscribers. The company has a stated goal of 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027.
Meredith Kopit Levien, the president and chief executive of the Times Company, has worked to diversify the company’s revenue streams by offering multiple lifestyle products alongside its news coverage in a subscription bundle.
Nearly half of the company’s subscribers now subscribe to more than one of the products, which include the core news report, Cooking, Games, the product review website Wirecutter and the sports news outlet The Athletic. Average revenue per user, an increasingly important metric for The Times, rose to $9.54 in the quarter, up 3.6 percent, in part because of the rise in bundle subscribers.
“Our strategy is working, and our business is growing and demonstrating resilience amidst the current economic and geopolitical uncertainty,” Ms. Kopit Levien said in a statement.
Digital advertising revenue rose to $70.9 million for the first three months of the year, up 12.4 percent from $63 million in the same quarter the previous year, while total advertising revenue was up 4.2 percent to $108.1 million.
Revenue from affiliate referral and licensing, such as those from Wirecutter, increased 3.7 percent from the first three months of 2024.
Quarterly operating costs were $577.3 million, an increase of 5.8 percent from $545.7 million a year ago.
The Athletic, which The Times purchased for $550 million in 2022, continued to eke out a modest profit. Adjusted operating profit for the quarter was $2.9 million, up from a loss of $8.7 million in the same quarter in 2024, while its advertising revenue increased 82.5 percent in the quarter, to $10.4 million. The Athletic’s total revenue increased 27.9 percent in the first quarter, to $47.6 million.
