Start with three lines: revenue by source, operating profit, and guidance. The New York Times Company posted its second-quarter 2026 results on August 5, 2026. Digital-only subscription revenue grew 16.4 percent. Total subscribers reached 13.35 million. Digital advertising grew 20.7 percent. The operating margin held at 15.5 percent. Four numbers, one story.
Every public company files these lines each quarter. The rest of the document explains them: costs, one-time items, and management’s own forecast. The skill in how to read earnings reports is sequencing, not accounting. A quarter is one frame. Adjusted figures come with company-written wording.
This piece works through one media filing, because publishers mix subscriptions, ads, and licensing, and each line stays legible. More coverage of company results sits in the publication’s business news section.
Which statements does a filing actually contain?
Four, per the SEC’s own investor guide: balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements, and shareholder equity statements. The income statement leads. It shows how much money a company made and spent over a period. The balance sheet is a still photo: what a company owns and owes at one point in time.
Cash flow statements track money moving to and from the outside world. For a quarterly read, the income statement carries the headline numbers. The notes below it carry the wording. Analysts jump between the two. So can anyone at home.
The SEC guide opens with a reassurance. If you can read a box score, it says, you can learn to read basic financial statements. That promise holds. The words look dense. The ideas are count and compare.
Which lines carry a media company’s story?
Publishers split revenue into subscriptions, ads, and other. The Times’ quarter shows why the split matters. Digital-only subscription revenue rose 16.4 percent. Digital advertising rose 20.7 percent. Affiliate, licensing, and other revenues rose 7.1 percent. The company added about 280,000 net digital-only subscribers. That brought the total to 13.35 million. For related coverage, see How The New York Times bundled its way past 11 million digital subscribers.
One more line earns attention: ARPU. That is average revenue per user, the subscription money divided by subscribers. The Times reported digital-only ARPU of $9.94, up 3.1 percent in a year. Subscriber growth with flat ARPU means cheap plans drive the gains. Rising ARPU means pricing power. Ad lines read against the duopoly frame, the grip two platforms hold on digital ad spending. The site’s digital ad duopoly analysis covers that in detail.
The print lines tell the other half. Print subscription revenue slipped 0.8 percent to $130.0 million. Print advertising fell 11.1 percent to $35.2 million. The digital side grew while the print side shrank. The mix, not the total, is the story a media reader wants.
Why do adjusted profits differ from the standard kind?
Because the company says so. The Times reported operating profit of $118.0 million, up 10.8 percent. Adjusted operating profit came to $155.3 million, up 16.1 percent. Adjusted strips out items management calls one-time, under wording the company writes itself. The margin spread, 15.5 percent against 20.4 percent, sizes that framing choice.
Neither number is wrong. Standard profit keeps every cost. Adjusted profit explains which costs management thinks skew the quarter. The habit to keep: read the wording before the number. Then compare the same adjusted line across quarters of one company, not across firms.
What does guidance add that results do not?
Forecast. The Times’ outlook guided third-quarter 2026 digital-only subscription revenue up 12 to 15 percent. Total subscription revenue was guided up 9 to 11 percent, with digital advertising up mid-to-high-teens. Guidance is management’s expectation, set as a range. Markets price the range. Misses move stocks more than the printed results often do.
Conclusion: three lines, then the footnotes
The sequence generalizes: revenue by source, profit with its margin, then guidance. The Times’ quarter was legible in four numbers. What does not generalize is the vocabulary. Each company writes its own adjusted wording, and one quarter is one frame. Read the sequence, then the notes. The footnotes feed the headlines.
