NYT posts 3Q net loss at $24.3 mn

The New York Times Co posted a third quarter net loss of $24.3 million, as against $2.7 million of income a year ago, as the company completed its sale of The Boston Globe and faced shrinking ad sales.

However, The New York Times' digital circulation has been increasing with more subscribers opting to pay for the online version. The number of digital subscribers – excluding home delivery customers who had online content access at no extra cost increased 29 per cent from a year ago to 727,000.

Unlike many other daily newspapers, NYT's circulation revenue exceeds its advertising revenue. The newspaper's circulation revenue was up 4.8 per cent during the quarter at $204.1 million, partly also due to the paper's decision to hike print circulation prices earlier this year, which helped its total quarterly revenue rise 1.8 per cent to $361.7 million.

Operating profit at the newspaper was up to $12.9 million from $8.9 million a year ago.

Pro-forma loss per share - excluding severance and a special item stood at a penny, beating analysts' projections of 4 cents per share loss.

Shares of the company were up 1.53 per cent to $13.96 in mid-day trading.

"The third quarter of 2013 was a strong one for the company," said CEO Mark Thompson in a statement. "We increased our revenue, decreased our costs and, as a result, significantly increased our operating profit compared with the same quarter last year."

Total advertising revenues fell 2 per cent in the quarter. Print advertising sales declined 1.6 per cent while digital advertising revenues were down 3.4 per cent.

With the deal it completed last week for The Boston Globe and related assets for $70 million, the company booked a $34-million loss, though its operating profit, which excludes many special items, rose to $39.9 million.

According to Thomson, the company also made significant progress in its strategic initiatives, but it still recognised despite these positive developments, that there was a great deal of work to do to transform its business model and to achieve its goal of long-term sustainable growth.

According to commentators, the company was in the process of shifting its focus from print to digital as it strove to adapt to a decline in readership and competition from other sources of news online.