ANSA McAL Group CEO, An­tho­ny Sab­ga III, said yes­ter­day the com­pa­ny took the de­ci­sion to sus­pend its div­i­dends for three years in or­der to re­al­lo­cate cap­i­tal to fund fu­ture ac­qui­si­tions as well as con­tin­ue in­vest­ing in tech­nol­o­gy and au­toma­tion to dri­ve ef­fi­cien­cies and op­ti­mise sup­ply chains.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day af­ter the ANSA McAL group's of­fi­cial re­lease of its 2024 fi­nan­cial re­sults, Sab­ga said the com­pa­ny is con­tin­u­ing to pur­sue a large pipeline of ac­qui­si­tions, which is "well over a few bil­lion dol­lars."

He de­scribed the ac­qui­si­tion pipeline as crit­i­cal to the group achiev­ing its Times Two goal of dou­bling ANSA McAL's size, scale and im­pact be­tween 2023 and 2027

"The tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of div­i­dends ba­si­cal­ly al­lows us to fund high-re­turn growth ini­tia­tives as op­posed to pay­ing div­i­dends," said Sab­ga.

"This af­fords the group the fi­nan­cial flex­i­bil­i­ty, al­lows us to re­duce debt re­liance and al­so strength­ens the for­ward bal­ance sheet, sup­port­ing the in­vest­ments that are in front of us," he added.

The ANSA McAL CEO said the ex­pect­ed out­come of the de­ci­sion by the ANSA McAL group to re­de­ploy div­i­dends would be a far larg­er com­pa­ny, with a stronger com­pet­i­tive po­si­tion and sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket ex­pan­sion.

"What that comes with would be fun­da­men­tal share price ap­pre­ci­a­tion, so there is some sub­stan­tial cap­i­tal gains that would take place. What that es­sen­tial­ly en­tails is longer term share­hold­er val­ue.

"When the div­i­dends do re­sume post 2027, when we have re­alised our Times Two agen­da, we are go­ing to be talk­ing about a far larg­er div­i­dend, cor­re­lat­ing with a far larg­er earn­ings stream and more sig­nif­i­cant cash flows," said Sab­ga.

The ANSA McAL group paid out $1.80 per share in div­i­dends in the four-year pe­ri­od 2021 to 2024. With 176,197,617 shares in is­sue, that equals $317.15 mil­lion (US$47 mil­lion) a year or $1.26 bil­lion (US$188 mil­lion) over the four-year pe­ri­od.

In at­tempt­ing to achieve its Times Two goals, the group has been strength­en­ing its core busi­ness­es, which are bev­er­ages, chem­i­cals and bank­ing and in­sur­ance.

The goals al­so in­clude ex­pand­ing the group's busi­ness in­to high-growth sec­tors, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Sab­ga cit­ed as an ex­am­ple of the Times Two-based ex­pan­sion, ANSA McAL's ac­qui­si­tion of the US-based chlor-al­ka­li pro­duc­er BleachTech for a pur­chase price of US $327 mil­lion in No­vem­ber 2024.

Asked whether the group could have main­tained some div­i­dend pay­ment and achieve its Times Two goals, Sab­ga said if the group wants to de­liv­er the out­sized growth of Times Two, the board and man­age­ment of the group de­cid­ed that the best use of its cash fire­pow­er would be to go for growth.

Notwith­stand­ing the coun­try's for­eign ex­change chal­lenges, Sab­ga said the ANSA McAL group be­lieves very strong­ly in the fu­ture of T&T and "we con­tin­ue to see op­por­tu­ni­ties both in Trinidad and out­side of the coun­try."