Chair­man of Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) Ken­ny Lue Chee Lip said pru­dent man­age­ment of the com­pa­nies port­fo­lio was re­spon­si­ble for its good per­for­mance is in a pe­ri­od of low oil and gas prices.

In his re­port to share­hold­ers at the com­pa­ny's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing, Lue Chee Lip said three years ago the NEL board em­barked on a strate­gic plan that in­clud­ed di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of its in­vest­ment port­fo­lio in­to oth­er sec­tors in­clud­ing pow­er and util­i­ties, fi­nan­cial ser­vices and down­stream en­er­gy; strength­en­ing of man­age­ment; mon­i­tor­ing per­for­mance of in­vestee com­pa­nies and con­tribut­ing to strate­gic di­rec­tion; in­vest­ment and man­age­ment of cash re­sources to gen­er­ate bet­ter re­turns; and in­creas­ing over­all share­hold­er val­ue and long term sta­bil­i­ty of earn­ings.

"NEL's re­sults for 2015 are a re­flec­tion of the man­age­ment's ex­e­cu­tion of that strate­gic plan over the last three years, re­sult­ing in sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter earn­ings in a pe­ri­od where oil and gas prices have seen a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion," he said.

"In No­vem­ber 2014, we closed an in­vest­ment in Pan West, LLC, the own­er of ten per cent of Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd. This was a joint bid by three in­sti­tu­tions–the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, The Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion and Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd–with each own­ing one third of Pan West.

"This in­vest­ment of US$56 mil­lion will gen­er­ate good re­turns and, along with our 2014 in­vest­ment of US$33 mil­lion in a ten per cent share­hold­ing in Pow­er­Gen, in­creas­es our port­fo­lio of in­vestee com­pa­nies and thus our div­i­dend in­come stream."He said NEL's ma­jor sub­sidiary and a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to its earn­ings, Trin­gen, un­der­took a ma­jor cap­i­tal project, En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy Im­prove­ment Project (EEIP), in the last quar­ter of 2014. This re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant down­time and low­er earn­ings.

The project was fund­ed en­tire­ly from in­ter­nal cash and is ex­pect­ed to im­prove pro­duc­tion and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy on Trin­gen's I plant, con­tribut­ing to bet­ter earn­ings from 2015 on­wards. Lue Chee Lip said Trin­gen's plant util­i­sa­tion and pro­duc­tion con­tin­ue to be af­fect­ed by gas cur­tail­ment is­sues on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

He al­so re­port­ed that in 2014 Ca­ble and Wire­less (CWC) an­nounced a pro­posed merg­er with Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T made ap­proval con­di­tion­al on CWC agree­ing, with NEL, to di­vest its 49 per cent share­hold­ing in TSTT.

He said: "A di­vest­ment and sus­pen­sion agree­ment was sub­se­quent­ly signed be­tween CWC and NEL, and this project is now un­der­way to look for a new strate­gic part­ner for TSTT. Op­er­a­tional­ly, 2015 marked a very good year for TSTT as it start­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of its VSEP plan and de­liv­ered a very good re­turn as it re­turned to prof­itabil­i­ty."

Lue Chee Lip told share­hold­ers that NEL record­ed a prof­it of $490.5 mil­lion for the year end­ed March 31, 2015, com­pared to $200.5 mil­lion the pre­vi­ous year. This was an in­crease of 144.7 per cent. Earn­ings per share was $0.80 com­pared to $0.32 for the pri­or year."TSTT re­turned to prof­itabil­i­ty in 2015 con­tribut­ing $108.6 mil­lion to NEL com­pared to a loss of $226 mil­lion in 2014. This was dri­ven by im­proved op­er­a­tional per­for­mance af­ter mak­ing VSEP pro­vi­sions in 2014," he said.

"NGC NGL al­so per­formed mar­gin­al­ly bet­ter in 2015".NEL re­ceived its first full year earn­ings from in­vest­ment in a ten per cent share­hold­ing in Pow­er­Gen yield­ing $11.5 mil­lion in div­i­dends, as well as div­i­dends from in­vest­ments in First Cit­i­zens Bank and Cli­co In­vest­ment Fund share shares. The com­pa­ny's in­vest­ment in No­vem­ber, 2014, in Pan West, LLC as a mem­ber of a con­sor­tium with the NIB and 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 its shut­down for works as­so­ci­at­ed with the En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy Im­prove­ment Project. This project was fund­ed en­tire­ly from in­ter­nal funds, and there­fore Trin­gen's fi­nal div­i­dends for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2014 will be paid to NEL af­ter our year end of March 31, 2015.

"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," Lue Chee Lip said.