NY Times

The New York Times Co. today reported $55.2M in Q4 net income compared to a year ago $56.8M loss and a 265K surge in digital subscribers, the biggest gain since the 2016 presidential election.

Paid-only digital subs rose 27.1 percent from the 2017 Q4 period. Of the 265K new subscribers, 172K were for the news site with the others split between cooking and crossword products.

Mark Thompson CEO said the NYTC ended 2018 with 3.4M digital subscriptions and 4.3M total subscriptions.

The company chalked up $709M in 2018 digital revenues, which is three-quarters of the way to achieving its five-year goal of $800M by 2020.

In a sign of bullishness, Thompson plans to grow the subscription base to more than 10M by 2025.

Wall Street cheered the NYTC performance, bidding its stock up 13.6 percent to a 52-week high of $30.56.

The stock traded as low as $21.34 during the past year.