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18 days ago
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Can you check the SEC filins - including latest quarters. Are all metrics growing healthy, anything alarming?

18 days ago
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I'll dig into NYT's latest SEC filings to assess the health of their operating metrics. Let me start by getting a summary of the recent filings.Now let me check the SEC filings for subscriber metrics, which are the real drivers of NYT's business.Now let me display the summary tables to present the analysis clearly.Here's what the deep dive reveals about NYT:


Overall verdict: Broadly healthy, with several distinct strengths and a couple of items worth watching. No red flags.

Strengths & Healthy Growth Metrics

1. Revenue growth has accelerated. Revenue grew 9.2% in '25 ($2.82B), up from 6.6% in '24 and 5.1% in '23. This is a meaningful reacceleration driven by the digital subscription engine.

2. Digital subscribers continue strong. Total subscribers hit 12.78M at end of '25 (up from 11.43M a year earlier, +11.8%). Digital-only subs jumped from 10.82M to 12.21M. The bundle strategy is working — bundle/multiproduct subs grew from 5.44M to 6.48M. The target of 15M by year-end 2027 looks credible.

3. Margin expansion is real and consistent. Gross margins crossed 50% in '25 (50.8%, up from 49.4% in '24). Operating margin reached 16.0% vs 13.6% the prior year. EBITDA margin hit 19.4%. Every margin line has expanded every year for three straight years.

4. Cash flow is exceptional. FCF reached $550M in '25 (19.5% FCF margin), up from $381M (14.7%) in '24. Operating cash flow of $584M was 1.7x net income — high-quality earnings.

5. Digital ARPU is rising. Total digital ARPU hit $9.68 in '25, up 2.7% YoY. Bundle ARPU is at $12.67, up from $12.18. Price increases are sticking even as the mix shifts toward bundles (which carry lower ARPU per user individually but higher total revenue).

6. Advertising rebounded sharply. Digital ad revenue surged 20% to $411M in '25, with display impressions up 19% and rates up 6%. Total advertising grew 11.8% to $566M — a meaningful reversal from flat growth in '24.

7. Balance sheet is pristine. Debt-to-equity is just 0.47x, down steadily from 0.78x in 2019. Long-term debt is minimal. The company is effectively unlevered.

Items Worth Watching

1. Q1 '26 seasonal margin dip. Q1 '26 (most recent quarter, through March) shows gross margin of 46.2% and op margin of 13.5% — the lowest in the eight-quarter series. This is partly seasonal (Q1 is always the weakest quarter for NYT), but it bears watching to see if the Q2 '26 rebound (expected in August reporting) matches the prior year's recovery.

2. News-only subs still melting away. News-only digital subscribers fell to 1.47M from 1.93M a year earlier — a 24% decline. This is by design (they're migrating to bundles), but the news-only base is shrinking faster than ARPU increases can offset. News-only ARPU is now $12.57, and the remaining base is increasingly the most loyal/high-paying cohort.

3. Print remains a slow bleed. Print subscription revenue fell 3.2% to $516M and print advertising fell 5.4% to $155M. These are manageable declines given digital growth, but print still constitutes ~24% of total revenue, so the drag is real.

4. The Athletic contribution is opaque now. In Q3 '25, NYT consolidated from two segments (NYTG and The Athletic) to one reporting unit. This makes it harder to track whether The Athletic is approaching breakeven/profitability or still a cost center.

5. Q4 seasonality masks underlying run-rate. NYT gets a disproportionate boost in Q4 (holiday advertising, year-end subscription pushes). Q4 '25 revenue of $802M was ~14% above the Q2-Q3 average. Annualizing off Q4 alone would be misleading.

Bottom Line

NYT's transformation from print to digital is in its late innings and executing well. Subscriber growth, ARPU expansion, margin improvement, and cash generation are all trending in the right direction. The 15M subscriber target by end of 2027 looks achievable at the current pace. The main risks are secular (print decay, potential ad market softness, AI platform disruption to traffic) rather than company-specific. The Q1 '26 margin dip is worth monitoring but is consistent with historical seasonality.

18 days ago