ABS-CBN profit down 22.9%

ABS-CBN Corp., one of the country’s biggest broadcasting company, reported a drop in profit in the first six months of the year due to the lack of election-related spending seen during the same period in 2013.

The company disclosed to the Philippine Stock Exchange that net income during the period dipped by 22.9 percent to P995 million while revenues also slid 4.7 percent to P16.4 billion. Removing the effects of election-related spending, ABS-CBN said first half profit would have increased 43.6 percent. For the second quarter alone, ABS-CBN said profit was down 42 percent to P457 million. It said the figure would have represented a 48-percent gain when the effects of political ads were removed.

Nevertheless, ABS-CBN chief financial officer Aldrin Cerrado on Wednesday told reporters that the company would keep its year-end profit goal of P2 billion, representing flat growth over that of 2013.

ABS-CBN mainly earns from television advertising and consumer sales, which includes pay-television unit Skycable. It said pay-television revenues rose 12.1 percent to P3.82 billion in the first six months. The company also reported that its costs and expenses hit P15.1 billion—0.3 percent lower than that of the comparative period the previous year.

“We are looking forward to sustaining our performance throughout the second half of the year. The results of our initiatives on both the revenue and expense side have been positive, and we should be able to deliver a marked improvement in our margins over the coming years,” said Rolando Valdueza, group chief financial officer.

Valdueza also cited unit ABS-CBNmobile, which provides traditional telco services like text messaging and voice calls backed by the network infrastructure of Globe Telecom.

Launched in November last year, ABS-CBNmobile had 537,000 subscribers as of end-June. It plans to end the year with about a million subscribers, Valdueza said.