In an unau­dit­ed sum­ma­ry of its con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the three months end­ed March 31, 2020 An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd has record­ed a first quar­ter prof­it of $13.096 mil­lion.

The com­pa­ny not­ed that in the first quar­ter its prof­it be­fore tax grew by nine per cent or $1.7 mil­lion over that of Q12019.

How­ev­er, it said the Group’s prof­it mar­gins were im­pact­ed by in­creased op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es of 17.6 per cent or $8.6 mil­lion over the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od as well as for­eign ex­change loss­es oc­curred in Q1 2020 due to de­val­u­a­tion of ma­jor for­eign cur­ren­cies as a di­rect re­sult of the eco­nom­ic im­pact of COVID-19.

“Fis­cal 2020 was off to a promis­ing start but we are mind­ful that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is like­ly to im­pact our lo­cal and for­eign de­mand, sup­ply chain and dis­tri­b­u­tion and the time re­quired to com­plete im­prove­ment and re­pair to our waste wa­ter treat­ment plant,” the com­pa­ny said.

Adding it is not daunt­ed, An­gos­tu­ra said it will con­tin­ue to in­no­vate and be proac­tive so as to con­duct its op­er­a­tions in a man­ner that takes ac­count of the chang­ing lo­cal and glob­al mar­ket as these months un­fold.

The com­pa­ny cit­ed that its bit­ters seg­ment record­ed the largest seg­ment growth over the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od last year of 42 per cent or $11 mil­lion due to in­creased sales in the US, UK and South Africa which off­set the de­cline in the Aus­tralian mar­ket.

“This is in keep­ing with the com­pa­ny’s strate­gic tar­get for growth and ex­pan­sion in for­eign mar­kets,” the com­pa­ny said.

It added lo­cal rum rev­enue grew by eight per cent or $6.4 mil­lion as the mar­ket ac­cep­tance of new flavoured rum blends, par­tic­u­lar­ly White Oak Sor­rel con­tin­ued in­to Jan­u­ary 2020.

In that month the com­pa­ny added White Oak Co­conut to the port­fo­lio which it said gained mo­men­tum over Car­ni­val 2020.

An­gos­tu­ra added that the im­pact of re­ju­ve­nat­ed mar­ket­ing cam­paigns for LLB was seen by the in­crease in rev­enues from that seg­ment, up 56 per cent or $2.3 mil­lion over the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od last year.

“This was di­rect­ly due to in­creased de­mand lo­cal­ly and through­out the Caribbean,” the com­pa­ny not­ed