The ANSA McAL Group de­liv­ered a sharp in­crease in first-half prof­itabil­i­ty, re­port­ing prof­it af­ter tax of $297.6 mil­lion for the six months end­ed June 30, a 44.4 per cent in­crease from $206.1 mil­lion in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year. The con­glom­er­ate said stronger trad­ing, strate­gic as­set sales and low­er fi­nance costs boost­ed earn­ings.

Prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty­hold­ers climbed 50 per cent to $257.8 mil­lion from $171.8 mil­lion, lift­ing ba­sic earn­ings per share to $1.50 from $1.00 a year ear­li­er.

Rev­enue al­so reached a new high, ris­ing three per cent to $3.79 bil­lion, com­pared with TT$3.69 bil­lion in the first six months of 2025, dri­ven by growth across al­most all of the group’s re­gion­al mar­kets.

ANSA McAL chair­man A. Nor­man Sab­ga said the group’s first-half per­for­mance re­flect­ed re­silient op­er­a­tions and dis­ci­plined ex­e­cu­tion de­spite vary­ing con­di­tions across its busi­ness seg­ments.

Prof­it be­fore tax from con­tin­u­ing op­er­a­tions rose 24.5 per cent to $400.8 mil­lion, while ad­just­ed EBIT­DA (Earn­ings Be­fore In­ter­est, Tax­es, De­pre­ci­a­tion, and Amor­ti­sa­tion) in­creased eight per cent to $751 mil­lion.

Guyana de­liv­ered the strongest ge­o­graph­ic per­for­mance, with rev­enues surg­ing 19.7 per cent. Rev­enue al­so in­creased across the group’s oth­er mar­kets ex­cept Bar­ba­dos and the Unit­ed States.

The bev­er­age and fi­nan­cial ser­vices di­vi­sions pro­duced the strongest earn­ings con­tri­bu­tions dur­ing the six months, while the ser­vices sec­tor al­so record­ed im­proved re­sults, sup­port­ed part­ly by gains from strate­gic as­set sales.

Man­age­ment con­tin­ued ini­tia­tives aimed at strength­en­ing per­for­mance in the chem­i­cals, dis­tri­b­u­tion and au­to­mo­tive busi­ness­es, which op­er­at­ed in more chal­leng­ing mar­ket con­di­tions.

The group al­so strength­ened its bal­ance sheet by re­pay­ing $683 mil­lion in debt dur­ing the pe­ri­od. That re­duced its gear­ing ra­tio to 19.6 per cent, down from 23.9 per cent at the end of De­cem­ber 2025.

Sab­ga said the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial dis­ci­pline was recog­nised through its in­au­gur­al cor­po­rate cred­it rat­ings from Cari­CRIS, which as­signed ANSA McAL a Cari­AA re­gion­al rat­ing and a ttAA na­tion­al rat­ing, both car­ry­ing sta­ble out­looks.

He said the rat­ings place ANSA McAL among the Caribbean’s most cred­it­wor­thy com­pa­nies and re­flect its mar­ket po­si­tion, re­silient earn­ings and pru­dent cap­i­tal man­age­ment.

The com­pa­ny al­so un­veiled group-wide En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Gov­er­nance (ESG) tar­gets cov­er­ing work­place safe­ty, waste man­age­ment and re­new­able en­er­gy gen­er­a­tion. Sab­ga said the ini­tia­tives are in­tend­ed to strength­en op­er­a­tional re­silience, im­prove risk man­age­ment and en­hance the group’s long-term com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Fol­low­ing the close of the re­port­ing pe­ri­od, ANSA McAL an­nounced a fi­nanc­ing part­ner­ship with IDB In­vest val­ued at up to US$500 mil­lion, the largest com­mit­ment of its kind in the Caribbean. Sab­ga said the fund­ing will sup­port the group’s long-term in­vest­ment pro­gramme, re­gion­al ex­pan­sion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives.

Look­ing ahead, he said geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions and glob­al eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty con­tin­ue to present chal­lenges, but added that the group’s di­ver­si­fied op­er­a­tions, strong bal­ance sheet and dis­ci­plined ap­proach po­si­tion it to con­tin­ue cre­at­ing long-term val­ue across the re­gion.