Outsiders who want to know which parts of The Times are unprofitable have no more insight than those who have to guess which stores in a retail chain are losing money. The calculations cannot be done because the data released in earnings reports are too limited. After poring over non-GAAP figures, special items, severance, pension charges and losses from joint ventures, the “Net (loss)/income attributable to The New York Times Company common stockholders” was $14.2 million, contrasted to a net income of $1.7 million last year. That first-quarter profit was razor-thin against $390 million. Revenue for the most recent quarter was down 1.6% to $384 million. The results would have been worse except that operating expenses fell 4.2% to $350 million.
This earnings and revenue pattern has become common across most newspaper companies. Advertising revenue dropped 5.8% to $150 million, despite success with digital sales.
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Mark Thompson, who is the president and chief executive officer, said:
We also saw digital advertising revenue continue to expand at the double-digit pace that began in the second half of last year, ending up 11 percent in the first quarter, driven by growth across mobile, Paid Posts and video.
Paid digital circulation and new products spawned as part of the drive to increase the revenue stalled, as Thompson pointed out:
We increased our digital subscriber count by 47,000 in the first quarter, more than in any quarter over the past two years, bringing us to a total of 957,000 paid digital subscribers. The strong digital consumer growth in the first quarter was largely attributable to improved retention and higher traffic to the website, partially as a result of our recent audience development efforts.
The comment was only part of the story. Circulation revenue took a tiny step forward, less than 1% to $211 million.
Cost cuts, which have been part of the Times operations for a long time, will inevitably happen again. These could be across any number of departments, but digital staff will be sparred. The open issue is whether entire parts of the Times editorial product should be eliminated, either because the people at the company who crunch numbers find that these sections have low readership or attract little advertising, or they attract advertising for which advertisers will not pay much.
The Times has many sections that have nothing to do with its primary business of covering the news. If there are any sections that lose money, the decision about cuts should be easy. Dump some ballast to save the ship. Kill the sports section.
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