Rapheal John-Lall

The ANSA McAL Group record­ed a 9.2 per cent in­crease in prof­it be­fore tax for 2015. Group chair­man and CEO Nor­man Sab­ga said the prof­it be­fore tax was $1.163 bil­lion, up from $1.065 bil­lion for the pre­vi­ous year.

The re­sults, which were an­nounced yes­ter­day, al­so show that the group's earn­ings per share (EPS) im­proved by 12 per cent to $4.45, from $3.97 in 2014 and rev­enues stood at $6.2 bil­lion which is two per cent high­er than the pri­or year mark of $6.1 bil­lion.

Sab­ga said all of the group's seg­ments gen­er­at­ed ac­cept­able rev­enue growth lev­els in 2015 that ex­ceed­ed 2014. Man­u­fac­tur­ing, pack­ag­ing and brew­ing grew by 13 per cent, while au­to­mo­tive, trad­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion was up by nine per cent; me­dia, ser­vices and par­ent com­pa­ny by eight per cent and in­sur­ance and fi­nan­cial ser­vices by four per cent.

The group's di­rec­tors have ap­proved a fi­nal div­i­dend of $1.10 per share which will be paid on June 8. This is ten per cent more than the fi­nal div­i­dend in 2014 and took the group's to­tal div­i­dend for 2015 to $1.40 per share.

Sab­ga said a mix­ture of dif­fer­ent things ac­count­ed for ANSA McAL's sol­id re­sults at a time when the T&T econ­o­my is slug­gish.

"Look at the tal­ent we have. We have done this the ANSA McAL way. We are nev­er hap­py where we are, we have a tar­get of grow­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly by 2020," he said.

"We were born in hard times and flour­ish in hard times. We be­lieve there is a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ty ahead."

Speak­ing fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial re­lease of the group's year-end fi­nan­cial re­sults at ANSA McAL's head of­fice, Tatil Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, Sab­ga said the con­glom­er­ate mod­el works well when ex­ter­nal cir­cum­stances are not do­ing well.

"When one sec­tor is down, the oth­er sec­tors can grow. That is the mod­el that has worked well for us," he said.

Sab­ga said the ANSA McAL Group has had dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change and is look­ing to in­crease ex­ports to gain ac­cess to more of it.

"The de­mand for for­eign ex­change out­strips the sup­ply. We must find the mech­a­nism to bring equi­lib­ri­um to the mar­ket. We are strug­gling for for­eign ex­change in in­sur­ance, trade and oth­er ar­eas. We want to beef up ex­ports to gen­er­ate more for­eign ex­change," he said.

He said while a de­pre­ci­at­ing TT dol­lar will dri­ve pro­duc­tion up, on­ly in cer­tain sec­tors like in­ter­na­tion­al trade, while in man­u­fac­tur­ing it would be much small­er.

Sab­ga al­so re­port­ed that ANSA McAL con­tin­ues to do well in Bar­ba­dos and oth­er re­gion­al mar­kets. He said Bar­ba­dos loves the ANSA McAL group and T&T and the group has con­tributed to grow­ing wealth in that coun­try.

The ANSA chair­man said he is con­fi­dent T&T has what it takes to re­vive its slug­gish econ­o­my.

"We are in a dif­fi­cult po­si­tion as a coun­try and we have to work hard to get our­selves out of this po­si­tion," he said.