THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY (NYT): what the price requires
At today's price, THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY (NYT) is priced for today's economics sustained for ~5.9 years. boothcheck doesn't publish a fair value or a price target; it shows what the price assumes, so you can judge whether that bar is too high.
Generated: 2026-07-14 · Exported: 2026-07-16 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/NYT
Headline
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Ticker | NYT |
| Company | THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY |
| Current price | $75.06/sh |
| Composition | Subscription 69% / Advertising 20% / Affiliate, licensing and other 11% |
What The Price Requires (Inversion)
The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Inversion basis | whole-company |
| Operating margin needed | 10.8% |
| Operating margin today | 13.2% |
| Margin compression implied | -2.4pp |
| Must persist for | 5.9y |
| Multiple paid | 33x operating income |
The operating-margin requirement is derived from the framework's value band at year 12, a separately labeled basis from the headline growth/duration solve.
Solve inputs: computed at a 8.8% cost of capital; growth searched up to the 25% self-funding ceiling; each 1pp moves the implied horizon ~1.9 years.
How unusual the bet is: elevated
| Reference | Value |
|---|---|
| vs own history | +0.31σ |
| cohort percentile (of 225 peers) | 73 |
| sustained it ~5.9 years at this level | 26% |
| implied end-window share | 0% |
Valuation X-Ray
Asset, earnings-power and peer-multiple models all land far below the price; ONLY the growth-DCF reaches it. The bet is durable compounding the static frames structurally cannot price (a moat/durability premium).
How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.
| Family | Median price/FV | Models | Reads |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asset | 2.96x | 5 | expensive |
| Earnings | 2.35x | 5 | expensive |
| Relative | 1.42x | 5 | expensive |
| Growth | 0.93x | 3 | justifies |
Families that justify the price: Growth Families that call it expensive: Asset, Earnings
The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 9.3%); the inversion above states its own rate.
Per-Model Detail (n=18)
| Model | Family | FV | Price/FV | Applicable | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DCF Perpetual Growth | Growth | $81.07 | 0.93x | yes | FCF base $0.6B, growth 10% (input: historical growth), terminal g 4.0%, WACC 9.3%, 6yr projection |
| DCF Exit Multiple | Growth | $85.32 | 0.88x | yes | Exit EV/EBITDA: 23.0x / 25.0x / 27.0x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 6yr |
| Relative Valuation | Relative | $52.77 | 1.42x | yes | P/E 22.24x (blended: static sector reference 18x + trailing (TTM) 32x), scenarios: 18.4x / 22.2x / 26.1x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 15.9x |
| Simple DDM | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Two-Stage DDM | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Simple Excess Return | Asset | $25.25 | 2.97x | yes | BV/sh $12.23, ROE (TTM) 19.1%, ke 9.3% |
| Two-Stage Excess Return | Asset | $35.87 | 2.09x | yes | 5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3% |
| Discounted Future Market Cap | Growth | $66.66 | 1.13x | yes | Rev $2.9B, growth 10% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 3.5x / 4.2x / 5.0x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 8x) |
| Peter Lynch Fair Value | Relative | $81.53 | 0.92x | yes | EPS $2.33, growth 35% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=0.92 (Undervalued) |
| Margin Trajectory | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Earnings Power Value | Earnings | $19.84 | 3.78x | yes | Normalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $0.32B × (1−11%) / WACC 9.3% → EPV (no growth) |
| Residual Income | Asset | $35.13 | 2.14x | yes | BV $12.23 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 19.1% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 8.8%/yr |
| Graham Number | Asset | $25.32 | 2.96x | yes | √(22.5 × EPS $2.33 × BVPS $12.23) — Graham's conservative floor |
| EV/EBITDA Relative | Relative | $36.63 | 2.05x | yes | EBITDA $0.48B × sector EV/EBITDA 12.0x |
| FCF Yield | Earnings | $36.95 | 2.03x | yes | FCF $542.2M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity |
| SBC-Adj FCF Yield | Earnings | $31.92 | 2.35x | yes | SBC-adj FCF $0.47B (FCF $0.54B − SBC $0.08B) capitalized at Kₑ |
| Ben Graham Formula | Earnings | $75.18 | 1.00x | yes | EPS $2.33 × (8.5 + 2×15.0%) × (4.4 / 5.3%) |
| ROIC-Justified P/B | Asset | $5.90 | 12.72x | yes | BV $12.23 × (ROIC 4.5% / WACC 9.3%) |
| P/Sales Sector | Relative | $44.31 | 1.69x | yes | Revenue $2.90B × sector P/S 2.5x |
| PEG Fair Value | Relative | $87.38 | 0.86x | yes | EPS $2.33 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 25.0% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 37.5x |
| Earnings Yield | Earnings | $25.19 | 2.98x | yes | EPS $2.33 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%) |
| Funds From Operations Multiple | Relative | — | — | no | — |
| Clinical Phase NPV | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Merton | Asset | — | — | no | — |
| V5 Mechanical | — | — | — | no | — |
Solvency
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Net cash | $594.5m |
| Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax) | -1.84x (net cash) |
| Net debt / operating income (pre-tax) | -1.65x (net cash) |
| Share count CAGR (buyback) | -0.7% |
| Burning cash | no |
Interest expense is not separately reported in the latest filings, so interest coverage cannot be computed.
Bullet Takeaways
- The surprising thing about the New York Times is that it barely behaves like a newspaper anymore: subscriptions are about 69% of revenue and advertising only 20%, and the company sells a "digital-only bundle that includes access to our digital news produ"ct plus games, cooking, sports, and reviews.
- The biggest risk is the price: at $73 the stock trades at roughly 31 times earnings, above every valuation method except the growth-based ones, which requires subscriber growth to keep compounding for years.
- The number that drives everything is the subscriber count, 11.9 million total with a stated target of 15 million by 2027, and the digital-only subscription line grew 14% to $1.43 billion in 2025.
Bull Case
Here is the counterintuitive fact: the New York Times, a 174-year-old newspaper, earns a 19.1% return on equity and trades like a software company, and it has done it by turning journalism into a subscription bundle. Subscriptions are now roughly 69% of revenue, with advertising shrunk to about 20%, the reverse of the old newspaper model where ads paid the bills and subscriptions were an afterthought. The company sells a "digital-only bundle that includes access to our digital news produ"ct alongside The Athletic, Cooking, Games, and Wirecutter, and that bundle is the engine. Bundle and multiproduct subscribers grew 24% to 6.5 million and now make up 53% of the digital base, the highest-engagement, lowest-churn cohort the company has.
The economics this produces are genuinely unusual for media. Digital-only subscription revenue grew 14% to $1.43 billion in 2025, the company carries no debt and nearly $600 million of net cash, and it converts revenue to free cash flow at a high rate, roughly $542 million trailing. A subscription business with pricing power, multiple products to cross-sell, and a base of 11.9 million subscribers is a compounding machine: each added product raises the value of the bundle, which lowers churn, which lets the company raise price, which funds the next product. That flywheel is why the static valuation methods, anchored on trailing earnings, structurally undervalue it.
The runway is the bull's strongest card. Management has set a target of 15 million subscribers by 2027, and the Q3 2025 quarter alone added 460,000 net digital subscribers, the pace that target requires. Games and Cooking are not side projects; they are acquisition funnels that bring in subscribers who never came for the news and then keep them for everything else. With no debt, a fortress of net cash, and a slowly shrinking share count, the Times can keep investing in new products and buying back stock at the same time. The bull case is that this is a durable, pricing-powered subscription compounder that the market is right to value above a newspaper multiple.
Bear Case
Read the recent earnings as the high side of a cycle, because parts of this business are more cyclical and more contested than the subscription story admits. Advertising, still about a fifth of revenue, swings with the ad market and is structurally pressured: the filing notes a meaningful share runs "through programmatic auctions run by third-party ad exchanges," where the Times competes on rate against the entire digital ad ecosystem. Affiliate referral revenue, the Wirecutter commerce piece, is openly seasonal, with "generally higher affiliate referral revenue in the fourth quarter due to higher consumer spending," which means a soft consumer cuts a high-margin line. The subscription engine is real, but it sits on top of two revenue streams that move with the economy.
The competitive environment is the deeper concern, and it is intensifying. The 10-K is blunt that the Times operates in "a highly competitive environment that is subject to rapid change," with rivals spanning "content providers and distributors, news aggregators, search engines, social media platforms" and more. Two of those, search engines and social platforms, are now deploying generative AI that summarizes news directly, which threatens both the referral traffic that funnels new subscribers and the value proposition of paying for news a chatbot will paraphrase for free. The bundle defends against this by selling games and recipes that AI does not replace, but the news product, the brand's core, faces the most direct disruption of any segment.
Then there is what the price demands. At $73, only the growth-based methods reach the stock; the asset and earnings-power methods land near a third of the price, and the peer-multiple methods short of it. To justify roughly 31 times earnings, the Times has to sustain mid-teens subscription growth and march toward 15 million subscribers without the engagement or pricing power faltering. The signal worth noting is that starting in 2026 the company will stop reporting digital-only subscriber counts and per-product revenue detail, reducing the very visibility investors use to track whether the growth that the price requires is still on schedule. A premium multiple plus reduced disclosure is a combination that leaves less room for error.
Valuation
The price is paying for duration, not for a single year of growth. Working the price backward, today's $73 implies the company sustains its current trajectory for close to six years, with the blended multiple sitting near 31 times earnings. The current operating margin of 16% is already healthy; the price is not asking for a margin miracle, it is asking for the subscription compounding to persist long enough to grow into the multiple. The bet is durability.
The methods divide along exactly that line. Only the growth-based approaches, the discounted cash-flow and future-market-cap models, reach the price, because they credit the recent double-digit revenue growth carried forward. The asset methods land near a third of the price, the earnings-power methods around a third, and the peer multiples below it. When only the forward-growth family reaches the stock, the premium is a durability bet the static methods cannot frame, since they capitalize trailing earnings without crediting the subscriber flywheel. The size of that gap between the growth methods and the static ones is the size of what the market is paying for the bundle to keep compounding. Notably, one growth-adjusted earnings method reads the stock as reasonable on the company's recent earnings growth, which tells you the premium is entirely a function of whether that growth rate holds.
The balance sheet removes any survival question and reframes the risk as purely valuation. No debt, nearly $600 million of net cash, and strong free cash flow mean the Times funds growth and buybacks internally; this is not a company that can be forced into a bad spot. Against media and subscription peers, the implied multiple is at the premium end, defensible only if the path to 15 million subscribers stays on track. The decisive judgment is the same one the price makes: how many more years of mid-teens subscription growth the bundle can deliver before it matures.
Catalysts
The subscriber trajectory is the catalyst that defines the stock. The Times added 460,000 net digital subscribers in the third quarter of 2025, bringing the base toward 11.9 million, and management has held to a target of 15 million subscribers by 2027. Each quarterly net-add figure is a direct read on whether that target, and the growth the price assumes, remains achievable.
The bundle is doing the heavy lifting. Digital-only subscription revenue grew 14% to $1.43 billion in 2025, with bundle and multiproduct subscribers up 24% to 6.5 million, now 53% of the digital base, and management guided digital-only subscription revenue to rise 13% to 16% in the final quarter of 2025. The cross-sell from Games, Cooking, The Athletic, and Wirecutter into the full bundle is the mechanism management is leaning on to reach the subscriber goal.
One disclosure change is worth watching closely: starting in 2026, the company will stop reporting digital-only subscriber counts and per-product revenue for the bundle, news-only, and The Athletic. That reduces the granularity investors have used to verify the growth story, so the headline subscriber number and total subscription revenue become the metrics that matter most. Generative-AI changes to how search and social platforms surface news are the external development that could alter the funnel feeding new subscribers.
Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)
News media (consolidated) (reported)
- NWS (NEWS CORPORATION)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- NWSA (NEWS CORPORATION)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- MH (MCGRAW HILL, INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- WLY (JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- DLX (DELUXE CORP)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- WBTN (WEBTOON Entertainment Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- CMPR (Cimpress plc)
- (no filing in the citation store)
Methodology Note
- Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
- Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
- Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
- Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.
Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.
Sources
New York Times 2025 results