An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The ANSA McAL Group has an­nounced that it record­ed its high­est-ever rev­enues in 2023, amount­ing to $7.046 bil­lion.

The group re­leased its year-end au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults yes­ter­day, re­flect­ing a rise in rev­enue from $6.392 bil­lion in 2022.

This re­sult­ed in a prof­it be­fore tax of $842 mil­lion, a sig­nif­i­cant leap from the $448 mil­lion prof­it be­fore tax the pre­vi­ous year.

Prof­it af­ter tax in­creased from $265 mil­lion in 2022 to $594 mil­lion in 2023.

Group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III hailed the per­for­mance dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the Tatil Build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. He said the group saw growth in most seg­ments and added that in­di­ca­tors for fis­cal 2024 al­so ap­pear to be promis­ing.

The com­pa­ny aims to dou­ble its im­pact, size and prof­itabil­i­ty by 2027. “We con­tin­ue to see growth on prop­er­ty and even more en­cour­ag­ing than just top-line growth. We’re start­ing to see the ef­fi­cien­cies that we have in­vest­ed in and the work that we have done in the pri­or pe­ri­od in the coun­try and im­prove mar­gins and im­prove prof­itabil­i­ty. So 2024 is shap­ing up to be that year that we want­ed in 2020 be­fore the dis­rup­tions,” Sab­ga said.

Chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer (CFO), Nicholas Jack­man, high­light­ed that the com­pa­ny made a record in­vest­ment of $736 mil­lion in cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture with­out in­cur­ring any debt.

“On the ac­qui­si­tion side for $437 mil­lion, we com­plet­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of Colfire and our 25 per cent in­vest­ment in the Ba­hami­an Brew­eries, and a fur­ther in­vest­ment of $55.8 mil­lion to in­crease en­er­gy out­put at our joint ven­ture so­lar farm in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic,” he said.

Speak­ing about dif­fer­ent seg­ments of the group, Jack­man said the bev­er­age, man­u­fac­tur­ing and au­to­mo­tive busi­ness­es demon­strat­ed strong top-line growth with prof­itabil­i­ty boost­ed by in­creased ef­fi­cien­cies and re­duced in­put costs.

The CFO out­lined that the bank­ing and in­sur­ance op­er­a­tions al­so per­formed cred­itably, with in­ter­est and in­vest­ment in­come re­turn­ing to pre-2019 lev­els.

He stat­ed that the group’s cred­it head­room stands at $3.5 bil­lion, al­low­ing them to ac­cess funds for up­com­ing growth ini­tia­tives, projects, and ac­qui­si­tions.

Re­gard­ing ex­pan­sion, the CEO ex­plained that the group is look­ing at var­i­ous op­tions.

“The ad­ven­ture in­to Ghana and West Africa is very nascent in our or­gan­i­sa­tion. His­tor­i­cal­ly, we did take a look at how to en­ter the African mar­ket. Giv­en that, quite a few of our prod­ucts will in­stinc­tive­ly have a nat­ur­al fit in­to that en­vi­ron­ment and some of the brands in our sta­ble are well po­si­tioned for that.

“Giv­en the dis­tance that Ghana is from our re­gion, ex­port­ing there and brew­ing prod­ucts are not part of the agen­da. So much in the same way we have suc­cess­ful­ly start­ed pro­duc­ing our brands in Greece and Cana­da. Carib is be­ing pro­duced un­der li­cens­ing for the Cana­di­an mar­ket, same as in Greece. We are very ad­vanced in look­ing at giv­en our ac­qui­si­tion in the Ba­hamas to brew and pro­duce Stag in that mar­ket,” Sab­ga al­so high­light­ed.

Fur­ther, he said the com­pa­ny is fa­mil­iar with “do­ing li­cens­es and or ac­qui­si­tion,” but the strat­e­gy on how it en­ters Ghana and West Africa is in a very de­vel­op­men­tal stage.

Re­gard­ing the me­dia in­dus­try, he ex­plained there has been a de­crease in me­dia ad­ver­tis­ing.

“GML is nowhere im­mune to that. We con­tin­ue to strive with our dig­i­tal ex­pan­sion and com­mer­cial dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, which we ex­pect to see us on­go­ing­ly thrive and re­turn to a lev­el of per­for­mance,” Sab­ga added.