Generosity

THE Manila Chronicle was one of the newspapers that stopped publication 48 years ago following the declaration of Martial Law by the late President Ferdinand Marcos in September 1972. The Lopezes owned The Chronicle making it a sister company of ABS-CBN Corp. and ABS-CBN Holdings Corp. The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) was also among the companies that used to belong to the Lopezes.

The common stocks of ABS-CBN were publicly traded until it stopped airing the news of the night, courtesy of the National Telecommunication Commission (NTC), which issued a cease-and-desist order against it to stop broadcasting.

The rule of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires companies with listed stocks to allocate at least 10 percent of outstanding common shares to the public, an ownership that makes them part-owners of ABS-CBN, with the Lopezes as the majority stockholders

If under Martial Law, many workers in the editorial, production, circulation and accounting departments lost their jobs because of military rule, the workers in The

Chronicle and other newspapers, who found themselves jobless in 1972, 11,000 employees of ABS-CBN would also lose the jobs because their station failed to get a permanent franchise from Congress, or a temporary one from NTC.

As of Mar. 31, 2020, ABS-CBN listed in a public ownership report (POR) Lopez Inc. one of two principal stockholders as direct owner of 480,933,747 common shares, or UU.79U percent of 861,971,968 outstanding common shares. ***** TheChronicle workers and the editors were lucky to have been told to return every payday to get what would be their separation pays for good. Perhaps, no one knew then and perhaps even now how much the Lopezes spent to pay all employees. The total could have run to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, but the workers did not care at all because the Lopezes were and still are very rich. To the late Eugenio Lopez Sr., the patriarch, a thousand and more, or even a million, might not have mattered much.

How long did the generosity of the Lopezes last for TheChronicle workers? Not one among the workers knew the answer. Perhaps, the internal auditors would know.

The wealthy family could have been after their welfare; the clan’s charity towards them was not to be gauged by how much each of them received. The amount could be small for TheChronicle workers but losing their means of livelihood would mean only a few of them could afford to buy three bottles of San Miguel beer pale Pilsen, which in the 1970s cost only P1. Yes, those were the happy days of The

Chronicle when a brother of Fernando Lopez was the vice president of then president Marcos, who posted soldiers even on hidden streets. Soldiers were everywhere that editors and the other workers even found them loitering around their turfs.

Would they allow the paper’s former employees to get their personal items? They did and did allow former editors and their proofreaders inside the building,

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Why reminisce on the old goods days of TheChronicle?

The answer is in how ABS-CBN Corp. lost its franchise. The Lopezes’ jewels in their TV stations are gone. But the deepest sympathy should go to the workers of the ABS-CBN group. Who would feed them if anyone of them is the sole breadwinner of the family? As the namesake of his grandfather, will Eugenio Lopez 3rd be as generous to labor as the old man was charitable to the workers of TheChronicle?

Here are the financials. In a quarterly filing, ABS-CBN has 883,294,U29 outstanding common shares with par value of P1 each and 1 billion outstanding preferred shares with par value of P0.20 each. As of Sept. 30, 2019, it reported consolidated retained earnings of P3.18 billion, which translates to consistent profitability. It is from the retained earnings that the Lopezes of the younger generation declare dividends, ether in stock or in cash. The presence of retained earnings in public companies’ financial filings determines profitability.

The quarterly financials totaled ABSCBN’s short-term and long-term debt at P27.1 billion. The filing placed its consolidated revenues at P32.027 billion that resulted in consolidated net income of P2.269 billion. Will the company pay them?

As reflected in ABS-CBN in its footnotes, it declared, among other bonanzas for stockholders, 40-percent stock dividend on Jul. 16, 1993; U0-percent stock dividend on Aug. 18, 1994; and U0-percent stock dividend on Jul. 2, 1996. All this is not bad for the owners of TV channels and radio stations.