The ANSA McAL Group re­turned to pre-pan­dem­ic rev­enue lev­els in 2022, record­ing a to­tal of $6.525 bil­lion for the pe­ri­od end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2022, Chief Fi­nan­cial Of­fi­cer Nicholas Jack­man an­nounced yes­ter­day.

This was an in­crease of $556 mil­lion com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year and was fu­elled by growth in the group’s bev­er­age, au­to­mo­tive, man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness­es, Jack­man said.

“We have a strong bal­ance sheet, our gear­ing ra­tio is down to 8.2, very sta­ble, very con­ser­v­a­tive­ly lever­aged. As a re­minder, gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­ers con­sid­er a 20 per cent gear­ing ra­tio to be ad­e­quate if not good. Un­der 10 per cent is con­sid­ered ex­cel­lent, so ANSA McAL con­tin­ues to be well cap­i­talised,” Jack­man said.

De­spite the strong bal­ance sheet, the re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate record­ed a 54 per cent de­crease in prof­it be­fore tax in 2022 when com­pared to 2021, Jack­man said.
ANSA McAL’s prof­it be­fore tax for the pe­ri­od end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2022, was $434 mil­lion.

“With re­gard to our prof­it be­fore tax, this was in­flu­enced by a $420 mil­lion swing in un­re­alised loss­es in our in­vest­ments,” Jack­man said.

ANSA McAL’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III said the con­glom­er­ate was able to weath­er the dif­fi­cul­ties caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, sup­ply chain is­sues, the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis and the war in Ukraine.

“What I re­main com­mit­ted to is I recog­nise it is not how you start, it is how you fin­ish and this group has a very in­cred­i­ble pos­si­bil­i­ty giv­en the strength of its bal­ance sheet, the strength of its brands, the strength of its peo­ple and I recog­nise it has the abil­i­ty to weath­er what has been noth­ing less than a per­fect storm the last cou­ple years,” Sab­ga III said.

He said this year, things seem to be sta­bil­is­ing and set­tling

Group Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man A Nor­man Sab­ga agreed, say­ing there has al­ready been a turn­around this year.

“Year to date 2023, our in­vest­ments have re­bound­ed be­tween 3.5 and 5 per cent so we have al­ready seen some gains,” he said.

He said ANSA McAL is con­fi­dent the in­vest­ments they have made have proven to be bet­ter than the dip ex­pe­ri­enced in the mar­ket.

“I am very pleased and very proud of the way we han­dled the Group dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. How our lead­er­ship team took con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

“We weath­ered it well con­sid­er­ing,” the Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man added.

Sab­ga said the Group is now poised for sig­nif­i­cant growth.

“From here on in, we are look­ing at growth, sig­nif­i­cant growth and I have no doubt that the team we have in place is ca­pa­ble of gen­er­at­ing that growth, so the sto­ry con­tin­ues and I think we are on a good track to see sig­nif­i­cant growth in the fu­ture,” he said.

Sab­ga said he is con­fi­dent the Group will be a $2 bil­lion prof­it be­fore tax com­pa­ny by 2027.