ABS-CBN Corp. plans to focus on growing its digital and international businesses in the next five years in the absence of a congressional franchise.
“Our recent development is to refocus ourselves in what we do best. We commit to our partnership with A2Z and TV5 to help us distribute our content to many people as possible.
We will also continue our effort to develop our digital businesses and international businesses,” Carlo Katigbak, ABS-CBN president and chief executive officer, said when asked about the company’s plan in the next five years during its virtual annual stockholders meeting.
Katigbak added the company is licensing its content to global digital platforms like Netflix and iflix, while it also exported television programs to many countries all over the world including Asia, Europe and Africa.
ABS-CBN said it made progress on its digital initiatives as iWant TFC now has 4 million monthly active viewers. The network is also among the top Youtube channels in the world with 16 billion views while ABS-CBN.com reached 2.5 million daily users, said Katigbak.
In 2020, ABS-CBN revenues dropped to P21.4 billion and it registered a net loss of P13.5 billion due to the non-renewal of its franchise.
“These numbers are the pains that we are going through. Despite the bleed financial performance last year, we are optimistic that better times will come, the economy will improve, our audiences will return and the bets we made on our digital and international businesses will pay off,” noted Katigbak.
In the first quarter of 2021, ABS-CBN reported a net loss of P1.9 billion, more than double the losses reported in the same period last year, attributed to lower revenues from both advertising and consumer sales business, following the telecom regulator’s order to stop its broadcast operation in May last year and the eventual denial of its franchise renewal in July 2020.
