PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

En­deav­our Hold­ings Lim­it­ed suf­fered a $14M dip in rev­enue fol­low­ing Movi­eTowne’s de­ci­sion to leave Price Plaza, but has still man­aged to turn a prof­it for the fi­nan­cial year 2021.

Chair­man John Aboud con­firmed in the com­pa­ny’s an­nu­al re­port that EHL record­ed net prof­it af­ter tax of $4.4M com­pared to $6.4M in 2020.

He said com­pa­ny ex­pe­ri­enced the full ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic with the gov­ern­ment’s re­stric­tions af­fect­ing busi­ness op­er­a­tions of their ten­ants.

Aboud said, “These re­stric­tions sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed our pri­ma­ry ten­ants in Price Plaza Mall where our ten­ant pool com­pris­es of restau­rants, fast food out­lets, bars, casi­nos and the cin­e­ma (amongst oth­ers). In-keep­ing with the pol­i­cy adopt­ed by EHL in the 2020 Fi­nan­cial Year, we ex­tend­ed con­ces­sions where pos­si­ble to those ten­ants whose busi­ness­es were se­vere­ly im­pact­ed by the re­stric­tions with rental dis­counts in the amount of $12.6M hav­ing been grant­ed to var­i­ous ten­ants at Price Plaza Mall.”

He con­firmed Movi­eTowne’s de­par­ture in Oc­to­ber 2020, af­ter ne­go­ti­a­tions over rent broke down, ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed EHL’s rev­enue stream.

“In ad­di­tion to the im­pact of COVID-19 on busi­ness in the coun­try, EHL’s rev­enue for the 2021 Fi­nan­cial Year was al­so im­pact­ed by the loss of rev­enue from Trin­ba­go Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, the op­er­a­tors of Movi­eTowne, who va­cat­ed Price Plaza Mall in Oc­to­ber 2020,” said Aboud, “The Com­pa­ny’s net rev­enue was im­pact­ed by the fac­tors men­tioned above, and re­sult­ed in a de­cline of $14.6M from $86.7M in 2020 com­pared to $72.1M in 2021.”

Aboud al­so not­ed the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance in­clud­ed neg­a­tive ad­just­ments of the val­u­a­tions of EHL’s in­vest­ment prop­er­ty port­fo­lio in the ag­gre­gate sum of $26.4M for 2021 and $26.2M for 2020.

The EHL chair ex­plained the neg­a­tive ad­just­ment was made as a re­sult of the im­pact on fair val­ues based on the an­tic­i­pat­ed dis­count on EHL’s fu­ture cash flows from the on­go­ing Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, with the most sig­nif­i­cant ad­just­ment be­ing made to the val­u­a­tion for Price Plaza Mall.

Aboud said, “EHL con­sid­ers that it is worth­while not­ing its prof­its ex­clud­ing the non-cash neg­a­tive prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion ad­just­ments, which were $30.8M in 2021 com­pared to $32.6M in 2020.”

He al­so stat­ed the com­pa­ny’s as­set base was still strong, as it was val­ued at $865.7M in 2021 com­pared to $887.4M in year 2020.

Aboud was op­ti­mistic about the com­pa­ny’s out­look go­ing in­to 2021, point­ing out the com­pa­ny re­tained its Cari A + rat­ing on its Bonds port­fo­lio from Caribbean In­for­ma­tion & Cred­it rat­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (Cari­CRIS). He al­so took note of the coun­try’s vac­ci­na­tion ef­forts.

“With the num­ber of vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons con­tin­u­ing to in­crease and the Coun­try moves clos­er to achiev­ing herd im­mu­ni­ty, EHL re­mains op­ti­mistic that the Coun­try will re­turn to some lev­el of nor­mal­cy over the course of this com­ing year. While we are not to­tal­ly out of the storm, we have sur­vived the worst of it and there­fore even in a slow­ly re­cov­er­ing econ­o­my, we hope to con­tin­ue to im­prove our fi­nan­cial po­si­tion,” he said.