Tough Times: NY Times Stock Price Drops as Company Reports Declines in Advertising Revenue

People walk by the front of the New York Times building in New York on Sept. 6, 2018. (Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images)

The New York Times stocks fell by 7 percent to $29.61 in early trading on Wednesday after the company reported third-quarter declines in advertising.

According to a report by the NY Times, the media company reported that advertising revenue for print is down 9.7 percent compared to the third quarter of 2018 and down 17.2 percent for digital ads. Third-quarter digital advertising this year decreased 5.4 percent, while print advertising dropped 7.9 percent.

Despite the company’s stock and ad revenue taking a big hit, the company announced it had added 273,000 new online subscribers in the third quarter, bringing it to a total of 4 million digital-only subscribers.

It also has 4.9 million total subscriptions, 500,000 of which are outside of the United States, the report states.

The company said it expects digital advertising to remain “challenging” this quarter and added that changes made to limit tracking of its users’ data by advertisers is affecting its ad revenue at the moment, The Morning Call reports.

During a phone call with analysts on Nov. 6, NY Times president and CEO Mark Thompson said he hopes to quadruple the number of subscribers outside of the United States to a total of two million or more by 2025.

He also touted the company’s latest deal with tech giant Facebook and their new subscription news service, which he said was of “strategic significance.”

According to Facebook, the news service will give its users “more control over the stories they see and the ability to explore a wider range of their news interests, directly within the Facebook app.”

The tech giant said it had surveyed 100,000 people across the United States on which news topics they were most interested in and decided to feature four categories which include, general news, topical news, and diverse and local news.

Speaking of the new deal, Thompson said: “Facebook News should bring new users to The Times. But more important than the immediate financial benefit of the agreement is its strategic significance.

“Although we previously received small payments for participation in various experiments and innovations launched by the digital different digital platforms, this is the first time that a Silicon Valley major has recognized the value of Times journalism to its platform with a substantial multiyear fee.”

The deal comes amid Facebook’s admissions that its platform has problems with political bias, which earlier lead to the company firing human editors who were responsible for its “curated news.” The social media giant then tried to automate the curation process, but the news product was eventually shut down after the system began recycling false stories.

President Donald Trump, a critic of the NY Times’s coverage of his presidency, said on Oct. 21 that the White House would be canceling its subscription to the paper.

He told Sean Hannity on Fox News earlier: “The media’s corrupt. Not all media, look I know some great people, including you, but I know some great journalists.

“Look, they gave Pulitzer Prizes to people that got it wrong. Okay, all these people from The New York Times—which is a fake newspaper, we don’t even want it in the White House anymore, we’re gonna probably terminate that and The Washington Post,” he said.

“You take a look at the kind of reporting they do, it turned out to be all wrong.”

Correction: This article has been updated to say that President Trump said on Oct. 21 that the White House would be canceling its subscription to the NY Times. A previous version stated Nov. 21. The Epoch Times regrets the error.