Business Overview: USA TODAY Co., Inc. (formerly Gannett Co., Inc.) (NYSE: TDAY)

---

Executive Summary

USA TODAY Co., Inc. is a diversified media and digital-marketing company and the publisher of USA TODAY, roughly 220 local news brands across 43 U.S. states, and the UK regional publisher Newsquest. Effective November 18, 2025, the company formally changed its corporate name from Gannett Co., Inc. to USA TODAY Co., Inc. and its NYSE ticker from GCI to TDAY, consolidating its identity around its best-known national brand. (Its CUSIP number was unchanged, underscoring that this was a rebrand of an existing public company rather than a new entity.) Because this filing history predates the rename, the most recent annual report on file with the SEC was still filed under the Gannett name for fiscal year 2024; the underlying business, segments, and financial profile described below are the same company now trading as TDAY.

The company earns revenue across three distinct businesses: Domestic Gannett Media (USA TODAY, local U.S. newspapers, and the USA TODAY NETWORK Ventures events business), Newsquest (over 210 UK media brands), and Digital Marketing Solutions / LocaliQ (a cloud-based digital marketing platform for small and medium-sized businesses). Total revenue was $2.509 billion in 2024, down 5.8% from $2.663 billion in 2023, continuing a long industry-wide decline in print advertising and circulation that the company has partially offset with digital subscriptions, digital advertising, and its LocaliQ marketing-services business — together, digital revenue reached roughly 44% of the total in 2024. The company carries meaningful leverage (~$1.11 billion in total debt) from its 2019 merger-driven capital structure, and 2024 included a major refinancing intended to extend maturities and reduce dilution risk from its convertible notes.

---

1. Core Business Model & How They Work

The company monetizes attention and local-business relationships across both legacy print/publishing and digital-only channels.

[ Journalism & Content Production (USA TODAY, local newsrooms, Newsquest) ] ➡️ [ Print + Digital Distribution ] ➡️ [ Subscriptions (print "all access" + digital-only) + Advertising (print & digital) ]

[ Small/Medium Business Relationships ] ➡️ [ LocaliQ Digital Marketing Platform (SEM, websites, lead management) ] ➡️ [ Recurring Digital Marketing Services Revenue ]

Key Operational Drivers

1. Subscriptions: home-delivered print and digital-only subscriptions, including an "all access" bundle of print plus digital in U.S. local markets.
2. Advertising: print and digital display, programmatic, and classified advertising sold through local, national, and self-service channels.
3. Digital marketing services (LocaliQ): search engine marketing, websites, and lead management sold directly to small and medium-sized businesses — a business model distinct from publishing, resembling a marketing-agency/SaaS hybrid.
4. Other revenue: digital content syndication, affiliate/content partnerships, licensing, commercial printing and distribution for third parties, and live events (USA TODAY NETWORK Ventures).

---

2. Business Segments

USA TODAY Co., Inc. (formerly Gannett Co., Inc.)
   |
   +-- Domestic Gannett Media (~largest segment) -- USA TODAY, ~220 local U.S. markets, USA TODAY NETWORK Ventures
   +-- Newsquest (UK)                              -- 210+ brands, 150+ newspapers, 60+ magazines
   +-- Digital Marketing Solutions ("LocaliQ")     -- SMB digital marketing platform
   +-- Corporate and other                         -- Unallocated corporate costs

Domestic Gannett Media

Anchored by the national USA TODAY masthead plus roughly 220 local markets across 43 states and over 330 digital news/media brands in total. Revenue mix within the segment shifted meaningfully toward digital: digital revenue reached $692.7 million (36% of segment revenue) in 2024, up from $641.7 million (31%) in 2023, while print and commercial revenue fell from roughly $1.5 billion to roughly $1.2 billion over the same period — the clearest illustration of the structural shift underway inside the core publishing business.

Newsquest (UK)

A large UK regional publisher with over 210 brands. Digital revenue was $79.3 million (33% of segment revenue) in 2024, up from $74.9 million (32%) in 2023, while print and commercial revenue was roughly stable at $160.0 million versus $159.1 million — showing a slower but similar digital transition to the U.S. business.

Digital Marketing Solutions (LocaliQ)

An all-digital business serving small and medium-sized businesses with marketing automation, AI-driven ad optimization, and reporting tools, including "Customer Center powered by Dash®." Search engine marketing made up 68% of DMS revenue in 2024, and the segment averaged about 14,300 core platform customers. This segment is structurally different from the publishing segments — it is a B2B marketing-services business that happens to be bundled with a newspaper company, competing against a very different set of rivals than USA TODAY or Newsquest do.

---

3. Product Portfolio

---

4. Competitive Landscape

The company competes in two structurally different markets.

• Publishing (Domestic Gannett Media and Newsquest): competes for advertisers and readers against other news outlets, free online content creators, traditional media (print, radio, TV), and large digital/social platforms. Barriers to entry for digital-only publishing are low, and the company may not be compensated when third-party platforms republish or summarize its content — a structural, industry-wide risk rather than one unique to this company.
• Digital Marketing Solutions (LocaliQ): operates in a fragmented, highly competitive SMB marketing software/services market. Rivals include smaller specialized providers, vertical-focused SMB marketing firms, large self-service ad platforms (Google, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft), traditional media companies with their own sales forces, and marketing-automation tools that commoditize parts of the category.

                 High digital-native competition
                             ^
                             |
     Google / Meta /         |
     Microsoft (self-serve   |
     SMB ads)                |
                             |
  Agency/sales-force  <------+------> Pure self-service platforms
  model                       |
                             |
     LocaliQ, traditional     |    Vertical SMB marketing
     media sales forces       |    point solutions
                             v
                 Lower-touch, lower-cost competition

---

5. Strategic Strengths & Risks

Strengths (Moat Sources)

• Scale and brand recognition: USA TODAY is one of the most recognized news brands in the United States, and the ~220-market local footprint plus Newsquest's UK breadth gives the company advertiser reach that smaller local publishers cannot match.
• Digital transition progress: digital revenue grew to roughly 44% of total company revenue in 2024 (and over 45% in Q4 2024 alone), with digital subscriptions and LocaliQ both showing real revenue growth even as print erodes.
• Diversified revenue base: unlike a single-title newspaper, the combination of national brand, hundreds of local markets, a UK operation, and a wholly-digital B2B marketing business (LocaliQ) spreads risk across distinct demand drivers.
• Active deleveraging: the company narrowed its net loss, generated a $55.6 million gain on early debt extinguishment, repaid $73.5 million of debt, and reduced first-lien net leverage to 2.7x by year-end 2024, improving the balance sheet after refinancing.

Risks

• Structural print decline: print and commercial revenue fell from roughly $1.5 billion to roughly $1.2 billion in the Domestic Gannett Media segment alone between 2023 and 2024, and this secular decline shows no sign of reversing.
• Continued net losses: the company posted a net loss attributable to shareholders in both 2023 ($27.8M) and 2024 ($26.4M), meaning the business has not yet returned to sustained GAAP profitability despite cost-cutting and asset sales.
• Meaningful leverage: ~$1.11 billion in total principal debt, including $850 million of first-lien debt, leaves limited room for error if digital growth decelerates or refinancing conditions worsen.
• Content monetization risk from AI and platforms: as with the broader publishing industry, the rise of AI-generated summaries and search-result snippets threatens to further erode the referral traffic and ad revenue that digital publishing depends on.
• Portfolio rationalization underway: the pending sale of the Austin American-Statesman to Hearst (expected to close Q1 2025) signals the company is still actively trimming its asset base — a sign of ongoing portfolio optimization, but also of a shrinking footprint.

---

6. Financial Overview

---

7. Summary Conclusion

USA TODAY Co. (the renamed Gannett) is a legacy print publisher executing a genuine, partially successful digital transformation: digital revenue is now close to half the business and growing, anchored by a nationally recognized masthead, a broad local-market footprint, and a fully-digital B2B marketing business (LocaliQ) that is structurally insulated from print decline. The company's real moat — brand recognition and advertiser-relationship scale across hundreds of markets — is being actively eroded by the same forces reshaping the entire news industry: falling print revenue, platform-mediated content distribution, and now AI-driven search summarization. With total revenue still declining, persistent (if narrowing) net losses, and over a billion dollars of debt to service, the central forward risk is whether digital and LocaliQ growth can outrun print's decline before leverage or further asset erosion forces harder structural choices — the November 2025 rebrand to the TDAY ticker is best read as a bet that the USA TODAY brand, not the Gannett publishing-conglomerate identity, is the asset worth building the company's future around.