A 10-K subscriber count carries legal weight, not an audit stamp

The revenue mechanism

Most publisher subscriber counts come from the company itself, with no independent check. A public company is different: it must file a Form 10-K annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, signed by its executives, under penalty of law for material misstatements. The New York Times Company's most recent 10-K, filed with the SEC on 27 February 2026 for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025, states in its EDGAR filing that the company 'had approximately 12.78 million total subscribers across 234 countries and territories' as of that year-end, of which 'paid digital-only subscribers totaled approximately 12.21 million.'

What the documents show

The filing separates total subscribers, which include the company's print subscriptions, from the digital-only figure, a distinction that matters because the two numbers answer different questions about where the company's growth is concentrated. The New York Times Company's own investor relations site lists this document as the '2025 Annual Report & Form 10-K,' confirming it as the company's current, filed annual disclosure rather than a press release or an earlier filing describing a prior year. The 10-K also states that the company generates revenue from subscriptions and advertising, without providing a specific subscription-revenue dollar figure in the sections reviewed here.

The assumptions exposed

A 10-K's subscriber count is not independently audited the way its financial statements are; auditors test financial figures against accounting standards, but operating metrics like subscriber counts are typically management's own tally, disclosed in a document that carries legal liability for material misstatement rather than a separate audit opinion on that specific number. That is still a materially stronger basis than a company blog post or press release, which carries no comparable filing obligation, but it is not the same guarantee an audited revenue line receives.

What to check before you rely on it

A publisher citing a competitor's or a benchmark company's subscriber count should prefer the SEC filing over a press release when both exist, and should check whether a cited figure is the total or digital-only count, since the two differ meaningfully. This is an editorial recommendation beyond what the filing itself instructs.

• Is a cited subscriber figure the total count or the digital-only count, and does your comparison need one or the other?
• Does the filing state the figure as of a specific date, and is that date recent enough for your purpose?
• Is the number you are comparing it against also from a filed report, or from a company's own unaudited announcement?

A filed 10-K remains one of the few subscriber figures in this industry carrying legal consequences for inaccuracy, which is a narrower claim than calling it fully audited.