New York Times Company (The)

Good morning and welcome to the New York Times Company's third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Anthony DiClemente, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and welcome to the New York Times Company's third 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 filing. will 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. Q3 was another strong quarter for the Times in which we demonstrated the essential nature of our journalism and lifestyle products to people everywhere. Our work continued to engage large audiences and drive value creation. And we made progress on all of our priorities for the year. Let me take you through them. First, we continued to cover the most important stories around the globe, independently and with rigor. Our journalists reported in myriad ways on geopolitical conflicts across multiple continents, consequential elections at home and abroad, reverberations in the economy and the growing impact of AI on society. We also had exclusive verified footage of the glacier collapse that triggered tragic floods in Nepal. And we demonstrated the unique convening power of the times and culture with our ranking of the hundred best TV shows of the 21st century selected by influential artists and creative leaders. Second, we presented our coverage in all the ways people want to engage with it and made more progress expanding video. Our long-form shows, including The Interview, The Ezra Klein Show, and Popcast are increasingly important venues for newsmakers who know they'll be watched by big, influential audiences. We continue to grow our stable of short-form video series with new dispatches from the hosts of The Daily and fashion critic Vanessa Friedman. And for those of you who are longtime followers of Dealbook, we'll celebrate 25 years of the franchise later this month with a blockbuster interview lineup that includes J.D. Vance, Zoran Mamdani, Christine Lagarde, Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Hailey Bieber. Third, we continue to add value in every part of our portfolio. We created a dedicated space for the midterm elections within our flagship app showing the battle for Congress through data visualization, polling, spending analysis, and more. Our games team gave subscribers even more reasons to engage with a weekly drop of subscriber-only puzzles. We launched a new AI-powered tool in cooking that helps home cooks adapt our human-crafted recipes. Wirecutter anointed its first Hall of Fame, featuring product picks that have stood the test of time, and The Athletic welcomed the return of the NFL with the second season of its weekly show on Amazon and increased video and live activities in the app. Now let me highlight our results from the quarter. Digital subscription revenues grew 14.6%, as we continue to become even more essential to even more people. We added 420,000 net new digital subscribers bringing our total subscriber base to 13.8 million and keeping us on track to our next milestone of 15 million and beyond. Digital advertising again delivered double digit growth at 12% and total advertising grew as well. We were pleased with these results and are confident in the long-term trajectory of our ad business, which is buoyed by a clear strategy, strong marketer demand for our products, and high engagement. Affiliate licensing and other revenues also grew in the quarter. We continued to exercise cost discipline while making targeted investments into our biggest strategic opportunities in the quarter. including video. Our ability to lean into advantages, namely our world-class journalism and leading lifestyle products is what will allow us to extend our strong market position and keep building a larger and more profitable company. I'll close by once again noting that we delivered our Q3 results against the backdrop of a rapidly changing information ecosystem The Times isn't immune to that impact, but our essential subscription strategy, which is about human made journalism and product experiences that people seek out directly and make room for in their lives, provides powerful advantages that we believe will only deepen with time. Our world-class news coverage and lifestyle products exist in giant spaces. Within those spaces, we have unmatched engines for producing independent journalism and original content that is increasingly rare and valuable. We have a track record of harnessing technology to do that across all the forms and formats that make people pay attention, engage deeply, and share widely. and we have multiple complimentary revenue streams that give us diverse ways to monetize consistently high audience engagement. Taken together, these advantages 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 create more value for users, for shareholders and for society. And with that, I'll turn it over to Wills.