Raphael John-Lall

Nor­man Sab­ga, Chair­man of the Ansa McAL Group of Com­pa­nies is at­tribut­ing the Group’s re­sults for the first half of the fi­nan­cial year to its in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions and not the macro econ­o­my.

“I do not think that the econ­o­my is the cause of our drop in prof­it. I think it is two fold, one is the one off’s that I spoke about and al­so part of our ex­pens­es have gone up and we have been meet­ing with each com­pa­ny look­ing at the ex­pens­es and shav­ing some of the ad­di­tion­al op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es. The fact that our vol­umes are on par and our gross prof­it, be­fore ex­pens­es is on par that is not a re­flec­tion that it is a re­sult of the econ­o­my.”

Sab­ga spoke yes­ter­day at the re­lease of the Group’s unau­dit­ed re­sults for the six months end­ed June 30, 2019 at Tatil Build­ing, Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

Ac­cord­ing to the Chair­man’s Re­port: “Ex­clud­ing the ef­fects of re­struc­tur­ing, the Group would have re­port­ed Prof­it Af­ter Tax­a­tion (PAT) in line with pri­or year. With the re­struc­tur­ing and ac­qui­si­tion costs in­clud­ed, PAT was $303 mil­lion, down 6 per­cent from pri­or year ($323 mil­lion – 2018) whilst rev­enues were $3.1 bil­lion, up 1 per­cent over pri­or year. Your Di­rec­tors have ap­proved an in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.30 per share ($0.30 – 2018) which will be paid on No­vem­ber 6, 2019.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Chair­man’s re­port, dur­ing six-month pe­ri­od end­ed 30 June 2019, the Group was able to ex­e­cute a num­ber of ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing:

I.Em­bark­ing on a pro­gram of re­struc­tur­ing. In­clud­ed in these re­sults are ap­prox­i­mate­ly $25 mil­lion in non-re­cur­ring costs which have im­pact­ed Prof­it Be­fore Tax in the near term but which will gen­er­ate a high­er lev­el of prof­itabil­i­ty go­ing for­ward.

II. The com­mis­sion­ing of a world-class fur­nace at Carib Glass at a cost of $150 mil­lion which was a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone. This in­vest­ment us­es new tech­nol­o­gy which al­lows the pro­duc­tion of the high­est qual­i­ty light weight glass bot­tles at re­duced costs and will sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost our ex­port ca­pa­bil­i­ty.

III. The suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of two strate­gic ac­qui­si­tions – a joint ven­ture in Tilawind, a Cos­ta Ri­can based wind farm and Trinidad Ag­gre­gate Prod­ucts, a clay block man­u­fac­tur­er, at a com­bined in­vest­ment of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $100 mil­lion. The Tilawind joint ven­ture is the Group’s first en­try in­to the al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy busi­ness with scope for fu­ture ex­pan­sion. The full ef­fect of these in­vest­ments, in­clud­ing ac­qui­si­tion and re­struc­tur­ing costs, has been in­clud­ed in these re­sults.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer seg­ment, he spoke about how for­eign multi­na­tion­als have im­pact­ed on the lo­cal me­dia mar­ket.

“I per­son­al­ly have a prob­lem with Face­book, Twit­ter and the oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies be­ing able to sell me­dia in Trinidad. with­out pay­ing a sig­nif­i­cant penal­ty for do­ing so. It is like on­line shop­ping. When one looks at Guardian Me­dia, News­day, One Me­dia, Guardian Me­dia alone has about 600 em­ploy­ees. I do not think that these or­ga­ni­za­tions have em­ploy­ees on the ground, I do not think that they pay tax­es and they take for­eign ex­change and they have a huge ad­van­tage in the mar­ket. They have made an in­vest­ment up front to have ser­vice and build a site and to be able to ad­ver­tise. A lev­el play­ing field does not ex­ist.”