New York Times Co (NYT) 2002 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, Hello and welcome to the New York Times Company's fourth quarter earnings conference call.

At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions and comments following the presentation.

If you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing 1 then 4 on your touch-tone phone.

Your question will be taken after the presentation.

It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Ms.Catherine Mathis, Vice President of Corporate Communications.

Thank you.

And good morning, everyone.

Welcome to our fourth quarter conference call.

By now, all of you have seen our press release, both on our earnings and on our advertising revenues.

And we have several members of our senior management team here today to discuss them with you, including our President and CEO, Russ Lewis; our Chief Financial Officer, Len Forman;

Janet Robinson, the Senior Vice President of Newspaper Operations and President and General Manager of the New York Times Newspaper.

Martin [INAUDIBLE], CEO of New York Times Digital.

Ellen , CFO of New York Times Digital.

Jim Lessersohn, our Vice President of Finance and Corporate Development.

Stu Stoller, our Corporate Controller; and Tony Benton, our Treasurer.

Our discussion today will include forward-looking statements.

Our actual results may differ from those predicted, and some of the factors which may cause them to differ are included in our publicly filed documents, including our June Form 10-Q.

We are undertaking no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, either as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

The conference call is being webcast, and an archive of it will be available on our website, which is www.nytco.com; and beginning at 1 p.m. today, an audio replay will be available.

The instructions for the audio replay are in the earnings press release.

In addition, a transcript of our conference call will also be posted on our website.

So with that, let me turn the conference call over to Russ Lewis, our President and CEO.

Thanks very much, Catherine.

And good morning to everyone.

While 2002 may have come in with a whimper, it certainly went out with a bang.

The year finished on a very strong note, with earnings improving significantly in the fourth quarter as a result of robust revenue growth at all of our divisions.

Ad revenue continued to improve, as it has sinse last January ,and circulation revenue growth at our newspaper group remains strong.

Our broadcast stations enjoyed a record level of political advertising.

And New York Times Digital, our internet and business information division, moved from an operating loss of 7.3 million in 2001, to an operating profit of 8.3 million in 2002.

So that's a positive swing of almost $16 million.

These results, these positive results, reflect the company's continued success in executing its long term strategy, which is to operate the leading news and advertising media in each of the markets we serve, both nationally and locally.

With regard to the national element of our strategy, we're continuing to develop our portfolio of multiple media properties, targeting the lucrative knowledge audience served by the New York Times brand.

Our primary initiative in this regard is, of course, the successful transformation of the Times into a national newspaper with strong circulation growth and an increasing share of the national ad market.

In the fourth quarter, we continued to make progress on this front, as evidenced by the Times' 16 percent gain in national advertising and its strong circulation revenue growth, which was up 6 percent.

Newyorktimes.com is the digital component in our national strategy.

Throughout 2002, it remained the number one newspaper site on the Web, based both on the number of its users and the time spent on the site by those users.