ABS-CBN net income up by 5.8% in first quarter
ABS-CBN Corp., the media holding company of the Lopez Group, said profit in the first quarter of 2015 rose as revenues—both from advertising and consumer sales—increased.
ABS-CBN said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange that its net income during the period rose by 5.8 percent to P569 million in the first quarter of the year from that of the same period in 2014.
Total revenues during the period went up by 2.4 percent to P8.4 billion, according to briefing materials released by the company.
ABS-CBN said ad revenues increased by 3.5 percent to P4.23 billion, while sales, which includes subscription revenues from SkyCable, rose by 1.4 percent to P4.14 billion.
“Advertising revenue growth has been robust and should accelerate over the coming months,” said Aldrin Cerrado, ABS-CBN chief financial officer.
“We managed to reduce our production costs by 3.4 percent for the first three months of 2015 versus the comparable period last year, from P2.7 billion to P2.6 billion.”
Total assets rose to P68.3 billion from P67.2 billion at the end of last year. Total equity stood at P26.5 billion at the end of the first quarter.
ABS-CBN also cited gains it made in digital television.
The company has so far rolled out 300,000 digital boxes in households across Mega Manila, North Luzon and Cebu. ABS-CBN plans to release 1 million boxes by the end of 2015.
In the first quarter of 2015, ABS-CBN spent about P1.5 billion of its planned capital expenditure of P8.5 billion for the whole year, its briefing materials showed. A large part of the spending is expected to go toward its pay television and digital television segments.
The company earlier disclosed a plan to spend P500 million this year alone to ramp up the rollout of its digital television service in Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, Bacolod and Cagayan De Oro.
ABS-CBN TV Plus gives viewers clear digital signal on Channel 2 and ABS-CBN Sports + Action, plus four exclusive channels namely, DZMM Teleradyo, Knowledge Channel, Yey, and Cinemo, a 24-hour movie channel.
“We should reach a million households by yearend and expand our coverage to the Visayas-Mindanao area,” Cerrado said.
