ABS-CBN Corp. expects its current momentum to carry the company back to profitability, its top executive said, after slashing its debt by more than half, cutting overhead spending by 54 percent, and rebuilding revenues to their highest level since it lost its broadcast franchise in 2020.
‘We recognize that we are not yet where we need to be,’ ABS-CBN President and CEO Carlo Katigbak told shareholders at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting on Wednesday. ‘We continue to believe with complete confidence that the momentum you are seeing will carry us through to profitability.’
The media conglomerate has brought down its outstanding debt to just under P8.5 billion from P20.5 billion in 2019, excluding Sky Cable Corp.-a 58-percent reduction achieved largely through asset sales, Katigbak said.
The company has also fundamentally restructured its cost base. General and administrative expenses and manpower costs, excluding Sky, fell to a combined P6.9 billion in 2025 from P15 billion in 2019, before the franchise loss.
Revenues excluding Sky reached P12.6 billion last year, the highest since the shutdown of its free-to-air operations. This compares with P9.3 billion in 2021, the first full year without a franchise, though still well below the P33.2 billion it generated in 2019.
Recurring net loss excluding Sky, before one-time gains and losses, narrowed to P2.5 billion in 2025 from P8.3 billion in 2020, with losses shrinking every year since.
‘This is a new ABS-CBN that we are building, faithful to our mission of public service, but adapting to a different time and circumstance,’ Katigbak said. ‘We no longer depend on owning platforms to reach audiences, instead building partnerships that would have once seemed impossible.’
Among these is the company’s collaboration with longtime rival GMA Network Inc. on ‘Pinoy Big Brother,’ as well as content deals with Amazon Prime, where its mini-series ‘The Silent Noise’ won Best Asian Content at the Global OTT Awards 2026, and Netflix, where ‘Sosyal Climbers’ topped the Philippine charts and cracked the platform’s global top 10 for non-English films.
The company’s P-pop group BINI has logged 2 billion streams and became the first all-Filipino group to perform at Coachella. The group was also tapped by Dreamworks Animation and Universal Pictures to perform the soundtrack for the film ‘Forgotten Island.’
Star Cinema produced the three highest-grossing Filipino films of 2025, with a combined box office of P900 million, while the company’s YouTube channel has grown to over 55 million subscribers, the largest entertainment channel in Southeast Asia.
Katigbak said the company’s survival is a test of its public service mission.
‘It is a chance to decide whether ‘In the Service of the Filipino’ was just a compelling slogan that served us well in good times, or if it is the genuine reason for our existence, proven because we embraced it in impossible times.’
On a consolidated basis with Sky, ABS-CBN posted revenues of P15.8 billion in 2025, down 9 percent from P17.3 billion, as the cable TV and broadband segment continued to lose subscribers. Consolidated net loss narrowed 23 percent to P4.7 billion from P6.1 billion the prior year.