As it cel­e­brat­ed 100 years in busi­ness, Massy Hold­ings Ltd yes­ter­day re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it from its con­tin­u­ing op­er­a­tions of $833.3 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, a 21 per cent in­crease com­pared to the $689 mil­lion it earned in its 2022 fi­nan­cial year.

The in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny gen­er­at­ed third-par­ty rev­enue of $14.2 bil­lion in its 2023 fi­nan­cial year, which was an in­crease of 15 per cent over the $12.3 bil­lion in rev­enue Massy re­port­ed in 2022.

The group's be­fore-tax prof­it from con­tin­u­ing op­er­a­tions grew by 23.5 per cent from $995 mil­lion in 2022 to $1.22 bil­lion in 2023.

Massy not­ed that in its 2023 fi­nan­cial year, it closed three sig­nif­i­cant ac­qui­si­tions:

* Rowe's IGA Su­per­mar­kets, an in­de­pen­dent su­per­mar­ket chain in Jack­sonville, Flori­da;

* Air Liq­uide T&T Ltd, a man­u­fac­tur­er and sup­pli­er of in­dus­tri­al and med­ical gas­es in T&T; and

* IGL (St Lu­cia) Ltd, the par­ent com­pa­ny of a cook­ing gas dis­trib­u­tor and man­u­fac­tur­er and dis­trib­u­tor of in­dus­tri­al and med­ical gas­es in Ja­maica.

"An ad­di­tion­al $1.1 bil­lion (US$158 mil­lion) in rev­enue and $142 mil­lion (US$21 mil­lion) in prof­it be­fore tax were de­rived specif­i­cal­ly from the three ad­di­tions. We are ac­tive­ly en­gaged in ef­forts to in­te­grate these com­pa­nies with­in the Massy Group," said the group's chair­man Robert Ri­ley.

The Massy chair­man said the group in­vest­ed US$240.5 mil­lion in debt fi­nanc­ing to make the ac­qui­si­tions in the last fi­nan­cial year. That in­creased the group's debt-to-eq­ui­ty ra­tio from 25 per cent to 46 per cent, which "re­mains well with­in a tol­er­a­ble lim­it," said Ri­ley.

"The group main­tains $1.3 bil­lion (US$191 mil­lion equiv­a­lent) in cash at the end of the year, and a high­ly liq­uid US$ in­vest­ment port­fo­lio, which ful­ly se­cures US$126.6 mil­lion of mar­gin-line debt, with­out which the group's debt-to-eq­ui­ty ra­tion would drop to 35 per cent," said the Massy chair­man.

He al­so not­ed that with the near­ing com­ple­tion of the group's di­vest­ment agen­da, prof­it af­ter tax from dis­con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions de­clined from its 2022 fi­nan­cial year. Ri­ley ex­plained that the com­pa­nies whose op­er­a­tions were dis­con­tin­ued in 2022 can­not con­tribute to the group in 2022 and some of the one-off gains on sales of as­sets and com­pa­nies (such as Massy Unit­ed) were not re­peat­ed in the 2023 fi­nan­cial year.

"In the 2023 fi­nan­cial year, dis­con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions pro­duced a loss of $20.4 mil­lion, main­ly de­rived from im­pair­ments as­so­ci­at­ed with non-core re­al es­tate as­sets and busi­ness­es in Bar­ba­dos slat­ed for di­vest­ment in fi­nan­cial year 2024. This is in com­par­i­son to the prof­it af­ter tax con­tri­bu­tion of $169 mil­lion from dis­con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions in 2022," said Ri­ley.

He said that as a re­sult the group's af­ter-tax prof­it (af­ter dis­con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions) de­clined by 5 per cent to $813 mil­lion in 2022 from $858.18 mil­lion in 2023. The group's earn­ings per share de­clined from $0.411 in 2022 to $0.386 in 2023.