Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to The New York Times Company's Second Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this call is being recorded today, Tuesday, July 29 at 10 o’clock AM Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today’s call Andrea Passalacqua, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead Ms. Passalacqua.

Thank you, and welcome to The New York Times Company’s second-quarter 2014 earnings conference call. Joining me today to discuss our results are Mark Thompson, president and chief executive officer; Jim Follo, executive vice president and chief financial officer; Denise Warren, executive vice president, digital products and services; and Meredith Kopit Levien, executive vice president of advertising. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that management will make forward-looking statements during the course of this call, and our actual results could differ materially. Some of the risks and uncertainties that could impact our business are included in our 2013 10-K. I should also mention that our presentation will include non-GAAP financial measures, and we have provided reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings press release, which is available on our website at investors.nytco.com. With that, I will turn the call over to Mark Thompson.

Thanks Andrea and good morning everyone. The second quarter was a very busy one for the Company, and there’s plenty to talk about in the results. On the consumer side of the business, we launched the first of our new digital products, and they’ve helped us continue to grow our pool of digital-only subscribers. On the advertising side, we continued to make progress on digital advertising with a second consecutive quarter of growth and real excitement around Paid Posts, our native advertising product, and video. By contrast, and in common we believe with the rest of the industry, we saw some loss of momentum in print advertising in the second quarter after a very good start to the year. We continued to keep a good grip of core costs, even though investments in our latest round of products and services meant that profits for the quarter were down year-over-year. We believe, however, that investment spending is essential to secure long-term sustainable growth for the Company. Let me begin with the digital subscription story. In terms of numbers, at the end of the second quarter, our digital subscriber count was 831,000, an increase of approximately 32,000 during the quarter. That is some 9,000, or 39%, more net new subscribers than we added in the same quarter last year, with the new products – including NYT Now, NYT Opinion and Times Premier – representing the majority of the growth in the quarter. We’ve been pleased by the reaction of both consumers and the industry to the new products. NYT Now – our new iPhone app curated by New York Times editors that targets on-the-go consumers at a lower price point than our original digital subscription packages – has been particularly well-received. NYT Now, which has received real promotional support from Apple– including…

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. The second quarter marked an important milestone in our effort to scale our audience of paying digital users, as some of our new products hit the market and began to ramp. While it will take time for the revenues associated with these new products to reach substantial levels, we are already seeing incremental effects. But despite this progress, second-quarter revenues ended slightly down overall, mainly reflecting weakness in print advertising, which more than offset ongoing growth in the digital area of our business. Expenses were up again in the quarter, as planned, as our intense focus on reducing core costs was offset by the investments we are making in our strategic initiatives as well as by higher retirement costs. The strategic initiative expenses will continue to drive up costs in the second half of the year, although we will be closely monitoring that spending as we evaluate the near-term revenue potential for the new products and where to best prioritize our investment spending. Operating profit before depreciation, amortization, severance, non-operating retirement costs and special items decreased to $56 million in the quarter from $71 million in the prior year. The decline was driven mainly by an $18 million increase in operating expenses compared with the second quarter of 2013, most of which was attributable to our strategic initiative investments. We reported GAAP operating profit of $16 million in the quarter compared to $46 million in the same period of 2013. Circulation revenues increased 1% in the second quarter with our digital subscription revenue stream offsetting print declines. We saw a 19% year-over-year growth in the company's digital subscriber total and also benefited from January's home delivery price increases, although revenue from the new rates were outweighed by volume declines, particularly on single copy…

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of William Bird with FBR Capital Markets. William Bird – FBR Capital Markets: Good morning. You mentioned some disappointment in the number of core subs added. I was wondering if you could just discuss how many core NYTimes.com subs were added. Thank you.

Bill, it’s Denise. As you know, we are managing the business as a portfolio and so at this point we’re going to refrain from providing details by product. We think in light of our approach it really makes the most sense to continue to report a single paid digital subscriber metric as well as continue to report on the digital subscription revenue. I will say just to reiterate a few of the comments that Mark made in his remarks that just in general, as we said the growth in the portfolio came from the new products as well as came from -- in the core business several of our promotional sales or Memorial Day sale or July 4th sale. In addition, we did see growth as we have seen in prior quarters in our what I will call our B2B business, our corporate and education, seat and site license business. Where the weakness was in the portfolio, was as Mark had mentioned, first of all, we do typically in the second quarter see a seasonality in the B2C education copies as the school year winds down. So that impacts the portfolio, as well we saw lower starts due to the secular usage shift, from web to mobile. And as well we did see some minimal cannibalization of new core starts to the new product.

And just – to your point, just I am sure you heard me say this but although we don't break the number down precisely we said the new products constituted the majority of the growth in Q2. William Bird – FBR Capital Markets: And just I was wondering if you could elaborate just on some of your general thoughts on, just the pace of digital subscriber additions likely in Q3 and I guess some of the things you might be able to do to try to improve the pace of digital subscriber additions?

Sure. So the pace that we expect to see in Q3 is similar to what we see in Q2. And in terms of sort of retooling our work, we think we have sort of three things that we need to really work on and get right. The first is we really need to get the right offer to the core audience on our web and core mobile properties. Our initial offer, which was access to top stories as part of the NYT Now offering didn't quite resonate the way that we had hoped. And so we’re in the midst of testing a number of alternatives. The second thing we have to get right is our ability to target. We need more precision to determine which is the right customer for the right offer and this we’re honing through AB tests and our data science capabilities. And then finally, of course, we need to continue to optimize all of these things within the broader portfolio.

I mean we clearly want to see acceleration but it’s worth saying that we're currently tracking in 2014 in the first two quarters higher than the net adds for the first half of 2013. So we are seeing a higher number of adds so far this year than last year. William Bird – FBR Capital Markets: And just a final question on digital subs. Could you talk about international, some of the efforts you’re making there to try to improve the offering?

So we do see growth in international subscription albeit at a lower rate than we have seen in prior quarters. We really expect to see the performance here improved when we launched the in-currency billing later on this year. That’s really the critical key initiative that we believe is going to accelerate growth in the international marketplace. William Bird – FBR Capital Markets: And that will be in the second half?

That’s we’re shooting for October to begin the rollout.

Your next question comes from the line of John Janedis with Jefferies. John Janedis – Jefferies: Thank you. Maybe a follow-up to Bill’s question, are you seeing any change in subscriber acquisition cost or churn and how does the churn of corporate and education subs compare to the rest of the subs, I think you spoke to the education but maybe on corporate?

I don’t really have specifics to -- and I don't want to mislead you, and I would really like to get back to you on the specifics on the churn on the corporate. My sense is that it churns at a much lower rate than individual subscribers but I would love to check that statistics again and get back to you.

And with some seasonality. So I mean with a profile of – subscribing and un-subscribing – not in the corporate –

I would say also that’s a relatively new program, so the history we have around those programs on retention churn is somewhat limited. John Janedis – Jefferies: And maybe just a related question, just on the guidance for circulation for the quarter. Does it imply still double-digit digital circ revenue growth or is the slowing across both the print and digital subs?

Slightly lower on the digital and a little lower on the print as well but the fact that print is still 75%, 80% of total sub revenue has a meaningful impact on that number. But again the growth in the first – second quarter was 1.4, it doesn’t take whole in terms of dollars to – county to country kind of in the flat area. John Janedis – Jefferies: Another question for you, on the strategic investments, have you now passed the peak increase in spend year-over-year and are you still on track then to hit that sort of prior number of the 30 million increase year-over-year?

I’d say we are. I think what you will see in the third quarter will be something similar to the second quarter, and that’s embedded in our guidance. We said low to mid single digits, which you get into the fourth quarter, fourth quarter last year was a pretty full quarter of spending. So I would say expense growth moderating to disappearing essentially in the fourth quarter absent any other changes plus or minus –

By Q4, when more or less at the run rate –

Yeah, essentially the run rate -- if you look at internal forecast we’re not expecting anything cost growth at all in the fourth quarter.

Your next question comes from the line of Doug Arthur with Evercore Partners. Doug Arthur – Evercore Partners: Three questions, two on numbers. Jim, in terms of the breakdown in severance and pension adjustments to the costs in the quarter, is it mostly an adjustment to SG&A or is some of that taken out of production costs? That’s question one. Question two, it looks like to get to $0.07 on the adjusted operating profit you got to use a 50% tax rate; why is that so high? And then a broader question for Denise, can you just speak more broadly to the challenges of marketing NYT Now to the Apple universe and what are the plans to expand it beyond that eventually?

Let me start and then I will let Denise finish. On the severance side, I would not put it – it’s not, I would say, solely related to G&A and it kind of gets spread, I don’t want to spend – say much more than that. But there is certainly say production element to it, the G&A element to it. On the tax rate side, tax rate tends to be -- as you know pretty volatile and because of the pretax income number and the size of it certain discrete items have more of an impact on the tax rate in anyone quarter. We still hold that kind of incremental rate on every dollar earnings beyond -- every incremental dollar of earnings is still in the 42% range but in this quarter we have some distortion based upon some discrete items.

On marketing NYT Now, we've actually been very pleased with what we've seen and the support that we've received from Apple. They did name the app for instance, one of the new apps in the months that we launched it. So I think really the marketing challenges in the Apple ecosystem are creating awareness, there is I think over a million apps in the app store. And so making sure that your product is actually seen is part of the battle and so when you get that kind of support from Apple it really helps. Clearly one of the things we are trying to do is get people to download the apps, so really it’s about creating awareness inside the ecosystem first and foremost and then of course secondarily it’s about creating conversion. In response to the question about potential other opportunities for expansion, clearly we’re exploring the Android marketplace, that would be the next most logical place for us to expand this particular offering.

It’s prudent – in a sense that with NYT Now, we’ve got both the opportunity but also the challenges up in the audience. The app seems to be reaching will tell you what the seems to be reaching the younger the previously been subscribers the good news about is that potentially opening up a new audience. The tough thing to say is that we’re going to meet and are already beginning to explore different marketing tactics to try and reach that audience.

Your next question comes from the line of Craig Huber with Huber Research Partners. Craig Huber – Huber Research Partners: A few questions I guess the first one is housekeeping question, for your daily and Sunday print circulation volume what was that percent change year over year please?

Week day was down 5.7 and Sunday was down 3.5. Craig Huber – Huber Research Partners: And then I'm just little more clarity here on the cost, this investment spending you guys are doing this year, it sounds like that's in the run rate of your cost as you go into 2015later this year or is that true?

Yes, I would not expect meaningful growth in the initiative spending in ’15. Craig Huber – Huber Research Partners: But what you've spent this year it gets ongoing expenditure, you’re saying right?

Largely I don’t think, there is not much in the way of kind of one time nonrecurring and -- we have a lot of marketing but as we've seen with our original pay initiatives around digital, mortgage ongoing, marketing is an ongoing effort and we will continue. Craig Huber – Huber Research Partners: And then can you talk a little bit further if you would please about why you think your print advertising performed worse in the second quarter versus the first, putting aside the year-over-year comparison, what’s July looking like please?

Yeah, happy to talk about that. I think in general print overall in the market – there are secular forces that are leading it to decline and by contrast we saw a nice continued uptick in our digital business. Category wise there were places where we saw what I’d call a wholesale shift there, for example, technology advertising was very weak in print but very strong in digital. So we’re really starting to see some fundamental shift in the market.

The one thing I would add to that is I don’t think the market has dramatically shifted and we had a good first quarter, less good second quarter. So I don't think we feel there is a fundamental shift that’s just accelerated pace in the second quarter. That being said, there are certainly secular forces at work here. It’s never precisely the same from quarter to quarter and sometimes the campaigns run, sometimes they don’t. So all the place together in ways that are often hard to predict. Craig Huber – Huber Research Partners: And for July, you’ve seen many differences here in July?

I am sorry. Craig Huber – Huber Research Partners: Are you seeing many differences in your print advertising here in July so far?

I think we’re off to a relatively slow start in print in July but a lot of how the third quarter goes will be written in September and our outlook in September is pretty murky at this point.

Murky, meaning we don’t see it rather than –

Yeah, not gloomy.

Well but I would add to that, I’d say print is off to a bit of a slow start in July but the opposite, the complete opposite, were strong double-digit growth in digital, we saw that sort of same performance in June as well. I would say also July is a very slow month. –

And particularly small month in print. So not a great indicator of how the quarter will go.

We will have to see how it plays out – as it was last year, you will recall last year September was – the third quarter – September performed –

Certainly in the 20 months or so I have been here, I mean our experience is it’s very, very hard to predict trend. I mean last December, we seem to be seeing a deceleration which was followed by Q1 where we actually saw print advertising growth year over year. So I mean it’s – I have learned it’s a month game to try and predict too much. And as both Meredith and Jim said, a lot of Q3 will be determined in September.

Look, I would say also we put a lot of additional resources and money behind the advertising department and Meredith’s organization, I think that takes time to make its way, and so you have to see how that plays out as well. Craig Huber – Huber Research Partners: Sorry to ask this again, but is there anything else specific you can point to about the differences in print advertising performed in the second quarter versus what you saw in the first quarter, is there any else besides of normal volatility here?

I would say that this is a relatively expected volatility versus something materially different that we’re concerned about.

Look, we also had some – we had some things that really broke well in our favour in the first quarter. We had live film entertainment and a strong Oscar season worked to our benefit, there was another couple other categories.

In the first quarter we had a Super Bowl in our city. So if you look at the categories and you actually see the difference from quarter to quarter, it sort of tells you the story of categories in and out of print.

So an example might be in Q1, as you said it was a pretty strong Oscar season, with quite a few contenders which were the kind of movies which kind of naturally fit with the New York Times audience. The summer – something the industry has seen – it was quite a tough summer for the studios with lots of movies opening and closing quite quickly and therefore not attracting multiple opportunities for print advertising. And also movies all the time, which perhaps a less suited to The New Times audience, so that’s one category, we shifted very clearly from Q1 to Q2.

But all that overlays the fact that comps did get meaningfully more difficult in the second quarter, first quarter last year we had negative 13 on print, second quarter last year we had like negative 7 [ph]. So they played a factor but it’s not the only factor in what drives the results.

Your next question comes from the line of Alexia Quadrani with JP Morgan. Alexia Quadrani – JP Morgan: Just a couple of questions. Again there is a – there is a lot of moving pieces right now, obviously you are rolling out this new product and you are making some changes to them as you’re sort of seeing the impact good or bad. I guess from the outside, in the investment community, what’s really a good time period that we should expect for you to get to kink out and sort of transition period to be over, is it a couple of quarters, is it a year? I guess, how should we see it?

Well, I think I mean – because we are doing stuff here where we are kind of on our own, I mean we’re doing things which nobody tried in our industry. It’d kind of be difficult to be precise about how long it’s going to take to optimize. But certainly I would say that over the coming quarters, when you said two to four over the coming quarters, we hope progressively optimize the portfolio, learn some of the marketing lessons we’re going to do, and to continue to grow digital subscription. I mean I think everything that we’ve seen so far suggests that packaging the right way, marketing the right way, we can find -- continue to find new subscribers for the digital flavors of the New York Times but there is – several quarters I said there is some complexity in the offering we’re making in the public and we need to work to get that right. Denise, you want to – Alexia Quadrani – JP Morgan: And packaging the right way, which you had is – as I hurdle for the most recent quarter, is that something that may be a quicker fix?

Alexia, I am sorry, can you take another stab of the question, when you say packaging the right way, meaning – Alexia Quadrani – JP Morgan: I think you highlighted a bunch of headwinds, that hurt the digital sub number in the quarter, it was confusing I think to the consumers in terms of how you presented the different products, I would assume that’s probably an easier thing to fix, right? – it might not be a drag –

Yeah, you might think it is but we’ve got to really get – but in response to the question all three things right, we’ve got to get the right offer, we’ve got to make sure we’re targeting the right customer, and then we need to be continually optimizing. So as Mark pointed out, it is quite complex. But we do have some experiments that we are spinning up right now to hone in on getting the offers right, and we will be really hacking the way that over, over the next couple of weeks and months.

And as we said the central challenge, we think we got to – a great product is NYT Now and actually we need to plan out its future as a mobile app based product. The puzzle, the marketing puzzle that we are engaged in solving is exactly what a lower priced offering should consist of on the web and our core mobile platforms have exactly how do we configure that and how do we market it and that’s what we are working on right now. Alexia Quadrani – JP Morgan: And just the last follow up question is the deceleration of sub growth in the third quarter versus what you have seen in the first half. Is that purely this noise on the digital front or is there some we can expect in print as well?

Little bit of weakening in print, I wouldn’t oversay it but again when print circulation is 75% of the number, a small changes in the percentage growth of decline will have outsized effect on the overall number. So a little of both.

As Jim said, again we are looking quite hard over what we can do to support print circulation and we don’t forget that print is a really important part of our business, and it’s not on the core [indiscernible] print product and services is looking hard at marketing solutions to strengthen the current quarter of print circulation.

Your next question comes from the line of Kannan Venkateshwar with Barclays Capital. Kannan Venkateshwar – Barclays Capital: Just a couple of questions. The first is on the digital side, when we look at the total adjustable market, now with all the newer products that you have, is the market bigger than what you started off with the original plan when you had digital? Or is it roughly the same market in your view? And secondly, when we look at price increases, historically when you did not have a digital product versus now when you have multiple digital products, has the elasticity changed on the print side to the price increases that you are seeing right now?

I think the way I think about this, Kannan, is – from a period where the company was thinking about how it converted an existing group of engaged users, digital users to subscribers, I think we have got greater ambitions about reaching out and finding new audiences and add new addressable markets and the international expansion is an example of that. Obviously that brings in its wake as I said in relation to NYT Now new marketing challenges, where you can rely somewhat less on the – as well the existing consumption of existing users and have to reach out – new, in some cases new marketing channels to find and engage new consumers, and that relates very much to the whole topic of audience engagement, and the ways in which you can use tools and practices also engagement to strengthen usage and therefore drive subscription. I think the basic answer to the question is we do believe that there is a bigger potential addressable market than perhaps we thought some years ago.

Yeah, I mean I would think that especially with NYT Now reaching a much younger audience than we’ve ever reached before with any of our products, we’re very, very encouraged that we might be able to make inroads just in particular in that segment of the marketplace, and that wasn’t what we had necessarily contemplated at the outset. So just to give one specific detail as to why I think I would point to NYT Now.

And on the elasticity point, I mean it’s worth saying that I think take up and retention of premier suggests something about elasticity. Now it’s complicated because premier is digital enhancements which are also available to print subscribers but premier suggests that across the portfolio both print and digital, there is some pricing elasticity. Having said that, we have primarily been focused on to grow the total number of digital subscribers. Though obviously we think about price and price increases all the time but our biggest focus at the moment has been trying to grow the number of subscribers.

There are no further questions at this time. I would now turn the call back over to Ms. Passalacqua.