The New York Times’ Digital Subscriptions Jump 14% in First Quarter

The New York Times is off to a strong start to 2025, according to its first quarter earnings report released on Wednesday morning, with the paper adding 240,000 digital subscribers between Jan. and March — up 14% compared to the gains it made a year prior. The Times also increased sales more than 7% year-over-year, hitting $635.9 million in first quarter revenue.

That subscriber growth indicates readers have been turning to the paper in the early days of President Trump’s second term — although the paper did not mention the president, or coverage of tariffs, as subscription drivers during the first quarter.

“As our first quarter results show, we’ve had a strong start to the year. Our strategy is working and our business is growing and demonstrating resilience amidst the current economic and geopolitical uncertainty,” CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said in a statement.

She added: “We have a diverse portfolio of world-class news coverage and leading lifestyle products; multiple, complementary revenue lines across subscriptions, advertising, affiliate and licensing; and a model that generates significant free cash flow and a strong balance sheet. All of which makes us confident we are
continuing to build a larger, more profitable New York Times company.”

The Times spent $1 million on legal fees tied to its ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft; the paper has accused the ChatGPT parent company of using its reporting to train its models without consent.

Here are the key results:

Revenue: $635.9 million, up 7.1% year-over-year and slightly ahead of analyst estimates of $635.14 million from Zacks Investment Research.

Notably, sales for The Athletic, the digital sports outlet the Times bought in 2022 for $550 million, increased nearly 28% year-over-year to $47.60 million.

Total subscribers: 11.66 million — up 230,000 from the previous quarter and up roughly 1.1 million from the same time last year.

Most of those subscribers — 11.06 million — are digital-only. Digital subscriber growth of 240,000 helped offset a slight decline for print-only customers; those 240,000 new digital subscribers represented a 14% year-over-year increase from the 210,000 the paper added during the first quarter of 2024.

Net income: $49.55 million, up 22.60% from the same period a year prior.

Earnings Per Share: Adjusted EPS of $0.41 was better than the $0.35 analysts had estimated.

Heading into Wednesday, the Times’ stock price had increased 15% over the last month — helping offset a dip that happened in Feb. For the year, NYT’s share price was up 0.67% to $52.66 before its first quarter report was released.

In other recent news for the Times, the paper at the end of Apr. announced announced its popular “The Daily” podcast is adding two new co-hosts, Rachel Abrams and Natalie Kitroeff, alongside veteran host Michael Barbaro. “The Daily,” which launched in 2017, is currently the fifth ranked show on Spotify’s podcast chart in the U.S. The Times did not mention its podcast business in its first quarter report.

More to come…

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