The ANSA McAL group yes­ter­day de­clared af­ter-tax prof­it of $126.3 mil­lion for the three months end­ed March 31, 2024, an in­crease of 7.57 per cent com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

The group's rev­enue for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to March 31, 2024 was $1.64 bil­lion, 3.45 per cent more than the pri­or pe­ri­od.

In its unau­dit­ed re­sults for its first quar­ter, ANSA McAL's prof­it be­fore tax and earn­ings per share (EPS) were up by 8 per cent and 5 per cent on pri­or year, re­spec­tive­ly.

The group not­ed this strong per­for­mance was dri­ven by in­creased sales in its man­u­fac­tur­ing, con­struc­tion, pack­ag­ing and brew­ing seg­ments.

"No­tably, our bev­er­age busi­ness gen­er­at­ed high­er lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al vol­umes in line with the sec­tor’s strat­e­gy to take our flag­ship bev­er­age brands glob­al.

"Our bev­er­age dis­tri­b­u­tion reach is now up to 34 mar­kets in the world. In ad­di­tion, there was a marked in­crease in sales in our au­to­mo­tive sec­tor as the sup­ply of units re­mained con­sis­tent," ANSA McAL chair­man, Nor­man Sab­ga, said in his state­ment.

He added that in­vest­ment port­fo­lios in its fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor al­so per­formed com­mend­ably.

Over­all, high­er rev­enue, low­er in­put costs and very pur­pose­ful and ef­fi­cient work­ing cap­i­tal man­age­ment re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved free cash flows for

the group, Sab­ga added.

"We are pos­i­tive about the out­look for the re­main­der of 2024. We are fo­cused on im­prov­ing prof­itabil­i­ty through sus­tained vol­ume growth, in­vest­ment in brand build­ing and the re­al­i­sa­tion of op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies. To achieve our 2X vi­sion of dou­bling group per­for­mance by 2027, we con­tin­ue to ex­e­cute our bal­anced strat­e­gy of ex­pand­ing our ex­ist­ing busi­ness­es and mak­ing strate­gic ac­qui­si­tions and part­ner­ships.

"As we em­bed a strong cul­ture of busi­ness stew­ard­ship and prac­tice good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, we strive to en­sure a sus­tain­able fu­ture by cre­at­ing val­ue for the ben­e­fit of all of our stake­hold­ers," Sab­ga added.