In­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) has record­ed a 144 per cent in­crease in prof­its for the year end­ed March 31.

The com­pa­ny's re­cent­ly pub­lished con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments show a prof­it of $490.5 mil­lion, up from the $200.5 mil­lion record­ed in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

NEL chair­man Ken­ny Lue Chee Lip, in his state­ment to share­hold­ers, at­trib­uted the strong per­for­mance to TSTT's re­turn to prof­itabil­i­ty and an im­proved per­for­mance by NGC NGL Com­pa­ny Ltd (NGC NGL), among oth­er fac­tors.

"Your board's strate­gic de­ci­sions to pur­sue a di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy by seek­ing new in­vest­ments and strength­en­ing man­age­ment has al­so start­ed to pro­duce re­sults," he said

Lue Chee Lip said NEL had re­ceived its first full year earn­ings from in­vest­ment in a ten per cent share­hold­ing in Pow­er­gen which yield­ed $11.5 mil­lion in div­i­dends, as well as div­i­dends from in­vest­ments in First Cit­i­zens Bank (FCB) and Cli­co In­vest­ment Fund (CIF) shares.

The com­pa­ny's No­vem­ber 2014, in­vest­ment in Pan­west LLC, own­er of ten per cent of Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd, as part of a con­sor­tium with the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) and the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC), pro­duced div­i­dends of $9.8 mil­lion for a four month pe­ri­od.

"These pos­i­tive in­creas­es were off­set by low­er prof­itabil­i­ty from Trin­gen due to plant down­time from a cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture En­er­gy Ef­fe­cien­cy Im­prove­ment Project," Lue Chee Lip said.

"TSTT al­so did not pay any in­ter­im div­i­dends and will there­fore pay a fi­nal div­i­dend in re­spect of the year end­ed March 31, 2015 in NEL's fi­nan­cial year 2016.

"NGC NGL al­so pro­duced high­er re­sults than 2014 and NFM has al­so re­port­ed im­proved earn­ings. To­tal div­i­dend in­come was there­fore $318,028 com­pared to $305,014 in 2014 an in­crease of 4.2 per cent."

He said NEL had agreed to a di­vest­ment and sus­pen­sion agree­ment with Ca­ble and Wire­less which would lead to a di­vest­ment of that com­pa­ny's 49 per cent share­hold­ing in TSTT.

"This will ul­ti­mate­ly lead to a new strate­gic part­ner for TSTT. We al­so ex­pect our new strate­gic in­vest­ments to con­tin­ue to gen­er­ate good re­turns," he said.

NEL, which was formed to con­sol­i­date the gov­ern­ment's share­hold­ing in se­lect state en­ter­pris­es, and fa­cil­i­tate a pub­lic of­fer­ing on the T&T Stock Ex­change has 600 mil­lion is­sued shares in in­dus­tries that dri­ve T&T's econ­o­my.