A worst of times, best of times 4Q06 earnings report from the New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT). The company admitted financially what has been visible for months, if not years and took a $814.4 million pre-tax write-down on the Boston Globe and other assets in the New England Media Group. Post-tax, that works out to a loss of $5.11 per share. The 4Q06 net loss was $648 million, or $4.50 per share, compared with a profit of $63.2 million, or $0.44 per share, in the same quarter last year. Excluding the write down, NYTCO would have increased 39 percent to $87.9 million.
On the digital side:
-- the News Media Group’s “other revenues” category rose 15.4 percent on higher commercial printing revenues, subscription growth at TimesSelect and revenues from recent online acquisition Baseline StudioSystems. 
-- About.com drew $24.2 million in revenue for the quarter, which had an extra week, up 44.8 percent from $16.7 million the previous year. Without the extra week, the increase was still healthy—up 34 percent on higher display and cost-per-click advertising and e-cmmerce revenue. Profit nearly doubled to $10.2 million thanks to higher incremental revenue and, in part, to that nifty extra week. Revenues were up about 50 percent for the year.
-- Internet revenue rose 42 percent, delivering $84.8 million compared to $59.7 million in 4Q05—Up 35.3 percent without the extra week.
-- Internet revenue accounted for 9.1 percent of NYTCO revenues, up substantially from 6.7 percent in 4Q05. For the year, internet represented 8.3 of the company’s revenue compared with 6 percent in 2005.
-- NYTCO projects income from the internet to hit $350 million in 2007, up approximately 30 percent from $273.9 million in 2006 and $193.9 million in 2005.
Earnings release | Webcast (11 a.m. Eastern)