THE television broadcast firm owned by Manuel V. Pangilinan needs to cut its financial losses by half this year if it aims to break even next year, TV5 Network Inc. President Vincent P. Reyes said.
And Reyes is optimistic this could be done saying on Monday that the company’s net loss improved by 43 percent last year compared to 2016. He, however, did not provide absolute figures.
“We had a very good 2017. And so [if] we go on the same kind of things, then, I think we are going to be able to achieve our target,” he told reporters during a news briefing in Makati City.
TV5 Networks is owned by MediaQuest Holdings Inc., a wholly owned unit of the beneficial trust fund of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT). Pangilinan chairs the latter company.
Reyes said he is bullish on the prospects of the firm’s goal, citing one of the drivers of this target is the firm’s purchase of license with the ESPN brand of Disney Co. ESPN, to note, has also been struggling with its financial ills since last year.
“I’m very optimistic always,” he said. “From what we did in 2017, we hope to improve the business by another 50 percent by the end of the year. That’s the kind of phase that’s going to take us into a good position by 2019.”
With the multimedia licensing and co-branding of both entities late last year, Reyes added the way they approach their business now really is “from a 360-degree perspective,” wherein they are “centered not only in generating content but even the way they monetize it.”
“So, if before we had an ad sales group that was focused only on selling television [TV] ads, now it’s 360 [degrees], given digital as well as online. All the properties are all part of that package. And so we took a good look at the numbers,” he said.
Reyes added even before they tied up with ESPN, the company’s portal that contained mostly contents from the US and other international sports already enjoyed 24 million page views in December 2016. He claims the number of views grew to 30 million in December last year.
“And that’s still ESPN, not yet ESPN5. We had not localized it yet,” Reyes said, adding that after announcing last October that ESPN is coming back to the Philippines, the page views “already jumped.”
“So what I’m saying is, the increase in traffic is going to give us opportunities to monetize and generate revenue. And we really think that it is going to make business sense,” Reyes added. “It’s going to make a lot of business sense to continue that partnership.”