ABS-CBN Broadcast Center, South Triangle, Quezon City. Gigie Cruz, ABS-CBN News MANILA — Carlo Katigbak, President and CEO of ABS-CBN, said on Thursday that the company will continue to seek partners in free TV, pay TV and online streaming to create and distribute the best content. “We hope to grow our audience to a much larger base than we had before,” Katigbak said at the virtual annual shareholders meeting. He added that ABS-CBN will focus on what it does best telling stories that inspire, inform and ignite change. “The publication never described ABS-CBN. "What we did best was telling stories," he said. “The heart and soul of ABS-CBN is in its storytelling,” he added. Katigbak talked about the success of last year's shows and movies, including the hugely popular "Ang Probinsyano", which recorded a 38 percent audience share, "Partners in Crime" and "An Inconvenient Love", which reached P177 million at the box office. It was ranked 9th on Netflix worldwide for non-English movies. However, he acknowledged that there are still difficulties. “There is still an uphill climb to profitability, but the light at the end of the tunnel has gotten sharper and brighter.” Katigbak said ABS-CBN disposed of unnecessary assets to raise cash and improve production quality and quantity. ABS-CBN generated revenue of P3 billion from the sale of various properties, which helped offset financing costs and reduce the company's net loss from £5.67 billion in 2021 to P2.63 billion in 2022. Meanwhile, revenues rose to P19.2 billion in 2022 from £17.8 billion a year earlier. Following the news of the sale of the ABS-CBN campus in Quezon City, Katigbak announced that there is no agreement yet on the redevelopment of the property. ABS-CBN was forced to drastically cut costs and sell its assets after its franchise was not renewed by Congress in 2020. Failure to renew led to employee layoffs and the closure of several business units. TeleRadyo, which was launched in 2007, was the last to stop its operations. It will officially close at the end of June 2023. Shareholders asked when ABS-CBN could host live viewers for shows like ASAP and Magandang Buhay; this is a reflection of how much viewers miss the live Kapamilya shows. Katigbak said that they could not host live viewers yet due to financial constraints, but they will inform the public as soon as possible. news.abs-cbn is the official news site of ABS-CBN Corp. RELATED VIDEO Gotopnews.com