Nadaleen Singh

The ANSA McAL Group of Com­pa­nies achieved $802 mil­lion in prof­it af­ter tax and for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year crossed six bil­lion in rev­enue, chair­man and chief ex­ec­u­tive Nor­man Sab­ga told share­hold­ers yes­ter­day.

Giv­ing high­lights of the fi­nan­cial state­ments for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31 2014, Sab­ga said the group's to­tal as­sets now ex­ceed $13 bil­lion and liq­uid­i­ty stood at $1.3 mil­lion.

At the group's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing at Tatil Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, Sab­ga said in re­sponse to a ques­tion about liq­uid­i­ty from a share­hold­er said the group was in an en­vi­able po­si­tion "where we have too much cash."

Fi­nance di­rec­tor Aneal Ma­haraj lat­er ex­plained the group's cash sur­plus po­si­tion: "Cash avail­able is close to $1 bil­lion and I ex­clude the pub­licly list­ed com­pa­nies in the group. There is on­ly one bor­row­ing third par­ty for the group and that is last year we did draw down on a US$20 mil­lion cred­it line and that re­mains in place to­day."

Ma­haraj said the pur­pose of the cred­it line was to source US cur­rent­ly to pay over­seas ven­dors on time. He said ANSA McAL is high­ly se­lec­tive in how it spends the $1 bil­lion in ex­cess cash it has at hand.

"Cash and sur­plus cash is not an is­sue. Be­ing se­lec­tive...yes we are se­lec­tive in how we spend it."

Sab­ga said while the group's fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor de­clined by 23 per cent, with lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al port­fo­lios gen­er­at­ing $97 mil­lion less than in the pre­vi­ous year, there were strong gains in the au­to­mo­tive, trad­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion seg­ments.

The sec­tors gen­er­at­ing the high­est gross rev­enue were man­u­fac­tur­ing with $2.4 mil­lion and au­to­mo­tive, trad­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion with $2.7 mil­lion.

Dur­ing the meet­ing Sab­ga an­nounced that the group of com­pa­nies had been re-cer­ti­fied as an ap­proved em­ploy­er by the As­so­ci­a­tion of Char­tered Cer­ti­fied Ac­coun­tants (AC­CA). He said Ma­haraj had been in­ter­viewed by AC­CA in­ter­na­tion­al and fea­tured on the front page of its mag­a­zine.

He said in the group's an­nu­al re­port: "Our bal­ance sheet has nev­er been stronger but we are nev­er com­pla­cent. We re­mind our­selves that adapt­abil­i­ty, not just strength, is key to long term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

"In 2014, your group com­mit­ted in­vest­ments of $184 mil­lion ($276 mil­lion - 2013) across sev­er­al sec­tors in busi­ness im­prove­ment and new busi­ness projects.

"Con­stant re­view of our gov­er­nance and ad­min­is­tra­tion struc­tures to ver­i­fy best prac­tice is main­tained in our op­er­a­tions and is sec­ond na­ture in the group."

Re­port­ing on the group's per­for­mance in the Bar­ba­dos mar­ket, Nicholas Mout­tet, pres­i­dent and CEO of ANSA McAL (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd, said: "We are the sin­gle largest con­trib­u­tor out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have done well in the last year and that was main­ly due to some con­sol­i­da­tion and re­struc­tur­ing of our busi­ness in Bar­ba­dos.

"De­spite a chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment we are bear­ing fruit in terms of the re-or­gan­i­sa­tion of our busi­ness there."