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.