Business Outlooks Unchanged at Gannett, Emerald, Reuters

The U.S. economy contracted at a rate of 0.3% in the first quarter, and recessionary fears abound amid talk of tariffs and trade wars. So far, companies appear to be largely shrugging off outlooks for a weaker 2025.

Emerald Holding, Gannett and Thomson Reuters all reaffirmed their outlooks for 2025 even as the scenario today appears to be vastly different from late last year.

• Emerald is projecting that it will generate $450 million to $460 million in revenue, which would be up from $398.8 million in 2024.
• Gannett sees total digital revenue expected to grow approximately 7%-10% on a same store basis with total revenue down in the low single digits on a same store basis.
• Thomson Reuters sees total revenue growth of 3% to 3.5% and organic growth of 7% to 7.5%.

When asked on today’s earnings call about the demand environment and any changes to buying patterns or willingness to spend or close deals since obviously the trade war heated up, executives at Reuters were clear:

“As you’ve seen from our results, we have not yet seen a change in the demand environment,” Chief Executive Officer Steve Hasker said. “Most of our customers across the spectrum are wondering what the sort of economic backdrop for the rest of this year will be, wondering what the tariff picture, when it settles, if it settles, will look like and what the implications would be. So I think there’s a level of nervousness, but we haven’t yet seen that play through.”

“If you look at our new sales pipeline, our renewal pipeline, no changes there. Both the new sales and renewal pipelines remain encouraging. Just looking at April velocity and average order value, they remain very consistent,” Chief Financial Officer Mike Eastwood said.

Gannett saw a drop of average monthly unique visitors to 195 million in the first from 200 million in the fourth quarter but didn’t change its outlook.

“We do have daily conversations with our advertisers, and through those conversations, we’re not seeing a material shift in the demand or in any buying behavior, and I think even more importantly, we’re starting to see improvements in the fundamentals of the business,” Trisha Gosser, chief financial officer, said on the Gannett earnings call. “We’re seeing stronger retention, we’re seeing a more diversified revenue base, and we are seeing the operational efficiencies take hold, and that gives us a lot of confidence in the assumptions and the trajectory that we’re on.”

At Emerald, there was some concern due to the ongoing tariff issues and which countries might shrink spending (namely: China and Canada). Chief Executive Officer Hervé Sedky said they are paying very close attention to it, he also said that their confidence for the year is due primarily to the diversity of its portfolio—it operates across a number of industries—and the fact that its clients continue to want exposure at live events.

Emerald CFO David Doft:

We’re reiterating our guidance based on what we’re seeing. We’re watching things very closely… our platform offers a really strong ROI. And in these times, customers are looking for alternatives where they can increase their sales, where they can meet their customers, they can get more leads. And so our platform, ours and the industry’s platform, is really efficient and effective for that. So the diversity of our portfolio, the strength of the platform and what we offer our customers allow us and what we’re seeing in terms of the pacing that we’re seeing for balance of year and into next year allows us to remain confident.