Sean Nero

The ANSA McAL Group rep­re­sents the best op­por­tu­ni­ty for sus­tained wealth cre­ation at a time when the T&T econ­o­my is be­ing chal­lenged by the slump in glob­al en­er­gy prices, chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Ger­ry Brooks told prospec­tive in­vestors on Wednes­day.

Brooks, who de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the an­nu­al awards cer­e­mo­ny of Ansa Coat­ings Lim­it­ed (ACL) at the Trinidad Hilton and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, high­light­ed the sta­bil­i­ty of the group and their quest to achieve bet­ter re­turns which com­mer­cial banks could not match. He said with bumper sales be­ing re­port­ed by ACL, in ad­di­tion to its sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in key sec­tors com­ple­ment­ed by a buoy­ant share price, the de­ci­sion was clear.

"The group's share price con­tin­ues to be buoy­ant, ap­pre­ci­at­ing to $66.52 to­day. This must be jux­ta­posed against the back­drop of a lo­cal T&T Stock Ex­change In­dex, which has de­clined by 2.9 per cent and lo­cal in­ter­est rates, which of­fer one per cent. Re­gion­al stock in­dices in Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica post­ed re­turns of 17.4 per cent and 5.6 per cent re­spec­tive­ly.

"The com­pound­ed three-year re­turn on ANSA McAL shares is plus 10 per cent. It is a proven in­vest­ment ve­hi­cle for in­sti­tu­tion­al, cor­po­rate and in­di­vid­ual in­vestors," Brooks said. ANSA McAL's di­ver­si­ty across mul­ti­ple sec­tors and its re­gion­al foot­print "pro­vide an ex­cel­lent de­fence and of­fence in what is an in­creas­ing­ly volatile and un­pre­dictable en­vi­ron­ment."

He said that 2014 was an­oth­er re­ward­ing year for the group which had made sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in the me­dia, man­u­fac­tur­ing, bev­er­age and au­to sec­tors to deep­en both pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness.

"This will al­low us to nav­i­gate the cur­rent rip­ples in the econ­o­my, while en­sur­ing long term growth. These in­vest­ments and our proven abil­i­ty to emerge stronger from eco­nom­ic chal­lenges have in­spired the con­tin­ued con­fi­dence of in­vestors," he said.

The ACL ex­ec­u­tive team came in for high praise for achiev­ing record sales as well as record out­put in litreage from its plant. The team al­so opened two new shops and up­grad­ed sev­en. In 2014 the com­pa­ny com­plet­ed its sin­gle largest floor coat­ings project for a food and bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­er.

Brooks said this un­der­scored the com­pa­ny's com­pe­tence and abil­i­ty to un­der­take sim­i­lar fu­ture projects lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly as it sought to deep­en its ser­vice po­si­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor, lever­ag­ing its re­la­tion­ship with De­voe, In­ter­na­tion­al, Glid­den and our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to bring pre­mier so­lu­tions to the oil, gas and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.