Ja­maican in­vest­ment firm, Bari­ta In­vest­ments Ltd, re­port­ed an af­ter-tax prof­it of J$3.08 bil­lion for the nine months end­ed June 30, 2023, a de­cline of 19.55 per cent com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2022. (US$1 equals J$154.21)

For the pe­ri­od be­tween Oc­to­ber 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, Bari­ta In­vest­ment, record­ed net op­er­at­ing rev­enue of J$7.38 bil­lion, 2.28 per cent more than the J$7.22 bil­lion for the com­pa­ra­ble pe­ri­od in 2022.

The com­pa­ny, which is list­ed on the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change, has five main sources of net op­er­at­ing in­come: net in­ter­est in­come; fees and com­mis­sion; for­eign ex­change trad­ing and trans­lat­ing gains (loss­es), gain on in­vest­ment ac­tiv­i­ties and oth­er in­come.

Com­pared to the first nine months of the 2022 fi­nan­cial year, Bari­ta’s net op­er­at­ing in­come was fol­lows:

* Net in­ter­est in­come de­clined by 69.54 per cent to J$422.55 mil­lion;

* Fees and com­mis­sions in­creased by 8.20 per cent to J$2.730 bil­lion

* Forex trad­ing and trans­la­tion de­cline by 28.47 per cent to J$431.21 mil­lion

* Gain on in­vest­ment ac­tiv­i­ties was high­er by 40 per cent to J$3.70 bil­lion

* Oth­er in­come in­creased by 55.65 per cent to J$99.25 mil­lion.

For the first nine months of Bari­ta’s 2023 fi­nan­cial year, the com­pa­ny’s op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es in­creased by 22.4 per cent to J$3.30 bil­lion. The com­pa­ny’s op­er­at­ing prof­it de­clined by 9.73 per cent to J$4.08 bil­lion for the pe­ri­od. Its prof­it be­fore tax was down by a sim­i­lar amount to J$4.15 bil­lion.

Bari­ta’s as­sets rose by 12.88 per cent to J$124 bil­lion for the nine-month pe­ri­od, com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2022.

In com­ments on the fi­nan­cials, Bari­ta chair­man, Mark My­ers, said the com­pa­ny’s de­lib­er­ate strat­e­gy was to es­tab­lish a strong foun­da­tion, with the goal of un­lock­ing and sus­tain­ing sig­nif­i­cant val­ue over the medi­um to long run.

“In that re­spect, we con­tin­ue to progress through our al­ter­na­tive in­vest­ment plat­form, in par­tic­u­lar, or re­al es­tate ini­tia­tives.”

My­ers said the com­pa­ny achieved sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments dur­ing its third quar­ter as it reached crit­i­cal mile­stones in its plan­ning and the cul­ti­va­tion of strate­gic part­ner­ships. He added that each of the ac­com­plish­ments brings the com­pa­ny clos­er to tran­si­tion­ing to the next stages of its al­ter­na­tive in­vest­ment en­deav­ours.

“As a re­sult we main­tain our guid­ance that as we ad­vance our lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships, the na­ture of the eco­nom­ics em­a­nat­ing from the re­al es­tate hold­ings will shift from reval­u­a­tion gains and tran­si­tion to­ward gen­er­at­ing re­alised cash-based rev­enues fol­low­ing the fi­nanc­ing, de­vel­op­ment and sale of di­verse re­al es­tate de­vel­op­ment projects over the next three to sev­en years,” said My­ers.