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Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Carnival cancellation hurts WITCO’s bottom line

by

Joel Julien
1408 days ago
20210511
WITCO’s headquarters in Champs Fleurs

WITCO’s headquarters in Champs Fleurs

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

The ab­sence of Car­ni­val this year is be­ing blamed in part for the West In­dies To­bac­co Com­pa­ny los­ing more than $33 mil­lion in rev­enue dur­ing the first three months of this year.

Ac­cord­ing to Wit­co’s unau­dit­ed re­sults for the pe­ri­od end­ed 31 March 2021 rev­enue was $199.7 mil­lion.

For the same pe­ri­od last year the rev­enue was $232.8 mil­lion.

Wit­co record­ed prof­it be­fore tax of $128.8 mil­lion, for the three month pe­ri­od end­ed 31st March 2021, rep­re­sent­ing a de­cline of $22 mil­lion or 14.6 per cent over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

“Prof­it for the pe­ri­od is $91.4 mil­lion re­flect­ing a de­cline of $13.5 mil­lion or 12.9 per cent less than 2020. These re­sults re­flect the con­tin­ued im­pact of COVID-19 and the ab­sence of Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions dur­ing this pe­ri­od,” Wit­co’s chair­man An­tho­ny E Phillip stat­ed in his re­view.

“The chal­leng­ing busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment cou­pled with a 20 per cent in­crease in Ex­cise Tax levied in 2020 and its ef­fect on con­sumer pur­chas­ing pow­er must al­so be not­ed. Com­pe­ti­tion from the grow­ing list of sus­pect­ed il­lic­it trade and low-price of­fer­ings con­tin­ues to en­gage the in­dus­try,” he stat­ed.

Phillip said as the new re­al­i­ty of COVID-19 con­tin­ues to af­fect the com­pa­ny’s land­scape, it will con­tin­ue to lever­age its agili­ty and Route to Mar­ket process­es to en­sure that prod­ucts are avail­able to all cus­tomers on time and in full.

“Op­er­a­tional­ly, cost-sav­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to be re­al­ized by sim­pli­fy­ing key busi­ness process­es while en­sur­ing that our Em­ploy­ees are re­tained and func­tion­ing un­der ex­em­plary COVID-19 and En­vi­ron­men­tal, Health and Safe­ty pro­to­cols. We con­tin­ue to en­sure that our Brand port­fo­lio re­mains rel­e­vant and dy­nam­ic, tar­get­ing con­sumers in all seg­ments of the mar­ket while rec­og­niz­ing the chang­ing pur­chas­ing pat­terns of con­sumers,” Phillip stat­ed.

“Notwith­stand­ing the chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment, and the re­stric­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with the Pan­dem­ic, we are con­fi­dent in our in­no­v­a­tive­ness dur­ing this pe­ri­od. The Com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to com­ply with all Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions and ful­ly sup­ports the ef­forts of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go as they man­age and re­duce the im­pact of this Pan­dem­ic,” he stat­ed.

Phillip said con­sid­er­ing the con­tin­u­ing un­cer­tain­ty of the full im­pact of COVID-19 on the busi­ness, the Board has tak­en a de­ci­sion not to pay an in­ter­im div­i­dend for the three months end­ed 31 March 2021.


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