ANSA McAL is look­ing to be­come a group that gen­er­ates prof­it be­fore tax of $2 bil­lion by 2027 and has es­tab­lished 2X as the in­ter­nal ral­ly­ing cry for the plan.

So said ANSA McAL’s group CEO, An­tho­ny Sab­ga III in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, fol­low­ing the com­pa­ny’s an­nu­al meet­ing, which was held Fri­day last at the Radis­son Ho­tel in Port of Spain.

Sab­ga said what 2X rep­re­sents for the group is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dou­bling its busi­ness in the next five years.

“Dur­ing the course of 2022, the lead­er­ship team of ANSA McAL went in­to re­treat. We start­ed re­view­ing and look­ing at the pos­si­ble items in our pipeline that we saw avail­able to us.

“The cul­mi­na­tion of that process is dri­ving the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a $2 bil­lion prof­it in the next five years,” said Sab­ga, adding: “We ex­pect that by 2027 the group would be a $2 bil­lion prof­it be­fore tax com­pa­ny.”

To achieve the goal of $2 bil­lion prof­it be­fore tax by 2027, the group has a pipeline of var­i­ous projects and ini­tia­tives, some of which are al­ready un­der­way.

“As you would have seen, there are a cou­ple very strate­gic ac­qui­si­tions that have al­ready come in­to the pipeline. There are a cou­ple oth­ers (still to come).

“There are ad­di­tion­al­ly a se­ries of or­gan­ic growth projects, all of which would cre­ate that ob­jec­tive.”

He said the com­pa­ny would need to more than dou­ble its rev­enue to achieve the goal of dou­bling its prof­it be­fore tax by 2027, “but large­ly this would be an ef­fi­cien­cy and prof­itabil­i­ty item.”

He said the tar­get would in­volv­ing go­ing in­to new coun­tries and new mar­kets.

“We have al­ready gone be­yond our Trinida­di­an shores and we have al­ready gone well be­yond our re­gion­al shores. As you know, we have made in­vest­ments in the US.

“We will con­tin­ue to do so. We have in­vest­ments south in Guyana. We have in­vest­ments in Cos­ta Ri­ca, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and we are cer­tain­ly look­ing at oth­er ex­tra-re­gion­al ju­ris­dic­tions with hemi­spher­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties,” said the ANSA McAL group CEO.

Asked about fund­ing of the growth ini­tia­tives, Sab­ga said: “We have a fair­ly clean and ro­bust bal­ance sheet. So our bal­ance sheet will pro­vide quite a lot of the monies re­quired for the growth ini­tia­tives.

“Where that pos­si­bil­i­ty does not ex­ist, we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty as a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny to go to the mar­ket where need­ed. We al­so have a very sig­nif­i­cant amount of cash in trea­sury re­serves, so we are well po­si­tioned to use var­i­ous fund­ing mech­a­nisms to get these things done.”

With to­tal as­sets of $17.6 bil­lion (US$2.61 bil­lion) at the end of 2022, ANSA McAL is one of the largest, pub­licly list­ed, in­dige­nous con­glom­er­ates in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.

The group com­pris­es 48 com­pa­nies in over eight ter­ri­to­ries, and it of­fers its brands, prod­ucts and ser­vices in over 30 mar­kets across the world, em­ploy­ing close to 6,000 peo­ple.

Dur­ing the an­nu­al meet­ing, Sab­ga called on sev­er­al of the group’s sec­tor heads and man­ag­ing di­rec­tors to make short pre­sen­ta­tions to the share­hold­ers at the meet­ing.

ANSA Mer­chant Bank’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Gre­go­ry Hill re­called that the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion made a num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant ac­qui­si­tions in the last three years.

ANSA Mer­chant com­plet­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of 100 per cent of Colfire, the gen­er­al in­sur­ance com­pa­ny that was un­der the con­trol of the CL Fi­nan­cial liq­uida­tors, in April 2023.

The Cen­tral Bank ap­proved ANSA Mer­chant’s ac­qui­si­tion of the Bank of Bar­o­da in No­vem­ber 2020. The com­mer­cial bank was re­named ANSA Bank and start­ed op­er­at­ing un­der that name in March 2021.

“I am very hap­py to say that since the ac­qui­si­tion of the Bank of Bar­o­da and the launch of ANSA Bank, we have seen a 210 per cent in­crease in our loan book, a 220 per cent in­crease in de­posits, a dou­bling of our bal­ance sheet size and cus­tomer ac­qui­si­tion grow­ing rapid­ly month on month,” Hill told the meet­ing.

In its first quar­ter re­sults, which were pub­lished on Mon­day, ANSA Mer­chant re­port­ed a 49 per cent in­crease in its rev­enue, which jumped to $256.5 mil­lion in the three months end­ed March 31, 2023, from $172.2 mil­lion in the same quar­ter in 2022.

The com­pa­ny al­so record­ed an in­crease in its con­sol­i­dat­ed prof­it be­fore tax for the quar­ter of $59.1 mil­lion, which was 252 per cent greater than the $39.8 mil­lion loss in the first quar­ter of 2022.

ANSA McAL owns 82.5 per cent of ANSA Mer­chant, which is al­so list­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change.

Andy Ma­hadeo, the man­u­fac­tur­ing head of ANSA McAL, told the an­nu­al meet­ing that his sec­tor has ex­cit­ing plans that are al­ready in train or soon to be re­vealed.

The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is di­vid­ed in­to pack­ag­ing and util­i­ties. Un­der pack­ag­ing is Carib Glass and ANSA Poly­mer.

Un­der the util­i­ties group is the chem­i­cals busi­ness, which man­u­fac­tures prod­ucts for wa­ter treat­ment.

The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is al­so in re­new­able en­er­gy gen­er­a­tion “as the group owns a wind farm in Cos­ta Ri­ca and a so­lar farm in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic,” said Ma­hadeo.

He said the man­u­fac­tur­ing arm of ANSA McAL is un­der­go­ing a 50 per cent ex­pan­sion of its chlor-al­ka­li (chlo­rine) plant “be­cause we have sold out the ca­pac­i­ty and we are chas­ing more mar­ket share in the re­gion.”

He said once that ex­pan­sion is com­plet­ed, the plant should con­trol about 85 per cent of re­gion­al de­mand for chlor-al­ka­li.

As a re­sult, the com­pa­ny has re­quest­ed a Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff (CET) from Ju­ly 1, 2023, which means all ex­tra-re­gion­al im­ports of chlo­rine from that date will at­tract a 10 per cent du­ty.

“We have ex­pand­ed our foot­print by putting a chlo­rine hub in Ja­maica and be­cause of that we re­cent­ly won the chlo­rine sup­ply for all of Ja­maica,” said Ma­hadeo.

He said the man­u­fac­tur­ing arm of ANSA McAL is now look­ing for hemi­spher­ic ex­pan­sion in­to chem­i­cals, with a trip planned for Ju­ly to look in­to a “huge” chlor-al­ka­li busi­ness.

The sec­tor has al­so start­ed the due dili­gence for an­oth­er ac­qui­si­tion.

“Hope­ful­ly with­in the next cou­ple years we will be­come a glob­al play­er in the chlor-al­ka­li space,” said Ma­hadeo.

ANSA McAL’s man­u­fac­tur­ing arm is al­so ex­pand­ing the so­lar park in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and is ac­tive­ly look­ing at new in­vest­ments in the so­lar space.

Pe­ter Hall, the bev­er­age sec­tor head, told the meet­ing: “As a key part of ANSA McAL, the group will not be able to dou­ble it­self, if Carib brew­ery and our bev­er­age busi­ness can­not as well.

“So we ac­cept our part in the plan and we in­tend to dou­ble the val­ue of our en­ter­prise in the next five years.

“We cur­rent­ly have a foot­print of four brew­eries—in Trinidad, Grena­da, St Kitts and Flori­da—and 25 ex­port coun­tries.

“We ex­pect over the com­ing decade that that num­ber of brew­eries with­in our busi­ness will grow and we think ul­ti­mate­ly reach­ing prob­a­bly around ten brew­eries.”

Oth­er man­ag­ing di­rec­tors and sec­tor heads made pre­sen­ta­tions out­lin­ing the group’s fu­ture prospects.