GMA Network posts P2.82-B net income

MANILA, Philippines - GMA Network managed a slight improvement in its bottom line, as it posted a 0.1 percent increase in its net income to P2.82 billion for 2010 from P2.57 billion in 2009.

Revenues grew by half a billion to P14.29 billion, amid a slew of difficulties that the company encountered last year.

Consolidated airtime revenues from all platforms climbed four percent to P13.19 billion backed mostly by political advertisements during the election period, which totaled P2.054 billion as against the P636 million booked in 2009.

Revenues from international and subsidiaries operations, meanwhile, grew three percent to P1.107 billion.

Flagship business unit Channel 7 chalked in the biggest revenues worth P12.2 billion, three percent over the preceding year’s P11.8 billion. GMA Radio inked its success story with revenues worth P535.6 million, or a sales hike of 43 percent as against 2009.

GMA International brought in subscription and advertising revenues worth P925.37 million, up eight percent from 2009’s P855.18 million on strong sales in the US, Canada, Middle East, North Africa, Asia Pacific and Europe.

Total operating expenses were up by P619.45 million or eight percent year-on-year to P8.461 billion. Production costs went up by eight percent on account of the non-recurring election coverage as well as additional in-house produced programs in the weekday late afternoon grid and the weekend flagship entertainment variety program Party Pilipinas. The weekday primetime programs also had higher programming costs relative to their counterparts from a year ago.

General and administrative expenses were kept at a single-digit growth of eight percent to P3.733 billion.

Earnings before income, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) reached P4.711 billion, four percent behind 2009’s P4.889 billion. But the drop in non-cash expenses drove the net income to settle at P2.821 billion.

The company paid out cash dividends to its shareholders amounting to P1.215 billion in December. It was the second payout of dividends for 2010 – the first of which amounted to P2.187 billion disbursed in May. Officials said GMA need not rely on foreign loans or external funds to run its operations since it has enough reserves and remains debt-free to-date.

GMA chairman and CEO Felipe Gozon noted that coming from a roller-coaster-like-ride in 2010, they look forward to a much more profitable year ahead with 58 percent of revenue targets already signed at the closing of last year.

GMA already booked more than P7 billion worth of sales for 2011 as of December 2010.

“GMA proved it can withstand the tests of times. I am confident the hard days are over and we can look forward to better times ahead. The entire organization – with footprints in regional, national, and international markets – is upbeat to exceed the records made in 2010 this 2011,” Gozon said.

GMA’s international channels – GMA Pinoy TV (GPTV) and GMA Life TV (GLTV) – both recorded double-digit growth in subscriptions by end fourth quarter 2010. GPTV’s subscribers were over 273,000 as of the mentioned period, up 16 percent year-on-year. Of this number, 125,000 are also subscribers of GLTV, increasing subscription rate by 17 percent from 2009.

On the other hand, GMA’s syndication sales and acquisition arm, GMA Worldwide Inc. (GWI), sold a total of $687,629 worth of programs in 2010 to countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia.

GMA also said that it surpassed ABS-CBN in national television ratings, based on the most recent data of Nielsen TV Audience Measurement – the broadcast industry’s more trusted ratings service provider.

According to the full February data (Feb. 27 to 28 based on overnight ratings), GMA went further by 2.2 points in household audience shares in National Urban Television Audience Measurement (NUTAM) with 34.2 points versus ABS-CBN’s 32 points. GMA was also ahead of TV5 even if the latter’s 14.9 is doubled.

In Urban Luzon, which made up 77 percent of total television households nationwide, GMA ranked ahead of competition by huge margins. It finished its February programming with 37.9 household share points, 12.9 points away from ABS’ 27 points; and 21.2 points higher than TV5’s 16.7.

In viewer-rich Mega Manila, which has expanded coverage to include Batangas and Laguna since January 2011 and now comprise 58 percent of total television households nationwide, GMA had 39.4 share points, or a 14.3-point margin over ABS’ 25.1 points; and 22.1 points higher than TV5’s 17.3 points.