Feb 4 (Reuters) – The New York Times forecast first-quarter subscription revenue above Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, expecting its bundling strategy for news and lifestyle products to draw in more paying users.
The newspaper expects subscription revenue growth to be between 9% and 11%, compared with analysts’ average estimate of 9.2%, according to data compiled by Visible Alpha.
Shares of the company were down nearly 2% in premarket trading. The stock had risen around 33% last year.
The bundling strategy is helping the company enhance subscriber engagement and retention at a time when users increasingly rely on artificial intelligence chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini for information.
Heightened geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty have kept many readers closely following the news, but publishers are also increasingly competing with social media and other platforms for audience attention.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
