Rapheal John-Lall

Less than a year af­ter com­plet­ing a ma­jor debt re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, the Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) Group has record­ed its high­est rev­enue of $2.1 bil­lion.

Fi­nan­cial re­sults just re­leased by the group al­so show prof­it af­ter tax of $428.8 mil­lion–a sig­nif­i­cant turn­around from loss­es of $211 mil­lion in 2014.

Group chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet told share­hold­ers that in ad­di­tion to suc­cess­ful­ly re­struc­tur­ing its debt, TCL was able to gen­er­ate pos­i­tive cash flow and is "be­com­ing a glob­al com­pa­ny that will be able to op­er­ate and sus­tain it­self over time in this glob­al en­vi­ron­ment."

He added: "We are all faced with the chal­lenges of the glob­al eco­nom­ic cli­mate–one which in T&T is very ob­vi­ous–and with each pass­ing day is be­com­ing more and more ap­par­ent as to the ex­tent of trans­for­ma­tion that needs to take place in this ex­ist­ing en­vi­ron­ment. We at TCL can take com­fort in that we start­ed the process ahead of the curve."

At TCL's 65th an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing at the Trinidad Hilton and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Es­pinet said the group's "un­prece­dent­ed" rev­enue per­for­mance "was main­ly dri­ven by a 12 per cent in­crease in ce­ment sales vol­ume in Ja­maica and a 16 per cent in­crease in clink­er sales vol­umes."

Group CEO Jose Sei­jo Gon­za­lez said giv­en TCL's sound fi­nan­cial base, the com­pa­ny will fo­cus on best prac­tices in health, safe­ty and the en­vi­ron­ment (HSE).

"Nu­mer­ous ac­tions were put in place, in­vest­ing close to $40 mil­lion across group in projects re­lat­ed to em­ploy­ees' well be­ing and the work en­vi­ron­ment," he said.

TCL com­plet­ed a ma­jor debt re­struc­tur­ing in May 2015, af­ter miss­ing debt ser­vice pay­ments in Sep­tem­ber 2014.

The ex­er­cise in­clud­ed an 11 per cent debt pre­pay­ment dis­count and a US$15 mil­lion cash pre­pay­ment, which re­duced its out­stand­ing debt to US$245 mil­lion from about US$292 mil­lion at the end of 2014.

The ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing group, based at Clax­ton Bay, re­fi­nanced its debt through a bridge loan af­ter get­ting an eq­ui­ty in­jec­tion of US$57 mil­lion in March 2015, US$44.8 mil­lion of which Mex­i­can ce­ment mak­er Ce­mex in­ject­ed, in­creas­ing its stake in TCL to 39.5 per cent from 20 per cent through one of its sub­sidiaries, Sier­ra Trad­ing.

TCL used the pro­ceeds of the eq­ui­ty in­jec­tion to fi­nance cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­tures, work­ing cap­i­tal, and strength­en its cash bal­ance. The com­pa­ny al­so en­tered in­to a tech­ni­cal and man­age­r­i­al ser­vices agree­ment with Ce­mex, in­clud­ing sup­port in man­u­fac­tur­ing, pro­cure­ment, plan­ning, ship­ping, and trad­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

As part of the agree­ment, five Ce­mex ex­ec­u­tives were ap­point­ed to TCL's man­age­ment, in­clud­ing the group CEO.

The TCL Group is the lead­ing pro­duc­er and mar­keter of ce­ment and ready-mix prod­ucts in the Caribbean, with eight op­er­at­ing com­pa­nies in T&T, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, Ja­maica and An­guil­la.