Dur­ing the first half of 2022, GraceKennedy Lim­it­ed (GK) achieved rev­enues of J$72.59 bil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing an in­crease of 14.6 per cent or J$9.24 bil­lion over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2021.

This re­sult­ed in prof­it be­fore tax (PBT) of J$5.46 bil­lion an in­crease of $12.6 mil­lion over pri­or year, as out­lined in the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial re­sults for the six months end­ed June 30, 2022.

Net prof­it at­trib­ut­able to stock­hold­ers for the pe­ri­od was J$3.7 bil­lion, which is $111.6 mil­lion high­er than the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year; and earn­ings per stock unit was J$3.73, com­pared to J$3.62 in 2021.

Com­ment­ing on the half-year per­for­mance, GK Group CEO Don We­h­by said the com­pa­ny re­mained cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic, point­ing out that de­spite the dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic cli­mate be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced lo­cal­ly and glob­al­ly, GK’s half year rev­enue and prof­it are ahead of tar­get.

He at­trib­uted the good per­for­mance to the GK team, who he said re­mains un­wa­ver­ing in their com­mit­ment and keen­ly fo­cused on the ex­e­cu­tion of the com­pa­ny’s strate­gic ini­tia­tives.

He ex­plained, “Like many oth­er busi­ness­es around the world GK has been tack­ling sig­nif­i­cant head­winds since the be­gin­ning of the year—high in­fla­tion, sus­tained sup­ply chain is­sues, in­creas­ing in­ter­est rates.

“The volatil­i­ty of the for­eign ex­change rate in our lo­cal mar­ket has al­so been a fac­tor. To ad­dress this, we have been im­ple­ment­ing mit­iga­tive mea­sures across our busi­ness­es, and as a re­sult GK con­tin­ues to de­liv­er good re­sults, de­spite these chal­lenges. Our team is ded­i­cat­ed, our strat­e­gy is sound. Our merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions strat­e­gy re­mains on tar­get for ex­am­ple and I am con­fi­dent that GK will fin­ish out the year strong.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, GK’s food busi­ness record­ed an over­all growth in rev­enues for the six-months end­ing June 30, 2022 when com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of 2021.

PBT record­ed an in­crease, with the ma­jor­i­ty of com­pa­nies record­ing an im­proved per­for­mance.

“GK’s Ja­maican food dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness con­tin­ued to per­form well, record­ing healthy growth in both rev­enues and pre-tax prof­its. GK’s in­ter­na­tion­al food busi­ness al­so record­ed an im­prove­ment in rev­enues over pri­or year; how­ev­er, record in­fla­tion and el­e­vat­ed dis­tri­b­u­tion costs re­sult­ed in mixed per­for­mance re­sults,” the re­port said.

The GraceKennedy Fi­nan­cial Group (GK­FG) al­so re­port­ed a pos­i­tive per­for­mance for the pe­ri­od, with im­proved re­sults record­ed by its bank­ing and in­vest­ments and in­sur­ance seg­ments.

GraceKennedy Mon­ey Ser­vices (GKMS) re­port­ed a de­cline in rev­enues and PBT for the pe­ri­od, at­trib­uted to low­er re­mit­tance flows as re­port­ed by the Bank of Ja­maica, and the volatil­i­ty of the Ja­maican dol­lar against the US dol­lar.

GK has al­so an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Vanes­sa Rizzi­oli to the com­pa­ny’s Board of Di­rec­tors, ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 28, 2022.

The com­pa­ny said Riz­zoli is a Ja­maican re­sid­ing in the Unit­ed King­dom and is a cor­po­rate fi­nance lawyer who has ex­ten­sive in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence in Pub­lic-Pri­vate Part­ner­ships (PPPs), en­er­gy and in­fra­struc­ture, project fi­nanc­ing and cor­po­rate gov­er­nance.

Com­ment­ing on ap­point­ment We­h­by said, “As we pur­sue our 2030 vi­sion for GK, Vanes­sa’s ex­per­tise will be a sig­nif­i­cant as­set to our lead­er­ship team, and she al­so brings the valu­able per­spec­tive of the di­as­po­ra to the role.”