ABS-CBN BEATS RIVALS IN ADVERTISING REVENUES!

Due to non-recurring gains last year from political advertisements, financial disclosures of ABS-CBN and GMA-7 created a huge turmoil in the realm of Network war.  To shed light to this perplexing issue let us first take a glimpse on how these figures work and what they represent.

Non-recurring items are income/s from non-regular transactions. In other words these are items that are one-time only like Political advocacies during election years and the sale of Sky Cable's Philippine  Depository Receipt (shares). These items are non comparable because they are not repeated annually. 

REVENUES:

A. Consolidated Income:

On Consolidated Income from consumer sales and advertising services (net of agency and co-producer's share), ABS-CBN earned P5.85 billion  versus GMA's P2.69 billion, both down by 15% and 12% respectively year-on-year. Striping out political gains incurred last year, ABS-CBN and GMA Network grew 6% and 29% respectively. But taking out ABS-CBN's share sale of Sky Cable this, comparative data shows it would have declined 6% on regular revenues.

Gross Revenues

ABS-CBN = P7.75 billion (2010) 

ABS-CBN = P6.56 billion (2011) down 15%

GMA = P3.63 billion (2010)

GMA = P3.14 billion (2011) down 13%

Net Revenue (Actual Income)

ABS-CBN = P6.92 billion (2010) 

ABS-CBN = P5.85 billion (2011) down 15%

GMA = P3.06 billion (2010)

GMA = P2.69 billion (2011) down 12%

Net Revenue (Without non-recurring Items)

ABS-CBN = P5.52 billion (2010) 

ABS-CBN = P5.18 billion (2011) down 6%

GMA = P2.09 billion (2010)

GMA = P2.69 billion (2011) Up 29%

Remarks: ABS-CBN Corp. still outmatched rival GMA Network Inc. in revenue generation with its much diversified portfolio, but it suffered slower growth year-on-year caused by weaker contributions from ABS-CBN Global. TFC lose about 70,000 subscribers worldwide while GPTV gained an additional 25,000 subscribers. Without one time gains, ABS-CBN's revenues declined 6% while GMA-7 zoomed 29% year-on-year.

AIRTIME REVENUES

Airtime Revenues, strictly speaking, measures how much advertisers patronize television networks. This, in other words, should be the basis of arguing whether which channel is the more recognized  no.1 TV Network.

However it is difficult to extract the exact amount channel 2 and channel 7 are generating from tv advertisements. Nevertheless, mere airtime figures already gives us the picture of the actual ad incomes because fundamentally they make the bulk of the airtime revenues.

GMA-7 in their financial disclosure indicated a 14% drop in airtime sales, while ABS-CBN also experienced a 21% relative decline. But stripping out non-regular advocacy ads, GMA-7 grew 21% while ABS-CBN grew 10%. Of GMA Network's P2.87 billion airtime sales,  95% or P2.72 billion came from channel 7, this was up 25% the previous year. ABS-CBN however did not disclose the actual amount channel 2 is contributing from its P4.01 billion advertising sales. But we can hypothesis that from channel 2's estimated 75-90% share, its airtime sales is way bigger at P3 billion to P3.6 billion compared to GMA's P2.72 billion.

Thus we can hypothesize that ABS-CBN is still the industry recognized leading broadcaster.

 

Airtime Revenue 

ABS-CBN = P5.06 billion (2010) 

ABS-CBN = P4.01 billion (2011) down 21%

GMA = P3.34 billion (2010)

GMA = P2.87 billion (2011) down 14%

Airtime Revenue (without non-recurring items)

ABS-CBN = P3.66 billion (2010) 

ABS-CBN = P4.01 billion (2011) Up 10%

GMA = P2.37 billion (2010)

GMA = P2.87 billion (2011) Up 21%

Airtime Revenue (per channel)

GMA-7 = P2.18 billion (2010)

GMA-7 = P2.72 billion (2011) Up 25%

Note: Net Income and Expenditures will come on a separate article.