Strong ads growth boosts ABS-CBN income to P2.8B

Broadcast giant ABS-CBN Corp. reported a consolidated revenue of P31.1 billion for the first nine months boosting its net income by 50 percent to P2.85 billion compared to the same period last year.

The profit surge was attribut­ed to strong advertising sales, ABS-CBN Chief Financial Officer Aldrin Cerrado said.

The election-related spend­ing and the top ratings of prime­time shows led ABS-CBN to prof­itability.

“Our ratings performance is key since we have adopted the cost per individual rating point pricing (CPIRP) scheme,” Cerrado said.

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

He said ABS-CBN has an ongoing cost efficiency program in place to achieve its target in­come.

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

ABS-CBN said media poll survey conducted through Kan­tar Media revealed that the top 10 programs for the first nine months were productions of ABS-CBN.

It listed the show “FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano” consistently ranking number one (top 1).

The company’s Digital Ter­restrial Television or DTT helped boost audience share with over 1.6 million ABS-CBN TVplus boxes sold as of the end of September.

Kantar Media uses a nationwide panel size of 2,610 urban and rural homes to represent the TV viewing population.

Online viewership of ABS-CBN content also remains strong with ABS-CBN’s vid­eo-on- demand service iWant TV continuing to garner mil­lions of page views very month. RIZA LOZADA