An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Agos­ti­ni’s Group strong fi­nan­cial 2023 was dri­ven by strong op­er­a­tional per­for­mance across the group com­pa­nies and by sev­er­al strate­gic ac­qui­si­tions.

In group's an­nu­al re­port, which was post­ed on the web­site of T&T Stock Ex­change yes­ter­day, Agos­ti­ni's chair­man, Chris­t­ian Mout­tet, said the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to ex­pand and strength­en across each of its three core ar­eas of op­er­a­tions: phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and health­care, con­sumer prod­ucts, and en­er­gy and in­dus­tri­al.

Moutett said the re­gion­al go-to-mar­ket strat­e­gy was bol­stered by a com­bi­na­tion of in­ter­nal trans­for­ma­tion (across or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and process lev­els) and strate­gic ac­qui­si­tions.

“In De­cem­ber 2022, we ac­quired Collins Ltd and Carlisle Lab­o­ra­to­ries Ltd, two Bar­ba­di­an phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies re­spec­tive­ly. In May, our Caribbean Dis­tri­b­u­tion Part­ners joint ven­ture com­pa­ny ac­quired 80 per cent of Chi­nook Trad­ing Cana­da Ltd, a Cana­di­an-based trad­ing com­pa­ny that dis­trib­utes con­sumer prod­ucts to the Caribbean. Fi­nal­ly, in Au­gust we ac­quired Health Brands Ltd, a Ja­maican phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny. These ac­qui­si­tions have ex­tend­ed our re­gion­al foot­print and brand port­fo­lio while pro­vid­ing greater ac­cess to cus­tomers and en­hanc­ing our lo­gis­tics ca­pa­bil­i­ties,” the chair­man out­lined.

He not­ed sales in­creased by 14.3 per cent to $4.7 bil­lion and prof­it af­ter tax at­trib­ut­able to share­hold­ers in­creased by 19.7 per cent be­fore the net gain on ac­qui­si­tion.

Earn­ings per share, Mout­tet stat­ed, in­creased from $2.76 to $3.31 be­fore the net gain on ac­qui­si­tion and the com­pa­ny's debt-to-eq­ui­ty ra­tio was 26:74.

Op­er­at­ing cash flow stood at $156.1 mil­lion and re­turn on eq­ui­ty im­proved from 14.4 per cent to 15.4 per cent .

The chair­man of the group men­tioned div­i­dends in­creased to $1.50 per share from $1.30.

Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and health­care

Mout­tet in­di­cat­ed that the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and health­care group de­liv­ered strong re­sults, at­trib­uted to a ro­bust per­for­mance across its key sub­sidiaries in the seg­ment.

The strate­gic ac­qui­si­tion of Collins and Carlisle Lab­o­ra­to­ries, he said, has yield­ed sig­nif­i­cant sales and prof­it for the ten months post-ac­qui­si­tion, with Collins stream­lin­ing op­er­a­tions for en­hanced cus­tomer ful­fill­ment and Carlisle boost­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing re­li­a­bil­i­ty to meet strong re­gion­al de­mand. “Ad­di­tion­al­ly, our ac­qui­si­tion of Health Brands in Ja­maica has ex­tend­ed and so­lid­i­fied our re­gion­al pres­ence, as we con­tin­ue to ex­e­cute our re­gion­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and health­care strat­e­gy. Su­per­Pharm for­ti­fied its mar­ket po­si­tion through ex­cel­lent cus­tomer ini­tia­tives and dig­i­tal ad­vance­ments in­clud­ing the de­vel­op­ment of an e-com­merce plat­form,” he de­tailed.

En­er­gy and in­dus­tri­al

This seg­ment over­all had a strong year with sales growth of 4.2 per cent and prof­itabil­i­ty growth of 22.1 per cent.

The group’s chair­man in the re­port said Rosco Pro­com, now ful­ly in­te­grat­ed fol­low­ing the merg­er of the Rosco Petroa­vance and Process Com­po­nents busi­ness­es, en­joyed strong sales and prof­it growth, pro­pelled by its Mo­bil Lu­bri­cants di­vi­sion and a more ac­tive oil and gas sec­tor.

“Agos­ti­ni Build­ing So­lu­tions, de­spite a dif­fi­cult in­dus­try cli­mate, de­liv­ered strong prof­it growth hav­ing strate­gi­cal­ly di­vest­ed its in­te­ri­or con­tract­ing busi­ness, and fo­cused on high­er growth op­por­tu­ni­ties,” he added.