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Thursday, October 19, 2006

As New York Times Digital Sets Records, The Parent Falters

Stocks: (NYT)(TSCM)(CNET)(YHOO)

As The New York Times Company reported poor earnings, its online properties set audience records. According to Comscore, New York Times Digitial had an aggregate 40.5 million unique users in September, up 20% from a year ago. It also ranked 9th among all sites measured for US audience size.In the meantime, the company's parent is bleeding to death.

JP Morgan has just cut the newspaper company's stock from "neutral" to "underweight".

NYT quarterly revenue fell 2% to $740 million. EPS fell to $.10 compared to $.16 in the third quarter of 2005. With an audience of over 40 million unique users, where is the contribution from the digital side of the NYT house? During the first nine months of the year, the company said online operations brought in $190 million.

CNET, which has a smaller audience, had revenue of $353 million last year. The Street.com, with a much smaller audience, did $34 million.

This year, the NYT will probably have revenue of slightly over $3 billion. While no one would expects the company to have online revenue like Yahoo!'s at $5.3 billion, with about a third of the unique visitors of Yahoo! it would not be too much to ask for the digital properities to kick in $500 million.

And, they won't.
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