In short: The flat side of the same 30-year contrast — same starting market cap as News Corp, "basically had the same market cap" three decades later. Used to argue that an entrepreneurial operator, not the industry, drove the 80× gap. No view on the business today.
The New York Times is the flat control group in the same comparison — same starting market value as News Corp, and "basically had the same market cap" 30 years later. Both were newspaper companies facing the same technological and advertising upheaval, which is exactly what makes the contrast useful: it isolates management and entrepreneurial drive as the variable.
Named for the history lesson only; there is no view here on the business or the stock as it stands now.
8:34But I'll say what hasn't changed. I think the core premise of just holding on to businesses that generate high returns on capital for a very long period of time — that's been a core, it's hard to get away from. And then which always plays into this also is the quality of the people involved in the business. So there are more examples I go through in this book where you have a particular entrepreneurial person who makes a difference. I remember there's one specific example I talk about, the New York Times and News
In short: Subscriber growth slows. Q2 revenue +11% Y/Y to $762M (an $11M beat) with adjusted EPS $0.69 ($0.02 beat), adjusted operating profit +16% to $155M, digital subscription revenue +16% and digital advertising +21%. The weak spot is the funnel: NYT added 280,000 net digital-only subscribers, down from 310,000 in Q1 and below the ~295,000 expected, for 13.35 million total, with digital ARPU +3% to $9.94. Management acknowledged that declining search and referral traffic from big tech platforms is making acquisition harder — the clearest statement in the issue of AI search eroding publisher distribution — reinforcing the push toward direct relationships. Video is the biggest investment area, with thousands of videos produced per quarter and a dedicated Shows tab, aiming "to become as relevant for watching the news as it is for reading it," though monetization is early while operating costs rose 11%. Q3 digital subscription revenue growth is guided to slow to 12–15% with digital advertising in the mid-to-high teens; shares fell more than 15%. "Q2 exposed the challenge of acquiring subscribers as platform traffic declines."
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.