Aleem Khan

ANSA McAL prof­its grew 25 per cent in the sec­ond quar­ter (Q2) of 2014 com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year, ac­cord­ing to unau­dit­ed re­sults re­leased by the group's board of di­rec­tors yes­ter­day at the Tatil build­ing in Port-of-Spain."I am pleased to re­port Q2 re­sults are sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved over Q1 2014," group chair­man and CEO A Nor­man Sab­ga said in his state­ment in­tro­duc­ing the re­sults.The group's Q2 2014 prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion was $240 mil­lion ver­sus Q2 2013's $191 mil­lion.

"Our half year re­sults showed prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion of $414M ($405M�2013) up two per cent over the pri­or pe­ri­od and earn­ings per share (EPS) at $1.59 rose 3 per cent," Sab­ga said. EPS in for the same pe­ri­od in 2013 was $1.55.

"Your group is now ahead of last year and we are con­fi­dent of achiev­ing our full year tar­get. Your di­rec­tors have ap­proved an in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.30 per share (same as 2013) which will be paid on No­vem­ber 7, 2014," he said. In ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 110 (1) (a) (i) of the Com­pa­nies Act 1995, the di­rec­tors have fixed Oc­to­ber 24 as the record date for pay­ment of this in­ter­im div­i­dend. The reg­is­ter of mem­bers will be closed on Oc­to­ber 27 to Oc­to­ber 28, 2014, both days in­clu­sive.

The group's to­tal as­sets al­so grew year-on-year (y-o-y), from $11.61 bil­lion as at June 30, 2013, to $12.24 bil­lion as at June 30, 2014. Rev­enue grew al­so but on­ly mar­gin­al­ly from $2.893 bil­lion in for the first six months of 2013 to $2.898 bil­lion in the same pe­ri­od this year. Rev­enue in Q2 2014 inched up from $1.45 bil­lion in Q2 2013 to $1.48 bil­lion.

The group's op­er­at­ing prof­it looked bet­ter in a Q2 2014 ver­sus Q2 2013 com­par­i­son than in the half year com­par­isons for the pe­ri­od. In Q2 2014, op­er­at­ing prof­it was $246 mil­lion while Q2 2013 was $199 mil­lion. For the first half of 2014 op­er­at­ing prof­it had a $6 mil­lion uptick from $418.8 mil­lion from the first half of 2013 to $424.8 mil­lion. To­tal gross rev­enue looked bet­ter by seg­ment with all seg­ments grow­ing ex­cept "au­to­mo­tive, trad­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion."

To­tal gross rev­enue for man­u­fac­tur­ing, pack­ag­ing and brew­ing climbed from $1.08 bil­lion as at June 30, 2013 to $1.16 bil­lion as at June 30 this year. Au­to­mo­tive, trad­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion to­tal gross rev­enue fell from $1.31 bil­lion in 2013 to $1.28 bil­lion this year. To­tal gross rev­enue for in­sur­ance and fi­nan­cial ser­vices grew from $370 mil­lion to $396 mil­lion. To­tal gross rev­enue for "me­dia, ser­vices and par­ent com­pa­ny" grew from $554 mil­lion to $597 mil­lion.

In his wrap up, Sab­ga not­ed that the group has "strong Q2 prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion (PBT) per­for­mance," and that the T&T econ­o­my is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue to grow. He said "re­gion­al economies (are) still un­der­per­form­ing" and men­tioned that "fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­vest­ment port­fo­lios (re­main) volatile." How­ev­er, he said he was "con­fi­dent of de­liv­er­ing our full year tar­gets."

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from the floor about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ANSA McAL "re­brand­ing" and plac­ing the name ANSA be­fore all its com­pa­nies as Massy has done, Sab­ga said: "We've done what they have done, so they've done the right thing. I can on­ly com­pli­ment them."

He said re­brand­ing was done about ten years ago, adding that "they've done a good job at ex­e­cu­tion" of their re-brand­ing. He said, how­ev­er, some com­pa­nies with­in the ANSA McAL Group have names that date more than 100 years, so there will be no change to the Guardian, Carib and oth­er "icon­ic brands" through­out the Caribbean. He quot­ed fel­low di­rec­tor An­drew Sab­ga who said that in the case of Carib, the brand val­ue may well ex­ceed the as­set val­ue.