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)