ABS-CBN’s president and chief executive officer (CEO) Carlo Katigbak expressed the media company’s commitment to seek partnerships in free TV, pay TV, and online streaming to produce and distribute more exceptional content.
Speaking at the virtual annual stockholders’ meeting on Thursday, May 25, Katigbak emphasized their goal of expanding viewership to a much larger audience than before. According to him, storytelling is the “core essence” of ABS-CBN, which drives their ability to inspire, inform, and instigate change.
“Broadcasting never defined ABS-CBN. What we excelled at was telling stories. The heart and soul of ABS-CBN is in storytelling,” he said.
Katigbak cited the successes of their recent shows and films, including the immensely popular FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano, which garnered a 38 percent audience share; Partners in Crime, which achieved P177 million in box office receipts; and An Inconvenient Love, which ranked 9th globally on Netflix for non-English movies.
Despite acknowledging the company’s ongoing challenges, Katigbak expressed optimism about its path back to profitability.
“While profitability remains an uphill battle, we can now see a brighter and clearer path ahead.”
To raise funds and enhance production capabilities, ABS-CBN has divested “unnecessary assets,” generating P3 billion from property sales that helped offset financing costs and reduce the company’s net loss to P2.63 billion in 2022, compared to P5.67 billion in 2021. Furthermore, their revenues have increased to P19.2 billion in 2022 from P17.8 billion in 2021.
ABS-CBN faced significant cost-cutting measures and asset sales following the non-renewal of its franchise by the Duterte-allied Congress in 2020, which led to employee layoffs and the closure of several business units. One of its news channels, TeleRadyo, established in 2007, became the latest to cease operations at the end of June 2023.
