Will The New York Times End Tough Year with Earnings Bump?

Posted Feb 9th 2010 4:00PM by Trey Thoelcke
Filed under: Earnings Reports, Forecasts, New York Times'A' (NYT)

New York Times Co. (NYT), which has said it plans to move to a metered model for its online presence, is scheduled to discuss its fourth-quarter and full-year 2009 financial results in a conference call Wednesday, Feb. 10, at 11:00 AM (ET). An live webcast of the call will be available at the company's website.

During the three months that ended in December, New York Times released an app for the BlackBerry and new features for NYTimes.com, as well as named a new HR chief. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters are looking for earnings for that period of $0.38 per share. That's up from $0.16 per share in the previous quarter and $0.30 per share a year ago. But revenue for the fourth quarter is expected to be 15.4% lower than a year ago to $653.2 million.

For the full year, analysts expect to see earnings of $0.20 per share (-73.7%) on $2.4 billion (-18.1%) in revenue. Earnings results have been better than expected in the past two quarters, beating the third-quarter consensus estimate by 17 cents per share.

Its earnings multiple is 17x, which is less than the sector average. Analysts will be looking for comments in the report on the outlook for advertising in the current quarter, as well as news on the impending paywall and rumors about New York Times' involvement in the New York version of the Wall Street Journal.

Shares have retreated in the past few weeks from a 52-week high of $14.87, but they are still about 36% higher than three months ago.

Tags: earnings, inthenews, New York Times, NYT, NYTimes.com