New York Times Company (The)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience, and now we'll start with the presentation.

Thank you, and welcome to the New York Times Company's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. On the call today, we have Meredith Kopit Levien, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Will Bardeen, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that we'll be making forward-looking statements including about our business strategy and performance based on our current expectations. Our actual results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties described in the company's 10-K and subsequent SEC filings. We'll also be referencing non-GAAP financial measures for which there are reconciliations to GAAP measures in our earnings release at investors.nytco.com. And with that, I will turn the call over to Meredith.

Thanks Anthony, and good morning everyone. Q2 was a great quarter for the Times. Our world-class journalism and premium lifestyle content continued to draw large audiences and power strong results for the company. This was a quarter where we made substantial progress against all of our priorities for the year. First, we continued to cover the world's most important stories, From politics to pop culture, from wildfires to wellness. Journalists around the globe reported on the ongoing conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, escalating drone warfare between Ukraine and Russia, and the rapid advances in powerful AI models. We comprehensively covered the primaries in the U.S., a historic heat wave in Europe, and an epic few weeks in New York that saw the Knicks win their first championship in over 50 years and Taylor Swift tie the knot with Travis Kelsey. Second, we presented our journalism and lifestyle products in all the ways people want to engage with them, including video. We're now producing thousands of new videos each quarter to reach the enormous audience for video in all the places people watch. including our own destinations. Just this week we launched a shows tab in our flagship app creating a new way to experience our long-form franchises in news, opinion, culture, and lifestyle. The shows tab complements our existing watch tab and the expanding volume of short-form video across the report. This is all part of our strategy to engage the people we already have more and engage more people. As we do that, we intend to make the Times as preferred a brand for watching the news as it is for reading and listening. Third, we continue to add value in every part of our portfolio. We began to make a series of upgrades to our flagship news app where we see strong subscriber engagement with the aim of making the app a more compelling experience for prospective subscribers. We also launched new listening and commenting features in our flagship news app, made cooking a better companion for home cooks with the new cook mode, launched new features to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Wordle, and its consistently strong audience and continue to add features to cross-play with its growing community of engaged players. The athletics approach to the World Cup represents how these three priorities come together to drive increasing value for audiences. The world's attention was on the games and we delivered journalism and experiences like no one else could. Over 70 soccer experts from a 550-person sports newsroom covered the most interesting athletes, moments, and stories from the tournament across 16 cities. We introduced new formats, including a daily long-form World Cup show on Amazon and daily short-form recaps on social and in our app. and we provided live updates and insights for all 104 games and popular interactive brackets that helped fans predict what would happen next. All of this led to The Athletic's biggest audiences ever and we expect these advances to power success in the NFL season and beyond. Now let me highlight a few results from the quarter. Digital subscription revenues grew 16% as we continued to become even more essential to even more people. We added 280,000 net new digital subscribers, bringing our total subscriber base to 13.4 million and keeping us on track to our next milestone of 15 million and beyond. In advertising, both digital and total advertising growth once again exceeded our expectations, with digital advertising up 21%. This was the result of a clear strategy, capable execution, strong marketer demand, and high engagement. Affiliate, licensing, and other revenues also grew in the quarter. We continued to manage costs Even as we invest into generational opportunities, making long-term bets, video among them, is how we expect to maintain and extend our strong market position and continue building a larger, more profitable company for the long term. I'll close by noting that we delivered our Q2 results against the backdrop of a rapidly changing information ecosystem. Thank you for joining us today. Our products are in giant spaces which deeply engage passionate audiences every day. In current events, sports, cooking, games, and shopping, we offer the highest quality, most trustworthy experiences that leave people nourished, not depleted. Second, we're one of an increasingly small number of news organizations that are committed to doing original, independent reporting and high-quality content at scale. While most publishers and broadcasters are doing less of this kind of work, the Times continues to invest. This makes our news coverage and lifestyle products increasingly rare and valuable in an information environment awash in low-quality takes and disinformation. Third, we have a long track record of using technology to report, Thank you for joining us today. taken together mean we're well positioned to continue making the New York Times essential for every person seeking to understand and engage with the world and to continue to create more value for users, shareholders, and society. And with that, I'll turn it over to Will.