In­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (NEL) is re­port­ing prof­it af­ter tax of $162.7 mil­lion for the six months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30. Chair­man Jer­ry Hospedales said the in­ter­im fi­nan­cial re­sults were "broad­ly con­sis­tent" with the $174.9 mil­lion record­ed for the cor­re­spond­ing six month pe­ri­od in 2015.

"While per­sis­tent­ly low com­mod­i­ty prices con­tin­ue to weigh on their medi­um-term out­look, the in­vestee com­pa­nies have proven to be re­silient in the chal­leng­ing glob­al en­vi­ron­ment by fo­cus­ing on im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cy, seek­ing new mar­kets, min­imis­ing costs and de­vel­op­ing strate­gies to counter in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive forces," Hospedales said.

"The medi­um-term out­look of our in­vestee com­pa­nies is en­cour­ag­ing, in par­tic­u­lar Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) in its dri­ve to be­come an ag­ile broad­band com­pa­ny is in­vest­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the trans­for­ma­tion of its in­for­ma­tion pro­cess­ing tech­nol­o­gy, in its wired and wire­less in­fra­struc­ture as well as in its re­tail and cus­tomer ser­vice sup­port sys­tems.

"Trinidad Ni­tro­gen Co. Lim­it­ed (Trin­gen) is max­imis­ing its pro­duc­tion to op­ti­mise prof­itabil­i­ty to fi­nance its cap­i­tal costs with its re­cent­ly in­stalled En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy Im­prove­ment Project."

The chair­man said oth­er in­vestee com­pa­nies are main­tain­ing their prof­itabil­i­ty and with the ap­point­ment of its board, the Pow­er Gen­er­a­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T Lim­it­ed will reg­u­larise its pay­ment of div­i­dends to NEL Pow­er Hold­ings Lim­it­ed.

Hospedales said NEL di­rec­tors are "rea­son­ably as­sured" that the com­pa­ny's bal­anced port­fo­lio of as­sets will "en­sure sta­bil­i­ty dur­ing these un­cer­tain times and con­tin­ue to pro­vide share­hold­ers with con­sis­tent and rea­son­able re­turns over the long-term."

An in­ter­im div­i­dend pay­ment of $0.15 per share will be made to share­hold­ers on De­cem­ber 9.