ABS-CBN Q1 profit jumps

ABS-CBN Corp., the media holding company of the Lopez group, saw profit jump in the first quarter of the year as the advertising-rich campaign season started.

ABS-CBN said in a stock exchange filing on Thursday that first quarter net income was up 34 percent to P761 million. The growth was driven by its TV and Studio business, where advertising revenues grew by 30 percent compared to the first quarter of 2015.

“As expected, we saw a big jump in advertising revenues driven by a combination of an improvement in our ratings and an increase in airtime placements from regular advertisers and from candidates running for office in the May elections,” Aldrin Cerrado, ABS-CBN’s chief financial officer, said in a statement.

Company officials last week said election-related advertising was already at  the P2.3-billion mark and was poised to eclipse figures booked in the last presidential election in 2010.

The company also credited earnings to a new airtime pricing scheme last year called Cost Per Individual Rating Point system or CPIRP, where advertisers pay based on the company’s ratings performance. It will be the first full year of its implementation in 2016.

Cerrado said the company intended to further boost its audience share as it improves the reception of channel 2 in the Mega Manila area and Central Luzon through the distribution of its ABS-CBN TV Plus boxes.

This would be achieved by the company’s foray into Digital Terrestrial Television or DTT.

Since it was launched in February of last year,  ABS-CBN said it had sold over 1.2 million ABS-CBN TV Plus boxes.