Pe­ter Christo­pher

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

ANSA McAL’s in­vest­ments in the past two years are start­ing to bear fruit, as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to see im­proved fi­nan­cial re­turns.

Speak­ing at a brief­ing of stock­bro­kers and jour­nal­ists held yes­ter­day at Tatil Build­ing in St Clair, Port-of-Spain, ANSA McAL’s chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer, Nicholas Jack­man, said the group’s fi­nan­cial re­sults for the half year end­ed June 30, 2024, was a con­tin­u­a­tion of an “up­ward tra­jec­to­ry.”

The group re­port­ed its prof­it be­fore tax in­creased by 16.6 per cent to $362.6 mil­lion com­pared to the $311.03 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od in 2023. Jack­man point­ed out rev­enue in­creased by 5.47 per cent to $3.42 bil­lion from $3.25 bil­lion in 2023.

Jack­man said, “We are now at an ear­ly stage of re­al­is­ing the ben­e­fits of our ma­jor cap­i­tal in­vest­ments over the last two years in terms of op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cien­cies. We are see­ing im­proved cap­i­tal man­age­ment, which we had to piv­ot and ad­just, and we are re­al­ly proud of how the man­age­ment han­dled that here and we have an ex­treme­ly strong bal­ance street.”

In a pre­sen­ta­tion at yes­ter­day’s meet­ing, Jack­man said ANSA McAL’s gear­ing ra­tio as at June 30, 2024 was 6.9 per cent, with medi­um and long-term notes and oth­er bor­row­ings to­talling $630 mil­lion and to­tal eq­ui­ty of $9.19 bil­lion.

He al­so not­ed that ANSA McAL’s op­er­at­ing cash flow per share has sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­cov­ered com­pared to 2023, to­talling $4.50 in 2024 com­pared to $0.92 in 2023.

One of the group’s in­vest­ments that is be­gin­ning to bear fruit is the Ba­hami­an Brew­ery & Bev­er­age Com­pa­ny Ltd, in which the group ac­quired a mi­nor­i­ty stake in Ju­ly 2023. ANSA McAL’s Group CEO An­tho­ny N. Sab­ga III hailed the in­vest­ment dur­ing the in­vestor brief­ing, not­ing the sig­nif­i­cant progress that had been made since the deal was bro­kered.

“We made an ac­qui­si­tion in the Ba­hami­an brew­ing com­pa­ny last year. That ac­qui­si­tion has out­paced our ex­pec­ta­tions,” said Sab­ga III, adding “I be­lieve we are now proud­ly pro­duc­ing Stag in The Ba­hamas for the Ba­hami­an mar­ket. So that is quite a phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess.”

Jack­man not­ed there were some tight mar­gins in the group’s Bar­ba­dos op­er­a­tions, while there were third par­ty rev­enue hits in both me­dia and re­tail seg­ments. How­ev­er, he high­light­ed that the group did see im­prove­ment in op­er­a­tions and ef­fi­cien­cies in the sec­ond quar­ter, in par­tic­u­lar with the launch of Carib’s Line 7 bot­tling fa­cil­i­ty, which was un­veiled in May.

Sab­ga was con­fi­dent that, based on the group’s over­all per­for­mance, the com­pa­ny was on pace to hit its 2027 tar­get of $2 bil­lion in prof­its.

Based on the group’s re­sults, its di­rec­tors have ap­proved an in­ter­im of $0.30 per share, which will be paid on Sep­tem­ber 9, to all share­hold­ers on the reg­is­ter as at Au­gust 26.