ABS-CBN Corporation, the country’s leading media and entertainment company, reported P 41.6 billion in consolidated revenue for 2016, bringing its net income to P3.5 billion, 39% higher than the P2.5 billion reported in 2015.
“We are very pleased to have exceeded our earnings guidance for 2016,” said ABS-CBN Chief Financial Officer Aldrin Cerrado. “Full year growth in advertising revenues, boosted by election-related spending, was about 11%.”
ABS-CBN adopted the cost per individual rating point pricing (CPIRP) scheme in 2015, which rewards the company for an increase in ratings. 2016 was its first full year of implementation.
“Our continued strong leadership in national audience share was also a key contributor to our record performance because improved ratings now translate to increased revenues,” said Cerrado. “We have also been able to manage our costs and expenses efficiently.”
Cost and expenses were up only 6% last year. In particular, ABS-CBN was successful in its continuing efforts to control production costs and reduced expenses by about 4% on a per hour basis compared to 2015.
Based on Kantar Media national TV ratings covering both urban and rural homes, the top 10 programs for 2016 for free-to-air television were all produced by ABS-CBN with “FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano” consistently topping all programs.
The company’s roll-out of its Digital Terrestrial Television or DTT helped boost audience share with over 2.3 million boxes sold as of the end of December 2016.
Total assets rose to P72.7 billion as of the end December 2016 compared to P69.9 billion in 2015. The company’s equity base increased to P31.7 billion as of the end of December 2016.
ABS-CBN Group CFO Ron Valdueza said, “We are also extremely happy with the performance of our subsidiaries last year. The healthy growth in our advertising revenues coupled with the accomplishments of our different business units enabled us to deliver record earnings performance for ABS-CBN.”
“Star Cinema generated over P2.9 billion in ticket sales both here and abroad. ‘Super Parental Guardians,’ which was released last November, brought in more than P600 million in ticket sales, making it the highest-grossing Filipino film,” added Valdueza.
SkyCable saw an 8% growth in revenues, driven by the introduction of SkyDirect, its newly launched Direct-to-Home Pay TV offering, and the continued sharp increase in its broadband subscriber base. By year-end, the company had over 112,000 SkyDirect subscribers and more than 200,000 broadband subscribers, bringing Sky’s total subscriber base to over one million.
Consistent with the company’s vision of touching the lives of Kapamilyas overseas, ABS-CBN Global staged “ASAP New York” at the Barclay’s Center. Around 9,000 Kapamilyas were entertained by over 50 artists during the four-hour show. The Filipino Channel (TFC) is now being watched by over three million Filipinos abroad.
Kidzania, the company’s educational theme park, has attracted over 360,000 visitors for 2016, while its TV shopping channel O Shopping generated over P820 million in sales.
