Q1 2023 New York Times Co Earnings Call
Good morning, everyone and welcome to the New York Times Company's first quarter 2023 earnings Conference call.
Participants will be in a listen only mode.
You need assistance or at least you know a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero.
After todays presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions.
I'll ask a question you May press star and one on your telephone keypad.
Withdraw your question you May press Star and two.
Please also note today's event is being recorded.
At this time I'd like to turn the floor over to Mike Braun, Vice President Assistant General Counsel and corporate Secretary. Please go ahead.
Thank you and welcome to the New York Times Company's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call on.
On the call today, we have Meredith Kopit, Levien, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Roland Caputo, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
Before we begin I would like to remind you that management will make forward looking statements. During the course of this call. These statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions, which may change overtime.
Our actual results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties that are described in the company's 2022 10-K and subsequent SEC filings.
In addition, our presentation will include non-GAAP financial measures and we've provided reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings press release, which is available on our website at investors thought N Y T C O dot com.
And finally, please note that a copy of the prepared remarks for this morning's call will be posted to our investor website. Shortly after we conclude.
With that I will turn the call over to Meredith Kopit Levien.
Thanks, Mike and good morning.
Last year, we presented the next phase of our long term strategy with the goal of becoming essential subscription for every curious English speaking person seeking to understand and engage with the world.
First quarter, we made steady progress on that strategy.
Despite a substantial runway ahead.
Let me share some of the highlights.
We crossed 3 million bundle and multi product subscribers in the quarter.
A number of new records for bundle.
We dressed sequential art two abstentions.
Five our value based pricing strategy.
Enjoy the strongest enterprise wide subscriber engagement we've seen.
More than a year and we slowed club right for the third consecutive quarter.
Disciplined cost management.
Our performance in the quarter reflects our strategy play out as it was designed with our high quality product portfolio and multi revenue stream model, giving us a variety of levers for growth.
You bet.
Certain markets.
The cash generative nature of our model.
All right.
I'll turn now to the quarter's [laughter].
We added 190000, net new digital subscribers roughly on pace last quarter spread.
By considerable market headwinds.
We now have more than $9 7 million total.
First for me on the path for coal 15 million subscribers by year end 2027.
Thanks to aggressive marketing across all of our products, we had our highest ever number of bundled start in the quarter highest percentage of bundles start and highest number of bundle upgrades. This matter as strong uptake of the bundle is a positive thing.
No revenue correct.
Because the average bundled subscriber engages more paid more and retain better than the average single products subscriber.
Subscriber engagement in the corner measured in weekly usage was especially strong.
And in part by high usage from early tenure subscribers many box bundle.
We also continued our deliberate efforts to grow topline audiences and widened our pools of high quality prospects across our product portfolio that work is intended to be a driver of medium and long term subscriber Brett and also to take counteract headwinds on news.
We've talked about for some time now including referrals.
Sure.
Fluctuations in demand driven by changing your cycle.
Wow.
This work will play out over time.
We're already seeing results.
Progress was most evident on the athletic wear weekly active users are up 50% year on year and new registrations have grown strongly.
This is the result of meaning.
It's temporary daily Daily Sports news cycle, and big game that while tapping into new audiences by the time, an all platform. We're pleased with its early progress, which is validates our approach and sets us up well to capitalize on the big opportunity we see.
Sport.
More than a year into our ownership wordell is still attracting tens of millions of passionate players each week and acting as a robust top of the funnel Tibet and Waikiki games and the bundle and we've been busy adding value to N Y T games, so that is where it'll players deeper into the game.
Final they find more reasons to convert and routine we added puzzle.
Puzzled into the App in the quarter and continued to drive strong engagement with Sterling.
Another area of Amendment was pricing, we advanced a coordinated set of pricing strategies in the quarter designed to drive some modest digital art to expansion, we've been aiming for while continuing to scale subscribers to.
To optimize for conversion, we used attractive promotional pricing for the bundle.
Combination with a new Oh funnel bundled marketing campaign.
We also continue to have success in the quarter stepping up subscribers on promotion to interim and full price and at the one year Mark.
The high levels of engagement, we see with early tenure bundle subscribers give us confidence that we'll be able to continue stepping up subscribers to higher prices as their tenure increases.
We also began rolling out price increases for tenured non bundle news and game subscribers towards the end of the quarter and we are pleased with the early results.
This component of the playbook to create digital R E.
In Q2 and beyond while driving even more people to the bundle as it's relevant price becomes more attractive.
Net result is that in Q1, we had a fully coordinated value based pricing strategy in action aimed at maximizing the lifetime value of our growing subscriber base.
Let me turn now to advertise.
Macroeconomic pressure on our AD business is playing out largely as we thought it would although the visibility from quarter to quarter remains a challenge and we expect it to continue to impact our business in the near term.
Given this volatility advertising was down more than we expected in the quarter a function of marketers pulling back on brands that especially in some of our largest categories like Tech finance and media. We view this as a cyclical meaning nothing has changed in our optimism about.
Advertising at the medium and long term growth driver in fact, there were a number of encouraging signs about the competitiveness of our AD product set and growth prospects.
Direct sold premium display advertising held up well in the quarter, which we believe reflects the effectiveness of our proprietary add campuses and first party data to drive performance for marketers.
Advertising was also strong and we doubled revenue over the last year and we added new advertisers to the enterprise, we have big ambitions for advertising, especially as we apply our high performing AD products across the bundle.
Help us realize this ambition during the quarter, we hired a seasoned leader joined Robbins as global Chief Advertising Officer Joy is our first outside executive hire in advertising in a decade and it's hit the ground running with our strong team.
Beyond subscriptions and advertising other revenue.
What is our wire cutter affiliate business licensing anymore was strong in the corner and is another testament to the power of our multi revenue stream.
Let me spend a few minutes now on cost.
Q1 was the third consecutive quarter during which we meaningfully slowed cost freight cars.
Consistent with our plan in the last few quarters, we found efficiencies in three major areas.
First given the fact that we continue to drive the vast majority of our subscribers starts organically we've reduced our overall marketing spend while also making the dollars you did spend more efficient.
These savings are strategic as we continue to lean into our product as more and more effective driver right.
We also continue to actively manage head count growth, particularly in digital product development well, we have succeeded in attracting top tier talent and expect growth slow from here and finally, we're always on the lookout for waste modernize our legacy operations and to <unk>.
Deficient.
Over the last few quarters that has resulted in modest head count reduction non digital areas, where business and G&A functions.
I'll summarize the quarters results by saying that we're making steady progress executing our strategy in a dynamic market. While advertising continues to experience near term challenges are bundled strategy is gaining momentum subscriber engagement metrics are strong.
Rising initiatives are taking hold and were slowing cost spread.
Our strategy was purpose built multi.
Multiple growth levers and we are confident that we're on the path to building a larger more profitable company.
Now before I close I want to congratulate my colleague will bar D will become our next CFO effective July 1st Wells. The appointment follows a comprehensive search to identify Rowland successor, we evaluated many talented candidates and it was.
Clear that will is the most uniquely suited and qualified leader to step into the role will have served as the times Chief strategy Officer since 2018, and that's a key leader within our finance organization.
My 10 years here well its been a driving force in all the major strategic decision, we made to put us on a promising path. We're on today few people understand our business our strategy and the market better than well and were confident he is the right person to help the time to deliver.
<unk> on our financial and operational goals.
Mommy has early priority as CFO will be to ensure that we're communicating as clearly as possible with investors. So they understand the track of our progress.
And finally I wanted to take a moment to celebrate Roland and his 37 year career at the New York Times now.
Now many of you on this call know Roland personally and understand what a wonderful leader and colleague in person. He is so much of our strong relationships with the investment community our reputation as good stewards of capital and our commitment to financial discipline is attributable.
Roland.
And on top of being remarkable strategic and financial operator, and representative of the times Roland has been a trusted partner and advisor to me and so many others and I will miss him very much well it will stay on with the company through the end of September to help ensure a smooth transition.
Responsibilities and our entire team wishes him all the best and a well deserved retirement and with that I will hand, it back to Roeland, one last time.
Thank you Meredith and good morning, as Meredith said in the first quarter, we made steady progress executing on our strategy with plenty of runway ahead.
Turning to the specifics of the quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share was <unk> 19.
Two cents lower than the prior year, we reported adjusted operating profit of $54 million in the quarter lower than the same period in 2022 by approximately $7 million.
Adjusted operating profit at the New York Times Group was approximately $62 million decrease of approximately $6 million compared to the prior year, while the athletic had adjusted operating losses of approximately $8 million, an increase of $1 million compared to the prior year.
Please note that the first quarter of 2023 includes three months of results for the athletic while the first quarter of 2022 included only two months of athletic yourselves.
Free cash flow in the quarter was approximately $45 million compared with negative free cash flow of approximately $23 million in the same period of 2022.
$45 million of free cash flow in the quarter was composed of approximately $51 million of operating cash flow less approximately $6 million of capital expenditures.
In the first quarter the company and 190000 net new digital only subscribers with continued strong growth and adoption of the bundle.
The number of digital only bundle and multi product subscribers grew by approximately 520000 in the quarter driven mainly by increases to the number of new subscribers choosing the bundle augmented by existing subscribers, who upgraded to the bundle.
Now have over 3 million digital only bundle and multi product subscribers.
Moving to revenues.
Total subscription revenues increased approximately 7% in the quarter with digital only subscription revenue growing approximately 14% to approximately $259 million.
Digital only subscription revenue grew primarily as a result of the new subscriptions, we have added in the past year.
A large number of subscribers, whose introductory promotional subscriptions graduated to higher prices.
Subscribers, who have upgraded to the bundle and the additional month of athletic revenues in 2023.
Print subscription revenues declined approximately 4% due mainly to lower volumes in both home delivery and single copy, partially offset by an increase in home delivery <unk> associated with the first quarter price increase.
In addition, the newsstand price a daily paper was increased from three to $4 mid February .
Moving to digital only subscribers.
Which includes all of our digital products.
On a sequential basis digital only subscribers increased approximately 130 basis points compared to the prior quarter.
Because of the prior year digital only subscribers decreased approximately 1% due to a <unk> three percentage points of dilution from the athletic.
It's worth noting that during the quarter approximately 550000 digital news and gained subscribers were notified of price increases on their individual product subscriptions.
These increases will mostly take effect beginning in the second quarter.
We expect to notify approximately 1 million additional subscribers of price increases for their subscriptions by the end of the year.
Both digital and total advertising revenue decreased approximately 9% in the quarter coming in below the first quarter guidance we issued.
The decline in digital advertising revenue was mainly due to lower revenue from our podcasts and other creative services, which was partially offset by higher advertising revenue at the athletic.
Print advertising was lower by approximately 9% compared with 2022, primarily driven by declines in the media advocacy finding and technology categories.
Print declines were partially offset by growth in the luxury category.
Yeah.
Other revenues increased approximately 16% compared with the prior year to approximately $57 million.
The increase is primarily the result of higher TV and film licensing and commercial printing revenues.
Adjusted operating costs were higher in the quarter by approximately 6% as compared with 2022, primarily due to growth in the number of employees in our newsroom and an additional month of athletic expenses, partially offset by lower sales and marketing costs.
Also at the New York Times group, we're less than 3% higher than prior year.
I'll now discuss the cost drivers for the New York Times Group.
After revenue increased approximately 6% as a result of higher journalism costs related to growth in the number of newsroom employees.
Sales and marketing costs decreased approximately 19% largely due to lower media expenses.
<unk> expenses were approximately $29 million approximately 34% below last year.
Product development costs increased approximately 15% as a result of growth in the number of digital product development employees in connection with improving our digital product portfolio.
And general and administrative costs were higher by approximately 7% due to an increase in the number of employees needed to support the growth in our business over the last several years and one time building maintenance costs associated with investments in more efficient lighting at our headquarters building.
Partially offset by lower outside services costs.
There were no special items in the quarter. However, a severance charge of approximately $4 million was booked in the quarter.
Our effective tax rate for the first quarter was approximately 30% versus an expected marginal rate of 27% due to a lower tax deduction on stock based compensation vesting in the quarter.
Moving to the balance sheet, our cash and marketable securities balance ended the quarter at approximately $472 million a decrease of approximately $14 million compared with the fourth quarter of 2022.
The company remains debt free with a $350 million revolving line of credit available.
Share repurchases during the first quarter totaled approximately $31 million.
Let me conclude with our outlook for the second quarter of 2023 for the consolidated New York Times Company.
Total subscription revenues are expected to increase 6% to 8% compared with the second quarter of 2022 with digital only subscription revenue expected to increase approximately 12% to 15%.
Overall advertising revenues are expected to decrease between four and 8% compared with the second quarter of 2022, mainly due to macroeconomic conditions and the comparison to a strong quarter in print in 2022.
Digital advertising revenues are expected to decrease in the low to mid single digits.
Other revenues are expected to increase in the high single digits.
Both operating costs and adjusted operating costs are expected to increase by approximately 6% to 8% compared with the second quarter of 2022, we expect expense growth to slow later in the year compared with the second quarter guidance.
Before we go to questions I would like to take a moment here on May 20, <unk> and final earnings call to thank you the sell side analysts for their time and effort you are putting covering the New York Times Company I would also like to thank the investor community for their continued interest in and support of the New York Times I've enjoyed working with you.
For the past five years and wish you all the best and now we'd be happy to open it up for questions.
Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session to ask a question you May Press Star and then one on your Touchtone telephone.
You are using a speaker phone we do ask you. Please pick up your handset before pressing the keys to ensure the best sound quality.
Withdraw your questions you May press star two.
Once again that is star and then one to join the question queue.
We will pause momentarily to assemble the roster.
And our first question today comes from Doug Arthur from Huber Research. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah. Thank you rolling.
For all your help over the years and William Congratulations on it.
On your appointment.
Meredith just I'm just trying to untangle these bundled versus subscriber numbers it looks.
Sequentially that your bundles.
Take up was very high I mean, you you added a lot of bundled subscribers on a sequential basis, the actual digital subscriber number.
Was okay. It was up 120000, so the difference between bundled ads.
And actual underlying subscribers is quite stark and this quarter is that a.
Pattern that we're likely to see it and how does that play out in terms of its impact on our pool.
To make to them.
How much is enrolling well and you might do a detail. It was a very strong quarter for everything about the bundle as I said in the prepared remarks that bundle starts were very good bundle engagement strong.
But the percentage of folks who bought the bundled versus.
Yes.
It's very very good and the number of people upgrading was very good and that was all because of deliberate.
It works to make that happen and Roland Jen can talk in more detail, but all of that should ultimately.
Have a positive effect on our peers, but well then why not why don't you answer Doug.
Sure So Doug in the quarter, we had and specific to the bundle.
We had quite a few new subs, but we also had quite a bit.
And that was the biggest single contributor to the number but we also had quite a large number of upgrades and most of those upgrades are coming from the news product. So you don't see an increase in total subscribers from that you have a switch from one category to the other we like that because.
As we've said a few times, we like the bundled subscribers. They retained better we think they'll have a longer life of the company to ultimately pay more.
So that should be a positive contributor both to <unk> in the near and long term and also to lifetime value.
Okay, and just as a quick follow up there does you've made.
Several references over the quarter that the big platforms, we're sending less leads to the time. So can you quantify the impact of that versus year over year or quarter over quarter.
Yes.
I can't really quantify it what I can tell you is we've talked about it I think for three quarters now in a deliberate way because we're feeling the effects of it and it's kind of across the board you know that.
As prominent example is Facebook has really dramatically shifted away from from sending referrals.
We used to have but I would say, it's kind of an across the board change and you know that.
That we are doing a ton of work we anticipated.
It just doesn't change and we've got a really good track record of kind of evolving around that and we now have this wide products that that gives value to people in lots of different ways sports journalism recipe shopping and base game says all attract audiences.
Different ways.
Four of our five products are also destinations we've got a.
Very big registration model and lots of emails lots of ways to be in touch with people. So I would say, we're feeling the pressure from audience. We've said that the that referral sources, but also giving a lot of work I would say in the short term to counteract that but also to build the audience.
For each product, which is really meant to be the medium and long game on counteracting.
Great. Thank you.
And our next question comes from David Karp, Carnal Koski from J P. Morgan. Please go ahead with your question.
Alright, Thank you burn through all at once if you could comment a bit more on the pricing initiatives.
How that looked in the testing phase in terms of churn or subs kind of uptake in the bundle.
Enrolling I think you mentioned a total of $1 5 million subs that will see a price increase can you confirm is that number basically reflect the number of fully tenured new subs and then can you also just confirm will that price increase be for $3.
Well then you want to take that yes sure David Thanks for the question so on.
On the pricing.
We increased the price on about 550000.
News and gaining subscribers in the first quarter most of them about 500000 of them actually were news only subscribers and we're happy with the results. We're seeing in terms of retention there, it's very similar to what we've seen.
In the past when we increased the price.
Originally.
Up to $17 back in the beginning of 2020, so all of that's going.
According to plan, so we're happy with that.
On the on the number of subs that are going to ultimately get.
An increase this year, so that's going to be new subs also gained subs.
And it will also be the cooking subs, which will happen later in the year.
So I mentioned last quarter was about 550000.
Most of the news next quarter is going to be about 700000, and that's going to be mostly folks who are multi product subscription so they're paying for more than one individual subscription and then that'll taper down.
For the rest of the year, but yes. The total that we expect for calendar year is about a million five people getting increases in their individual subscriptions.
And would you be willing to quantify the level of the price where it is.
So tenured new subs.
In general are moving from $17 to $20.
For four weeks and gains and cooking are moving from $5 to $6.
Alright, and then Meredith wanted to see if you could discuss just athletic advertising how that rollout is going and maybe how that's complicated just by the overall softer market you're launching into thanks yeah.
It's going well.
Just remind them that's out in the call that we took our kind of long serving highly effective head of time advertising and we'd send in my words the athletic to run the commercial the all of the non stop efforts there and the idea behind that is you take the playbook from the New York Times, which is premium.
Canvases and first party data and build that on the athletic and we really like what we see so far.
You know here is that the whole AD market is obviously uncertain and complicated and theres lots of pressure, but the athletic is starting from a tiny base. So you know even in a tough market.
Got a great product you can really get growth and we like what we're seeing that there are two other things I'll say and there's just a ton of interest in advertising around sports and.
The athletic is pretty wide and it's cut bridge said that there's a lot of market or appeal, there and what we like and if everything about it so far but one of the things that we've been particularly focused on is bringing new advertisers to the enterprise of the time and I keep checking their chips, but you know that that is.
Is is also having a positive effect. So it's it's all going well. It's it's early days, you're going to hear us continue to talk about building the audience.
For the athletic and that's obviously going to be an important driver of how big that business can be as well we saw a really nice.
In audience.
This quarter, but there's a lot more room to go and grow their own we're highly highly focused on that.
Okay. Thank you.
And our next question comes from the.
Silly Gara style from Cannonball Research. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you good morning.
And I wanted to ask you a sort of a modeling question.
Now that.
You know your sales and marketing expenses are have a different trajectory as Meredith pointed out with organic starts growing and so on what is the best way for us to sort of think about modeling expenses, specifically the cost of revenue sales and marketing.
And Jim.
Some of them are just quarter to quarter will remain more or less constant like GMA and then should we look at the cost of revenue as a percentage of digital.
Digital.
Revenue.
Same with sales and marketing or should we look at.
Quarter to quarter progression.
Would appreciate your help here, especially.
If we look past the Q2.
Hello.
All of the years, how youre thinking about it thank you.
You're welcome Thanks for the question <unk>.
I don't know if I'll be quite as specific as you'd like but I think that the way I would think about it is what we're going to continue to invest in our in our journalism as you know.
And that will that's quarter to quarter and year to year. That's that's important for us to kind of grow a moat.
Two to increase the value of the company.
As you mentioned we had.
Slowed the growth on our marketing spend and actually we've been reducing that I think going forward you can think about that more as being in the range of what we're currently spending so we don't really see big drops.
From that area in the future and always with the possibility that we might see a reason to up spend in one quarter or another but but the general trend should be pretty flattish.
Product development.
<unk> Meredith mentioned, how we've attracted some great talent over the last few years and you've noticed that we've been putting a bunch of money into that area over the last few years, you can expect that to slow that growth should slow.
Over the remainder of this year and and and.
And in the future.
And G&A also should slow we did spend quite a few dollars there over the last recent quarters and we can expect that that to slow as well.
In terms of overall costs.
As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we expect to slow the rate of growth year over year in the back half of the year I'd say.
Most significantly in Q4.
Thank you.
And our next question comes from <unk>.
When catastrophe from Barclays Capital. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you Ron.
Thank you for all the help over the years and all the best for the future.
Welcome and look forward to interacting with you on the pizza as well.
Thank you.
And.
In terms of the pricing trajectory rather than as you mentioned.
All the price increases that you plan to pass through over the course of the year.
Could you help us think through what that means for the ARPA trajectory rest of the year, because I think Q1, excluding the estimate that you guys were up 2% from the core product.
Sequentially It was up as well should that accelerate going forward as these price increases take effect.
And thinking of David sorry, Glenn.
No go ahead give me your other question.
The other question I had was on sales and marketing I mean.
The absolute dollars did drop year over year, but the ratio to sales actually went up after dropping for a couple of quarters I think.
And so if you think about.
The quoted in itself was the enemy.
Extra spending.
Did from a unit growth perspective, just because there were price increases then you want to manage that process or something along those lines.
And is it fair to think about sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue that's how you'll manage with that budget. Thanks.
So maybe I'll take your second question first.
Actually we reduced media spend.
As you heard.
The press release and in my prepared remarks, but actually if you. If you split that between brand and direct acquisition spend we actually spend a hair more in acquisition.
Then we then than we had last year in this quarter, but we cut way back on brands. So there's a little bit of a.
Rebalancing between that ratio of acquisition and brand and yes, we did see a reason to spend a little bit more on on direct for a number of reasons. One is we're really pushing hard on the bundle because that's you know that's a big ROI, how do you get folks up to the bundle and that we've got.
Those price increases in the market, but I'd say, it's mostly because we were making a more fully.
Focused effort on marketing in the bundle.
On your <unk> question.
Starting next quarter, we expect year over year, our proved to be increasing.
In addition to sequential increases we expect the year to year increases to begin next quarter and continue.
For the remainder of the year, we have a large number of people stepping up to higher prices.
Which is really the biggest driver it's a bigger driver than the price increases should understand that.
It will be done lapping the acquisition of the athletic next quarter this quarter, even though we.
We had the athletic in both quarters as I mentioned earlier, we only had it in our financial results for two months of the quarter last year and we had it for three months. So there was still a bit of a dilutive effect there.
Got it thank you.
Our next question comes from Thomas <unk> from Morgan Stanley . Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, good morning, and my congratulations to Roland and well as well.
I wanted to ask about the pricing strategy for the bundle itself and kind of dovetail that with a really strong comments on engagement trends that you're seeing rolling you kind of just mentioned the majority of an art to uplift might be coming more from just a gradual migration of some of these promotional subs as we kind of lap that one year Mark.
Could you talk about the strategy around that initial cohort on higher pricing I mean, given their higher engagement any signs of being able to take more than you would typically to a high full price here relative to your stand alone products and that would be helpful.
So on the ability to take the higher prices.
It's yet to be seen right, we fully believe in the value that the bundle will deliver all of our early signs on all of those metrics are positive. We're only now beginning to see.
If you recall, we only really leaned into the bundle beginning last year. So we're only now beginning to see the initial.
Serge.
New bundled subscribers hitting the end of the promotional period, so far so good.
But I don't know that we have any indications that we'll be able to move them to higher prices faster than we were able to move.
The new sub cohort for instance.
Okay. That's helpful.
And then really notable authentic subscriber growth even more so than overall bundling that at.
What were the big levers for the quarter were there any more news subscribers being granted access or is that purely organic.
I mean, the biggest the biggest driver to the increase in the number of subscribers with access to Gaslog as those who are behind the bundle that is far.
Far and away the biggest.
Driver to the increase in that number.
Actually much more focused on opening up that funnel and building the audience for the athletic than selling individual subs right now the focus is setting ourselves up to sell more of those in the future and to make the athletic and more well known brand and destination to bulk sell.
Individual subs, but also.
Just to illustrate the value that that is added to the bundle.
The addition of the athletic.
Just to add to that.
If you think about what we've done with Wearables on games.
This incredible megaphone to say it's.
It's free lots of passionate players play it every day every week.
And then they get exposed to the other things the times is doing in games and across across the bundle.
That is like in very broad terms part of the game with the athletic we want a really wide audience to come to US every day every week for their sports journalism and then they get to know the whole of the times as they do that so that roeland point.
The Big thing, we're aiming for right now on the athletic is strong audience growth we see.
What we saw in the first quarter and we're gonna be focused on that for for some time that the new editor, who started I'm forgetting if it was right at the end of the year I think.
Very beginning of this year is off to a really good start and a lot of the moves we're making about sort of being more on the news.
Sports and having that sort of during game experience be enriched should help with that.
Great. Thank you so much.
And with that will be concluding today's question and answer session I'd like to turn the floor back over to Mike Brown for any closing remarks.
Thank you for joining us this morning, and we look forward to talking to you again next quarter.
And with that we'll conclude today's conference call and presentation. We do thank you for attending you may now disconnect your lines.