New York Times Company Q2 AOP Beat, Though Shares Decline on Digital Subscription Guide

Research evidence excerpt

J P M O R G A N

North America Equity Research

05 August 2026

New York Times Company

Q2 AOP Beat, Though Shares Decline on Digital

Subscription Guide

Overweight

NYT, NYT US

Price (04 Aug 26):$75.61

▼Price Target (Dec-27):$76.00

Prior (Dec-26):$82.00

NYT reported Q2 results, with AOP of $155m slightly ahead of JPMe/consensus

at $153m/$152m, driven by better-than-expected revenue across segments, with a

partial offset from higher costs related to the advertising outperformance.

Guidance points for Q3 indicate an AOP of ~$149m, which was slightly below

consensus into the print. Shares declined 13% (SPX -0.2%), and we think investors

mainly locked into the digital subscription outlook at +12-15%, a slower pace

relative to recent quarters; it’s possible as well digital advertising expectations

were even higher than the beat delivered today. On the digital subscription guide,

management noted the impact from the mini-crossword paywall cohort coming off

promotion (330k Other net adds in Q3’25) as impacting the growth mix in Q3’26,

though generally expressed confidence in the underlying drivers of the operating

model. Fluctuation in digital subscription growth is not unusual, but we think there

are factors compounding concerns, namely press reports of publishers worried

about losing traffic to AI overlays or RDDT’s recent share decline following its Q2

earnings. NYT seemingly alluded to this in prepared remarks on the earnings call,

though to be clear, very similar comments were made on prior calls going back to

at least Q1’25. In the Times’ defense, we note that traffic headwinds – initially from

social media de-emphasizing news and more recently from AI – are not new, and

the company’s strategy is largely built around navigating these items. We’re not

dismissive of the threats and they bear watching - SimilarWeb website visitation

data shows a worsening y/y trend in 2Q (vs. 1Q) for a broad swath of publishers

- though we think NYT can continue to outperform. We update our model, moving

F26 revenue/AOP to $3.11b/$641m (prior $3.10b/$647m). We remain Overweight

and establish a Dec-27 PT of $76.

Net digital sub adds were+280k. Total net digital adds of +280k q/q (+310k

…