GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

A ma­jor de­vel­op­ment for T&T NGL Ltd (TTNGL) dur­ing the first half of 2026 was the re­turn of cap­i­tal to share­hold­ers through a spe­cial div­i­dend pro­gramme that gave in­vestors the op­tion of re­ceiv­ing pay­ments in ei­ther lo­cal or US dol­lars.

Fol­low­ing share­hold­er ap­proval of a TT$2.2 bil­lion re­duc­tion in the com­pa­ny’s stat­ed cap­i­tal ac­count, TTNGL’s board de­clared a spe­cial in­ter­im div­i­dend of TT$1 per share on April 9.

The div­i­dend was paid on May 29, with share­hold­ers al­lowed to choose be­tween re­ceiv­ing their pay­ments in T&T dol­lars or Unit­ed States dol­lars.

In his chair­man’s state­ment ac­com­pa­ny­ing the com­pa­ny’s in­ter­im re­sults, Ger­ald Ramdeen de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment, not­ing that share­hold­ers hold­ing 81 per cent of all is­sued shares elect­ed to re­ceive their dis­tri­b­u­tions in US cur­ren­cy.

In to­tal, US$18.5 mil­lion was paid out to in­vestors. Ramdeen said the pro­gramme ful­filled a com­mit­ment made to share­hold­ers at the com­pa­ny’s March 2026 an­nu­al meet­ing and thanked the T&T Cen­tral De­pos­i­to­ry, stock­bro­kers and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions for help­ing make the ex­er­cise pos­si­ble.

The share­hold­er pay­out came as TTNGL re­port­ed im­proved un­der­ly­ing per­for­mance for the six months end­ed June 30, 2026.

Ac­cord­ing to the chair­man, the com­pa­ny earned af­ter-tax prof­it of TT$62.9 mil­lion dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

Ex­clud­ing the im­pact of a cal­cu­lat­ed im­pair­ment pro­vi­sion recog­nised in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2025, that prof­it was 27.6 per cent high­er than the com­pa­ra­ble ad­just­ed re­sult of TT$49.3 mil­lion a year ear­li­er.

Earn­ings per share in­creased to TT$0.41 from an ad­just­ed TT$0.32 in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of 2025.

Ramdeen at­trib­uted the stronger re­sults main­ly to im­proved per­for­mance at Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Lim­it­ed (PPG­PL), TTNGL’s prin­ci­pal in­vest­ment.

He said the in­crease in prof­itabil­i­ty re­flect­ed high­er nat­ur­al gas liq­uids con­tent in the gas stream, stronger re­alised prices for nat­ur­al gas liq­uids prod­ucts, low­er feed­stock costs and con­tin­ued em­pha­sis on pru­dent cost and cash man­age­ment.

Look­ing ahead, Ramdeen said the out­look for gas sup­ply is ex­pect­ed to im­prove sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­to 2027 as a re­sult of suc­cess­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions that se­cured ad­di­tion­al up­stream gas vol­umes. He not­ed that through the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go, avail­able gas sup­plies will con­tin­ue to be ac­tive­ly man­aged through sup­ply op­ti­mi­sa­tion ini­tia­tives, con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments and co­or­di­na­tion with cus­tomers.

From mid-2027, the com­pa­ny ex­pects a more mean­ing­ful im­prove­ment from new do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion, brown­field ex­pan­sion projects and cross-bor­der gas de­vel­op­ments.

The chair­man al­so ad­dressed PPG­PL’s North Amer­i­can op­er­a­tions, say­ing mar­gins re­mained pos­i­tive through­out 2026 de­spite flat trad­ing vol­umes.

How­ev­er, he cau­tioned that mar­gins are ex­pect­ed to come un­der pres­sure as con­tracts are re­newed.

He said the board con­tin­ues to as­sess risks as­so­ci­at­ed with the busi­ness and is eval­u­at­ing mea­sures to mit­i­gate any po­ten­tial ad­verse im­pacts on the wider PPG­PL Group.