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Thursday, March 20, 2025

EHL revenue hit by MovieTowne departure

by

1297 days ago
20210830
Flashback May. Workmen remove the signage on top of MovieTowne, Price Plaza Mall, Chaguanas.

Flashback May. Workmen remove the signage on top of MovieTowne, Price Plaza Mall, Chaguanas.

SHASTRI BOODAN

PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

En­deav­our Hold­ings Lim­it­ed suf­fered a $14M dip in rev­enue fol­low­ing Movi­eTowne’s de­ci­sion to leave Price Plaza, but has still man­aged to turn a prof­it for the fi­nan­cial year 2021.

Chair­man John Aboud con­firmed in the com­pa­ny’s an­nu­al re­port that EHL record­ed net prof­it af­ter tax of $4.4M com­pared to $6.4M in 2020.

He said com­pa­ny ex­pe­ri­enced the full ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic with the gov­ern­ment’s re­stric­tions af­fect­ing busi­ness op­er­a­tions of their ten­ants.

Aboud said, “These re­stric­tions sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed our pri­ma­ry ten­ants in Price Plaza Mall where our ten­ant pool com­pris­es of restau­rants, fast food out­lets, bars, casi­nos and the cin­e­ma (amongst oth­ers). In-keep­ing with the pol­i­cy adopt­ed by EHL in the 2020 Fi­nan­cial Year, we ex­tend­ed con­ces­sions where pos­si­ble to those ten­ants whose busi­ness­es were se­vere­ly im­pact­ed by the re­stric­tions with rental dis­counts in the amount of $12.6M hav­ing been grant­ed to var­i­ous ten­ants at Price Plaza Mall.”

He con­firmed Movi­eTowne’s de­par­ture in Oc­to­ber 2020, af­ter ne­go­ti­a­tions over rent broke down, ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed EHL’s rev­enue stream.

“In ad­di­tion to the im­pact of COVID-19 on busi­ness in the coun­try, EHL’s rev­enue for the 2021 Fi­nan­cial Year was al­so im­pact­ed by the loss of rev­enue from Trin­ba­go Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, the op­er­a­tors of Movi­eTowne, who va­cat­ed Price Plaza Mall in Oc­to­ber 2020,” said Aboud, “The Com­pa­ny’s net rev­enue was im­pact­ed by the fac­tors men­tioned above, and re­sult­ed in a de­cline of $14.6M from $86.7M in 2020 com­pared to $72.1M in 2021.”

Aboud al­so not­ed the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance in­clud­ed neg­a­tive ad­just­ments of the val­u­a­tions of EHL’s in­vest­ment prop­er­ty port­fo­lio in the ag­gre­gate sum of $26.4M for 2021 and $26.2M for 2020.

The EHL chair ex­plained the neg­a­tive ad­just­ment was made as a re­sult of the im­pact on fair val­ues based on the an­tic­i­pat­ed dis­count on EHL’s fu­ture cash flows from the on­go­ing Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, with the most sig­nif­i­cant ad­just­ment be­ing made to the val­u­a­tion for Price Plaza Mall.

Aboud said, “EHL con­sid­ers that it is worth­while not­ing its prof­its ex­clud­ing the non-cash neg­a­tive prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion ad­just­ments, which were $30.8M in 2021 com­pared to $32.6M in 2020.”

He al­so stat­ed the com­pa­ny’s as­set base was still strong, as it was val­ued at $865.7M in 2021 com­pared to $887.4M in year 2020.

Aboud was op­ti­mistic about the com­pa­ny’s out­look go­ing in­to 2021, point­ing out the com­pa­ny re­tained its Cari A + rat­ing on its Bonds port­fo­lio from Caribbean In­for­ma­tion & Cred­it rat­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (Cari­CRIS). He al­so took note of the coun­try’s vac­ci­na­tion ef­forts.

“With the num­ber of vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons con­tin­u­ing to in­crease and the Coun­try moves clos­er to achiev­ing herd im­mu­ni­ty, EHL re­mains op­ti­mistic that the Coun­try will re­turn to some lev­el of nor­mal­cy over the course of this com­ing year. While we are not to­tal­ly out of the storm, we have sur­vived the worst of it and there­fore even in a slow­ly re­cov­er­ing econ­o­my, we hope to con­tin­ue to im­prove our fi­nan­cial po­si­tion,” he said.


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