ABS-CBN profit shoots up on poll fever

Broadcasting giant ABS-CBN Corp. grew its nine-month net profit by 50 percent year-on-year to P2.85 billion as the national elections boosted advertising revenues.

ABS-CBN chief financial officer Aldrin Cerrado also attributed the growth to the firm’s continued leadership in viewership ratings, specifically for its primetime shows.

“We are confident that we will meet our earnings guidance of between P3.2 to 3.5 billion for 2016,” Cerrado said.

Consolidated revenues in the first nine months surged to P31.1 billion, close to 12 percent higher than the level generated in the same period last year.

Cerrado also pointed to ABS-CBN’s ongoing program to manage costs more efficiently.

“We have been successful in controlling production costs and have been able to reduce expenses on a per program basis compared to last year,” he said.

Citing the latest survey from market research firm Kantar Media, the top 10 programs for the first nine months of 2016 for free-to-air television covering both urban and rural homes were all produced by ABS-CBN, with “FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano” consistently ranking number one.

Kantar Media uses a nationwide panel size of 2,610 urban and rural homes that represent 100 percent of the total Philippine TV viewing population.

The company also reported Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) helped boost audience share with over 1.6 million ABS-CBN TVplus boxes sold as of the end of September.

The company said online viewership of its content also remained strong with ABS-CBN’s video-on-demand service iWant TV continuing to garner millions of page views very month.

Total assets rose to P74.7 billion as of the end-September from P70.4 billion as of end-2015. The company’s equity base ended the period at P30.8 billion.

ABS-CBN also issued an upbeat report on the performance of ventures outside its TV and studio businesses, namely cable subscription, ticketed experiences and durable goods.

Ron Valdueza, ABS-CBN group chief finance officer said: “Sky Cable has improved its profitability, assisted by cost control measures and the continued steep increase in its broadband subscriber base.”

Valdueza said the launch of Sky’s direct-to-home pay TV service nationwide under the brand SkyDirect last May had brought in over 70,000 subscribers.

“By yearend, Sky’s total Pay TV and Broadband subscriber base should breach the one million mark,” he said.

ABS-CBN’s Filipino Channel (TFC) is now being watched by over three million Filipinos abroad. Kidzania, the company’s educational theme park, has welcomed over 200,000 visitors since the beginning of the year, while the O Shopping Channel has generated P612 million in sales of various products for the first nine months of 2016.