Paula Schwartz – IR Janet Robinson – President and CEO Jim Follo – SVP and CFO Scott Heekin-Canedy – President and General Manager

John Janedis – Wells Fargo Alexia Quadrani – JPMorgan Craig Huber – Access 342 Edward Atorino – Benchmark

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to The New York Times first quarter 2010 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. A question-and-answer session will follow today's presentation. Instructions on how to queue for questions will be provided at that time. And now for opening remarks and introductions, I'll turn the conference over to Ms. Paula Schwartz. Please go ahead.

Thank you Delia, and welcome to our first quarter 2010 earnings conference call. We have several members of our senior management team here to discuss our results with you. They include Janet Robinson, President and CEO, Jim Follo, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Scott Heekin-Canedy, President and General Manager of The Times and Martin Nisenholtz, Senior Vice President, Digital Operations. All comparisons on this call will be for the first quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2009 unless otherwise stated. Our discussion will include forward-looking statements and our actual results may differ from those predicted. Some of the factors that may cause them to differ are included in our 2009 10-K. Our presentation will also include non-GAAP financial measures and we have provided reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings release, which is available on our corporate website at www.nytco.com. An archive of this call will be available on our website as will a transcript and a version that's downloadable to an MP3 player. With that, let me turn the call over to Janet Robinson.

Thank you, Paula and good morning everyone. We were very pleased to report continued strong improvement in our operating performance. In the first quarter, we experienced significant positive trending in both print and digital advertising relative to the fourth quarter. As the quarter progressed, we saw acceleration in the rate of advertiser spending across our newspapers, websites and other platforms reflecting a firming of economic conditions. The company's continued progress in our long-term strategy to restructure our cost base and reposition our businesses also contributed to the growth in our operating profit. Some of the actions that supported our successful efforts were securing strong performance on costs with a heightened emphasis on efficiency, diversifying our revenue streams with particular focus on increasing revenues from our digital sources, leveraging our brand strength to grow profitable circulation revenue where we believe that strong demand for high quality journalism as demonstrated by the Times's three newest surprises will inevitably lead to increased value and managing our asset portfolio to strengthen our core operations and enhance our digital presence. We achieved strong growth in our operating profit, which excluding depreciation, amortization, severance and a special item in 2009 increased more than five fold to $83 million in the first quarter, from $16 million in the first quarter of 2009. On a GAAP basis, we reported operating profit from continuing operations of $53 million, compared with an operating loss of $62 million in the same period of 2009. Diluted earnings per share from continuing operations, excluding severance expense and special items grew 132% to $0.11 per share compared with a loss per share of $0.34 in the same period of 2009. On a GAAP basis, we reported diluted EPS from continuing operations of $0.08, compared with a diluted loss per share of $0.52 in the…

Thank you, Janet. We reaffirmed our commitment to rigorous expense control in the first quarter, building on our multi-year progress to restructure our cost base. Operating costs declined 18% for the quarter as reductions occurred in nearly all major expense categories as a result of the cost restructuring initiatives, with about half of the savings coming from reductions in compensation and news print expense. For the quarter, we achieved more than $117 million in savings while continuing to develop innovative products based on our high quality journalism. Getting to the special items, our fist quarter earnings were favorably effected by a $0.04 gain from the sale of an asset at one of our paper mills in which the company has an investment, and we were unfavorably affected by a $0.07 one time tax charge for the reduction in future tax benefits, retiree health benefits resulting from recently issued federal healthcare legislation. EPS for the first quarter 2009 had been unfavorably affected by an estimated loss on leases at city and suburban of $0.07. Severance costs were minimal at $237,000 in the quarter, compared to $0.11 per share or $25 million in the first quarter of 2009, which were primarily at the New England Media Group. Depreciation and Amortization decreased 17% to $30 million from $37 million in the first quarter of 2009, primarily because of lower depreciable assets. For the year, we expect depreciation and amortization to be between $125 million and $130 million. News print expense decreased 37% in the first quarter, of which 25% was attributable to lower pricing and 12% to lower consumption. News print prices rose in the first quarter, but were significantly lower than in the same period last year. We anticipate prices will continue to rise in the second quarter, given the recent announcements…

(Operator Instructions). With Wells Fargo, we have John Janedis. John Janedis – Wells Fargo: Thanks. A couple of questions. First Jim, just to follow-up on the expense trends; I think in the past you've given more of a target if you will in terms of savings for the year and so I'm wondering can you help us a bit more in terms of maybe the order of magnitude in terms of the decline for at least second quarter and then if you can in terms of detail remind us of what the bigger pieces of the savings were in the second half of '09 that won't repeat. Thanks.

Well, you'll recall that quite a bit of the work we did up in our New England Media Group last year and you will remember that we had some significant restructurings that resulted in about $20 million savings through some union contract negotiations and a plant consolidation. Those were done about mid-year last year. We had some salary rollbacks that were implemented in the beginning of the second quarter of last year. So those also don't repeat. And there was just kind of acceleration of a number of different initiatives much lower, smaller in scale, but still meaningful. So those will clearly make the comparisons much more difficult. As I said, we will remain diligent in our cost efforts throughout the remainder of the year. We have not put a target out there. I think it's going to be – I think we will still see some reduction go into the second quarter. Those will certainly moderate off what we saw in the first quarter, first quarter been very strong and about 18% down. But we are going to be fairly fluid in our approach to managing costs in this point going forward. John Janedis – Wells Fargo: Okay. Thanks and then switching gears a bit, I think you're going to start sizing up against some of the last year's news stand and home delivery increases, I think maybe sometime around the end of June or early July. Does this year's budget call for another increase for either of those?

We don't disclose our any plans we have for circulation price increases. So, what I can tell you is that we will continue to see growth through that point cycling and perhaps a bit beyond. John Janedis – Wells Fargo: Okay and then Scott, maybe as somewhat of a follow-up, in terms of the March number which sounded quite good. I'm assuming some of the benefit was used – some of it was some of the retrend stuff you guys discussed. Can you help us think about April in the context of March, maybe how much was pulled forward into March and how do you think about April?

We really don't think that Easter timing had much effect on our results. Easter fell in April both last year and this year, timing a little bit different, but we don't see as really affecting our results. March was a really good performing month. It was positive and we don't see – while we see continuing sequential improvement we don't see it happening necessarily in a linear fashion. April is definitely in line for that sequential improvement but not with the same strength as March. There are a lot of – there was a confluence of I think unique factors in March which drove those results. April, I can give you a little bit detail if you like, April we're seeing strength in financial services. Throughout the first quarter financial services had very difficult comps and did not see growth, but we can expect to see growth I think for the rest of the year. Luxury has been performing sequentially better. Automotive continues to be strong as it was toward the end of the fourth quarter last year. Healthcare also another category that was strong last year is continuing and should be strong throughout the year, Advocacy also strong in April. Challenging categories in April continue to be studio and live entertainment, challenging for us throughout the first quarter and we expect through the rest of the year. Likewise for telecom, real estate and recruitment. John Janedis – Wells Fargo: Thank you.

Our next question comes from Alexia Quadrani with JPMorgan. Alexia Quadrani – JPMorgan: Thank you. First just to clarify on your answer just now were you saying that April is trending better than March or better than the quarter?

Definitely not as strong as March, but showing the sequential improvement that was built into the first quarter. Alexia Quadrani – JPMorgan: And then on the – just if you can talk a bit about the competitive environment at NYT, are you seeing any particular pressure in your New York City, increasingly competitive environment. Are you seeing ad rates maybe under pressure more in the New York area versus maybe some of the other properties?

We're seeing pressure but we don't believe it's so far having any effect on our business. Some of the rates that are out there from the journal are deeply discounted. There are many packages with free pages built into them according to advertisers we're talking to. But we've seen these kinds of tactics in the past both in journal and many other competitors and we believe that we can manage through that kind of rate pressure. Alexia Quadrani – JPMorgan: And then just on the online business, can you tell us how much online ad revenues at news media comes from display versus classified?

I can tell you that at nytimes.com the classified percentage is now down to 14%. We'll get you a number across the group that would obviously be somewhat higher than that but the times website is obviously the dominant website in the news media group by a very significant margin. Total company, actually because of Abbott. See what we have, we have an aggregated number that includes Abbott. So because of Abbott, total company classified is only 13%. We can try and extract Abbott and get you a number but NYT is 14%, Boston NEMG is 48%, the regionals are 42%. But again because they're relatively smaller in terms of impact, you can't just average them out that way and of course Abbott is 0%. So total is 13% for the company. The total display on the other hand is 53% with cost per click advertising now at 24% and other at 10%. So I think it would be fair to say that probably benchmarked against most other news paper companies our exposure to classifieds across the company is small and becoming much smaller. Alexia Quadrani – JPMorgan: Okay, that’s very helpful. Yes, that was actually looking specifically for [ph] New York Times. That is very helpful detail. Just falling back on that though, the online classified revenues in the quarter, were they down more than the classified print revenues or less so?

I would think they would be down. I’m sorry, in the News Media Group the classified online revenue was down about half the rate it was around in the newspapers. Alexia Quadrani – JPMorgan: Perfect. Thank you very much.

And next up from Access 342, we have Craig Huber. Craig Huber – Access 342: Yes. Good morning. A few questions if I could. Online help wanted, how much was the percentage change there year-over-year in the month of March and also for the quarter and then I have some follow-ups?

Online help wanted in the quarter was down about 20%. I don't have it just for the month. That was for the quarter.

We'll get back to you on the month, Craig. Craig Huber – Access 342: And then also your press release talks about adjusted – radio station sale. Your News Media Group ad revenue is down 9.1%. How much was the advertising volume down in the quarter?

We don’t give out volume data Craig, Craig Huber – Access 342: All right. What I'm trying to get to is how – I always ask this, how much is your blended overall news for advertising rates down you think year-over-year? Do you think down 5% is a reasonable assumption across your newspapers for the quarter?

New York Times media group we're showing a rate yield in low single digits. It's due to a number of factors including the category mix, increased color advertising and increased premium position placements.

And at Boston and the regional Craig the rate yield has decreased but that has a great deal again to do with mix and certainly use of color and certainly contractual commitments as well and positioning. Craig Huber – Access 342: Okay and then the other thing that’s in a lot of investors minds here is, you have a Wall Street Journal, Murdoch threatening to go through with a war against you guys on the advertising front and give circulations (inaudible) do allow here. On the advertising front, what do you have here to combat this? He is out there potentially looking at cutting his ad rates by 80% give or take as we read about out there and given that your demographics are pretty darn similar to the Wall Street Journal, you guys both have very high quality editorial content unlike when you're going up against his New York post. He's been willing over the years in London and particularly here in the states to absorb massive, massive losses year after year.

We are not concerned. Craig Huber – Access 342: Yes, but what are you going to combat this with Janet?

We don’t shy away from the competition. We never have and we never will Craig. We fully understand how to compete and in fact we enjoy it. The fact of the facts, we've had many competitors, not just one for many years due to the fact that we have competed against all advertising categories due to the broad coverage that we've had in the paper forever. We are aggressively competing not only with the content but also with a lot more innovation and customizing of advertising packages and one of the things that I think people have to recognize is that people know what they get even when it's free. So advertisers are well aware of the facts, very well aware of the fact that the return on investment is extremely important and I guess I beg to differ in regard to our demos because they are very different. They are not similar from your earlier comment. The advertisers are aware of the fact that our audience is 22 million in print and online versus the journals 13 million. They're well aware of the fact that 5 million business decision makers online is double that of what is on WSJ.com. They are well aware of the fact that we have the largest advertising share of National Newspaper advertising by a very large margin. They are very well aware of the fact that 75% of the Wall Street Journal readers already read the New York Times. They are aware of the fact certainly that we have a larger female audience. They are aware of the fact that there is more time spent with our newspaper and websites than the Wall Street Journal and very well aware of the fact that the Times has a very strong reputation of developing customized, innovative multi-platform packages primarily because we've been such a leader in making sure that multi-platform is part of who we are. These are the facts and I think they speak for themselves. Craig Huber – Access 342: I appreciate that Janet but if I could just ask, and I'm talking more about the wealthy households that both your paper reaches as well as the Wall Street Journal. I realize that the women demographic is certainly different to your point. But if you have a guy up there in Wall Street Journal, if he does in fact cut his add rates by 80%, do you not think that’s going to hurt your overall ad revenues if you think out over the next two to three years plus?

I think that from a volume perspective certainly they will increase volume by giving away a lot, a lot of free advertising. We are not doing that. We are customizing our packages. We're doing so across the newspaper and online and beyond and we are finding that indeed advertisers are very well aware that a free ad in any vehicle may not necessarily be as effective as a paid ad in a property that indeed has a very, very responsive audience. As I noted, you are talking about advertisers who are being held accountable for a strong ROI on their advertising. So I think we have to remember that indeed they are going to look at the responsiveness of that audience with great detail Craig. Craig Huber – Access 342: Thank you Janet.

You're welcome.

Next up we have Edward Atorino with Benchmark. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Hi. I think you mentioned in the joint venture there was a gain in there. Did I hear that right? What was the gain?

Yes you did. It was the gain from our sale of a portion, 7% portion of our sale in the… Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Oh, that’s right. What was the amount Janet?

Hold, on. Hold on.

We have an investment in a paper mill in Maine and they sold an asset in Maine. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: And what was the contribution? What was the gain in there of the $9 million?

The gain in the joint venture line was $12 million but it is a minority interest portion of that I believe the number net after minority interest is about $9 million or $10 million and that’s called out in the press release. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Well I didn’t – so without that it was zero?

I think there might have actually been a small loss. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Okay that’s what I want. Secondly not to belabor the point on Mr. Murdoch, Janet, have you, is there particular "strategy" or you're just going to keep on trucking the way you do?

Oh no. There is definitely a very well orchestrated, well planned strategy in regard to how we compete both in New York and beyond against every category and really against every advertiser. We're very used to competition. When you are the lead dog, people are constantly going to go after you. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Yup.

Whether it'd be the Wall Street Journal or other magazines or other platforms. We're very used to this. The strategy is to make sure that our content continues to be invested in and continues to expand. It means that indeed the audience will continue to grow. We're certainly doing that with all of our online features that we're adding and we're continuing to drill home the fact that our audience is more receptive and certainly more engaged with our products than many of the competitors. So from a standpoint of an aggressive competitive strategy, you can certainly count on us to make sure that that is not only planned but already very, very much in place and has been for a very long time. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: And one last question. This is the cleanest quarter the Times has had in sometime and thank you for that. Should we infer that you're more or less through with the majority of lets call it non-recurring items?

Well non-recurring by nature are kind of … Edward Atorino – Benchmark: That’s okay. You know what I mean. I mean there have been write-offs and stuff and this is really a pretty clean quarter.

Yes we believe it is. Yes Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Great. Thanks.

I was just – just somebody had asked a question earlier about what the March month online classified was in our News Media Group and that decline was 13.2%. For the quarter it was 21.3%.

And just another clarification. The Abbott Group's operating margin expanded to 48% in the first quarter, up from 33% the same period of last year. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Did you comment at all on April trends? Did I miss that?

We said that indeed print advertising was continuing to improve and that the strong performance in digital advertising was continuing into the second quarter as well in the high-teens, that indeed it was continuing on the same level. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Thank you.

And now we have a follow up question from John Janedis with Wells Fargo. John Janedis – Wells Fargo: Hi thanks. Just trying to think about the ad market again, broadly speaking and so, looking back to '04 and into early '05, I think national print advertising lagged retail a bit in that ad recovery and so I'm wondering, when you think about this recovery broadly going forward, how do you think about the relative growth rates between the two categories?

I think that national advertising is going to pick up quite markedly as year goes on. We're hearing from advertisers that they're a bit tentative in the beginning part of the year to see the recovery and how strong it's going to be but its very clear that advertisers are going to have to look at more branding opportunities. So consequently display advertising, particularly national I think is going to have to continue to show stronger improvement and particularly I think they're going to have to make sure that they have larger units online and certainly do so in paper as well and certainly with other platform choices that they do make.

John this is Scott. I can take you through the categories that we think are very likely to show nice growth this year. They're pretty much all national in character, financial services, tech, media, healthcare, American Fashion, Cosmetics Fashion jewelry, automotive, sea hotels. We think we'll see growth in all of those.

And the fact that as you know very well John, the fact that the Times Company has such a large portion, national advertising already and has always had a large portion. We think that there is strong opportunity for us in that area. John Janedis – Wells Fargo: Okay that's helpful. And for the other two groups meeting, the regionals and New England. Without really saying what the numbers are obviously, do you think the local or retail component would be growing better than national for the year or is it too soon to know or how do you think about that?

When you look at the categories in Boston for the first quarter that showed improvements with media, packaged goods, pharmaceutical, national auto, advocacy, some good national business there and on the retail side we saw jewelry and that category showing some signs. But the retail and the local side was still a little softer in the first quarter in Boston. In the regionals, the categories were soft. Where we did see growth in the regionals was in digital. Excluding Florence, digital was up about 10% in the regionals. But they are continuing to see softness as I noted in my remarks in the classified area and in the retail area, with some improvement with the declines lessening but with some improvement. John Janedis – Wells Fargo: Great. Thank you, Janet.

You're welcome.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference, actually our Q&A session and for now for closing remarks I'll turn the call over to Ms. Schwartz

Thank you for joining us today. Please give us a call if you have any additional questions. Bye-bye.

That concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation.