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Text: On the call today, we have Meredith Kopit Levien, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Roland Caputo, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
These statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions, which may change over time.
Our actual results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties that are described in the company's 2020 10-K and subsequent SEC filings.
Given the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on our business in 2020, we will also present certain comparisons of our operating results in 2021 to 2019, which we believe in many cases provides useful context for our current year results.
The Times had a strong third quarter, with the power of our subscription-first strategy on full display.
It was our best third-quarter in both News and total net subscription additions since the launch of the digital pay model more than a decade ago.
And, outside of 2020, it was our best quarter ever for digital subscription additions.
We hit an important milestone during the quarter.
The Times now has more than 1 million international digital subscriptions.
We've said for some time that we see a huge opportunity to reach curious, English-speaking people not just in the US, but around the globe, and we continued to prove that out in Q3.
We added a total of 455,000 net new digital subscriptions in the quarter, including 320,000 for News and 135,000 for Games, Cooking and Wirecutter.
This progress reflects the enduring demand for quality, independent journalism, and our long-term potential to mean more to more people across a range of news and life needs.
Total revenues grew 19% in the quarter, with digital subscription revenue rising 28% and advertising up 40% for both print and digital.
As a result, adjusted operating profit grew 15%, despite a 20% increase in adjusted operating costs.
The quarter was a busy one in news.
While COVID remained the dominant story, as it has for the last 20 months, a wide range of topics also captured the public's attention, including the Afghanistan withdrawal and the tragic events in Haiti, the resignation of New York's governor, and our ongoing climate reporting.
These are the kinds of stories that our 2,000-person journalism operation is uniquely positioned to cover with depth and thoughtfulness.
The news cycle no doubt played a role in the quarter's performance, but so too did our improved command over the levers of our model.
I've talked in the past about our efforts to build enduring daily habits whatever the news cycle.
Those efforts are now bearing fruit.
That, plus improved marketing messaging, makes it a steady source of new subscriptions.
We improved conversion in the quarter with a variety of planned experiments across the customer journey.
We're using data and machine learning in increasingly sophisticated ways to identify the right moment to ask a reader to become a subscriber; tests involving our algorithmic meter and paywall have been particularly promising.
We also continue to experiment more broadly with friction and value exchange to find the right balance between converting readers into paying subscribers and growing the pool of prospects at the top of the funnel.
Some of those experiments entailed more aggressive limiting of access to our journalism for non-subscribers, which had a meaningful, positive impact on starts in the quarter.
We've loosened those restrictions somewhat in the current quarter as we fine-tune and balance the model.
We're also working to improve and differentiate the subscriber experience to showcase the benefits of subscribing to prospects and also to drive retention.
To that end, we introduced a portfolio of subscriber-only newsletters in the quarter, leveraging some of our existing newsletters with strong followings, like Paul Krugman, Watching and Well.
We also launched several new newsletters, including Professor John McWhorter on race and language and Tressie McMillian Cottom on culture, politics and the economics of our everyday lives.
As a result of strong demand for news and strength in conversion in the quarter, we were able to profitably increase media spending.
That, too, contributed to our record quarter for net additions, and we did so while our mix of paid and organic starts remained heavily weighted to organic.
We continued to pay close attention to churn, which will require increased focus and energy as our subscription base grows.
As I've said in prior calls, we generally view our churn rate, which has vacillated within a relatively narrow band over the last few years, as a strength.
That continued in the third quarter, with a slight improvement.
We expect pressure on churn in the fourth quarter as promotional pricing ends for the cohort that started last year around the presidential election and as credit card regulations tighten in some markets.
We continue to believe that our focus on driving repeat engagement and on enhancing the subscriber experience will reduce reasons to cancel over time.
One of the ways we intend to boost engagement and showcase the benefits of subscribing is by getting more people to experience the full value of The Times, including our current stand-alone products -- Cooking, Games, and Wirecutter.
The success of these stand-alone products alongside the growth of our core news product begins to demonstrate the potential of our multi-product bundle.
As we experiment more with cross-promotion, we are seeing more News readers also engaging deeply with Cooking and Games.
Over time, we expect that a bundle, offering all of our products, can play a big role in driving conversion and in giving subscribers more reasons to engage and retain.
But in the meantime, Cooking and Games continue to show promise as compelling propositions for subscribers in their own right, with each product nearing a million total subscriptions.
Net subscription additions to Games were 35% higher in Q3 than the prior quarter, and more than 20% higher than last year.
Cooking net additions more than doubled quarter-over-quarter and were on par with last year's elevated Q3, with a first-time price promotion and access model experiments driving the results.
We also launched paid subscriptions to Wirecutter in the quarter.
While a relatively small contributor to overall subscription additions, it's off to a promising start, especially among existing Times subscribers, with 10,000 net subscriptions in the first month.
It's been a fertile period for product development at The Times, both within and beyond our existing products.
Last month, we announced that we'll test a new digital experience we're calling New York Times Audio.
It's a single destination for listeners to enjoy the full range of our audio storytelling, which today reaches 20 million listeners a month.
We also officially launched a beta for a digital kids how-to product, inspired by our popular monthly print kids section.
Costs were higher in the third quarter, largely driven by higher paid media expenses, as well as the strategic investments we're making in journalism, product development and technology to allow our digital subscription business to scale efficiently.
As I've said in the past, you can expect us to continue to invest into our long-term opportunity to lay the foundation for a larger, more profitable business over time.
Turning to advertising, we had another strong quarter of revenue growth.
While year-on-year growth slowed in the third quarter compared with the second, as expected, digital advertising revenues grew 22% compared with 2019, the same rate of growth as we reported in the second quarter.
Our third quarter results continue to reflect the benefits of the overall market recovery, as well as marketer interest in our proprietary products, including the first-party data that stems from our subscription business and our growing offering of captivating podcasts.
I'll close by reiterating that our business success is tied inextricably to our mission of helping people understand the world.
Key to that is hiring the best journalistic talent available.
Several exceptional journalists joined us in recent months, including Lulu Garcia-Navarro from NPR; Peter Coy from Bloomberg BusinessWeek; and Paul Volpe, who returned to The Times from Politico, where he was executive editor.
These Afghan colleagues -- and so many others fleeing the country -- went through a harrowing experience, and it has been nothing short of awe-inspiring to watch this institution come together to help.
I'm incredibly grateful to the many colleagues who supported their journey to safety and continue to do so as they resettle.
And with that, over to you, Roland.
Fundamental strength in the underlying business exemplified by strong digital subscription unit growth and healthy growth in both subscription and advertising revenues, resulted in strong financial performance in the third quarter.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.23 in the quarter, $0.01 higher than the prior year.
We reported adjusted operating profit of $65 million, higher than the same period in 2020 by $9 million and $21 million dollars higher than 2019, which we continue to believe is an important comparison point given the impact that the pandemic had on our 2020 results.
As Meredith noted, we added 320,000 net new subscriptions to our core digital news product and 135,000 net new stand-alone subscriptions to our other digital products, for a total of 455,000 net new digital-only subscriptions.
As of the end of the quarter, we had approximately 980,000 Games subscriptions, approximately 900,000 Cooking subscriptions and 10,000 Wirecutter subscriptions, the Wirecutter subscription offering having launched at the beginning of September.
The international share of total news subscriptions remained at 18% as of the end of the quarter.
Total subscription revenues increased nearly 14% in the quarter with digital-only subscription revenue growing nearly 28% to approximately $200 million.
Digital-only subscription revenue grew as a result of the large number of new subscriptions we have added in the past year, continued strength in retention of the $1 dollar-per-week promotional subscriptions who have graduated to higher prices, and to a much lesser extent, the impact from our digital subscription price increase.
Digital news subscription ARPU for the quarter increased approximately 5 percentage points compared to the prior year and nearly 1 percentage point compared to the prior quarter.
This improvement in both the year-over-year and sequential result was primarily due to subscriptions graduating from their introductory price to either full price or an intermediate step-up price in the quarter, as well as the continued benefit from price increases on our more tenured, full-price subscriptions.
ARPU related solely to domestic news subscriptions increased 6.5 percentage points versus the prior year and approximately 1.5 percentage points versus the prior quarter.
We continue to expect the impact from subscriptions graduating from discounted promotions and the price increase on tenured digital subscriptions to provide a tailwind to digital news ARPU through the balance of this year.
Print subscription revenues declined 1% as overall volume declines more than offset the benefit from the first quarter home delivery price increase.
Total daily circulation declined approximately 7% in the quarter compared with prior year, while Sunday circulation declined approximately 5%.
Compared with 2019, print subscription revenues declined 5%, as single-copy and international bulk sale copies declined, while revenue from domestic home-delivery subscriptions grew 1.7%.
Total advertising revenues increased 40% in the quarter, as both digital and print advertising grew approximately 40%, in large part as a result of the impact of the comparison to weak advertising revenues in the third quarter of 2020.
Digital advertising continued to be buoyed by our proprietary first-party targeted ad products and expanded audio product portfolio.
Compared with 2019, digital advertising grew more than 22% as a result of higher direct sold advertising, including traditional display and audio.
Meanwhile, print advertising increased 39% compared with 2020, primarily driven by growth in the luxury and entertainment categories.
However, print advertising remained below 2019 levels by 25%.
Other revenues increased 19% compared with the prior year to approximately $56 million, primarily as a result of higher licensing, commercial printing associated with the addition of the Dow Jones family of products to our operations, and Wirecutter affiliate referral revenue.
Adjusted operating costs were higher in the quarter by approximately 20% as compared with 2020 and approximately 16% higher than 2019.
Cost growth came in at the top end of the guidance we issued in early August largely due to the profitable deployment of additional marketing media above initial estimates.
Cost of revenue increased 9% as a result of growth in the number of newsroom, Games, Cooking and audio employees; higher subscriber servicing costs; a higher incentive compensation accrual and other costs in connection with the production of audio content.
Sales and marketing costs increased more than 65%, driven primarily by higher media expenses, which had been reduced last year in light of the historically strong organic subscription demand.
When compared to 2019, sales and marketing costs increased more than 30% while media expenses were approximately 54% higher.
We expect media expenses to remain elevated in the fourth quarter.
Product development costs increased by approximately 18%, largely due to growth in the number of engineers and a higher incentive compensation accrual than had been recorded in the third quarter of 2020.
General and administrative costs increased by 26%, largely due to a higher incentive compensation accrual and increased headcount in support of employee growth in other areas, stock price appreciation on stock-based awards, and higher consulting costs.
We recorded one special item in the quarter, a $27 million gain related to a non-marketable equity investment transaction, which is reflected on the interest income and other line of our income statement.
Our effective tax rate for the third quarter was approximately 27%, which is in line with the rate we expect on every dollar of marginal income we report with the possibility of significant variability around the quarterly effective rate.
Moving to the balance sheet, our cash and marketable securities balance ended the quarter at $1.043 billion, an increase of $96 million compared with the second quarter of 2021.
The company remains debt free with a $250 million revolving line of credit available.
Let me conclude with our outlook for the fourth quarter of 2021.
Total subscription revenues are expected to increase approximately 12% compared with the fourth quarter of 2020, with digital-only subscription revenue expected to increase approximately 25%.
Overall, advertising and digital advertising revenues are expected to increase in the mid-teens compared with the fourth quarter of 2020.
The expectation that the rate of digital advertising growth will slow compared with our third quarter is partially a result of more difficult comparisons in the fourth quarter.
Other revenues are expected to increase approximately 15%.
Both operating costs and adjusted operating costs are expected to increase approximately 17% to 20% compared with the fourth quarter of 2020 as we continue investment into the drivers of digital subscription growth and compare against another quarter of low spending last year.

user
quarterly adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations $0.23.
paid digital-only subscriptions totaled about 7,588,000 at quarter end, net increase of 455,000 subscriptions compared with end of q2 2021.
new york times sees q4 subscription revenue up 12%.
total subscription revenue in q4 2021 are expected to increase about 12 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2020.
total advertising & digital advertising revenue in q4 of 2021 expected to increase in the mid-teens compared with q4 of 2020.

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