There is an old say­ing, “In the midst of cri­sis, lies op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

While there is con­cern over ANSA McAL Group’s de­ci­sion to sus­pend the pay­ment of div­i­dends for a three-year pe­ri­od, the group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III is adamant the group is far from fac­ing a cri­sis.

In­deed, amid a sig­nif­i­cant drop in the price of the group’s shares, with the share price hit­ting $37.45 on Fri­day, he is urg­ing in­vestors to seize up­on a “once-in-a-life­time op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

When asked about the dip in share price at the pre­sen­ta­tion of ANSA McAL’s fi­nan­cial re­sults for the six month end­ed June 30, at the Brix Ho­tel in St Ann’s, Sab­ga said it did not re­flect the true val­ue of the com­pa­ny’s shares.

“There are many fac­tors to be con­sid­ered. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the share price is a re­flec­tion of con­fi­dence in ANSA McAL, be­cause there’s some­body buy­ing those shares. There does seem to be, at least from our read, a bit of a gen­er­a­tional switch­ing on own­er­ship. And as I said, if you can get a hold of those shares at that price, I’d say, take it and run. I mean the share is trad­ing well be­low 50 per cent of what I think it should be val­ued at. So there’s a great op­por­tu­ni­ty there, in my view. Grab it now, be­fore it’s gone,” said the ANSA McAL CEO.

“In my view, it’s a once-in-a-life­time op­por­tu­ni­ty; the abil­i­ty to buy the ANSA McAL share at this trad­ing price is a gift.”

The ANSA MCAL CEO’s po­si­tion is that the com­pa­ny’s port­fo­lio and track record speaks for it­self.

It is a po­si­tion that was strength­ened by the fact that he an­swered this ques­tion mo­ments af­ter the chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer, Nicholas Jack­man, not­ed the group en­joyed a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in rev­enue.

“Over­all our rev­enue (for the sec­ond quar­ter) is just short of a $2 bil­lion mark. Year to date is up $219 mil­lion or 12 per cent and ad­just­ed EBIT­DA at $409 mil­lion is up $96 mil­lion or 31 per cent. Prof­it be­fore tax for the sec­ond quar­ter at $217 mil­lion is up $28 mil­lion or 15 per cent quar­ter on quar­ter, and the earn­ings per share at $0.68 is up two cents or 3 per cent. So all in all, a marked im­prove­ment on quar­ter two last year,” said Jack­man.

The com­pa­ny had de­cid­ed to sus­pend its div­i­dends for three years in or­der to re­al­lo­cate cap­i­tal to fund fu­ture ac­qui­si­tions as well as con­tin­ue in­vest­ments in tech­nol­o­gy and au­toma­tion to dri­ve ef­fi­cien­cies and op­ti­mise sup­ply chains.

Ear­li­er this year, at the ANSA McAL group’s of­fi­cial re­lease of its 2024 fi­nan­cial re­sults, Sab­ga said the com­pa­ny is con­tin­u­ing to pur­sue a large pipeline of ac­qui­si­tions, which is “well over a few bil­lion dol­lars.”

Jack­man, dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion on Fri­day, said the com­pa­ny had made sig­nif­i­cant strides in ad­dress­ing its debt dur­ing the pe­ri­od and there were sev­er­al pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tors in the com­pa­ny’s eco­nom­ic per­for­mance.

“When we talk about fi­nan­cial po­si­tion, I draw your at­ten­tion to the fact that our debt to EBID­TA is at 1.6, well be­low the lim­it of 3.0 that is wide­ly es­tab­lished by the cred­i­tors. So we are com­fort­ably pay­ing down debt. That mea­sure­ment was north of 2 when we start­ed fi­nanc­ing at the end of fourth quar­ter of 2024 and we’re com­fort­ably al­ready de­liv­er­ing down to 1.6. So again, show­ing how we com­fort­ably ser­vice and that in just six months, we’re able to come down by such a mark,” Jack­man said.

“If you look at the op­er­at­ing prof­it be­fore work­ing cap­i­tal changes, and you look at the op­er­at­ing cash flow, you can see the cor­re­la­tion to that num­ber. The dif­fer­ence be­tween that is how much we rein­vest in our busi­ness and how much we see move­ment in in fi­nan­cial in­stru­ments, se­cu­ri­ties, etc. So again, show­ing that strong im­prove­ment in per­for­mance to be $525 mil­lion in cash flow, op­er­at­ing prof­it be­fore work­ing cap­i­tal changes ver­sus $473 mil­lion.”

Ini­tial signs from those ex­pan­sions have been promis­ing for the group based on the lat­est fi­nan­cial re­port and feed­back from var­i­ous sec­tor heads.

The group was able to boast of en­cour­ag­ing re­turns from its US$327 mil­lion in­vest­ment in US-based chlo­ral­ka­li pro­duc­er Bleachtech LLC, which gave in­creased re­turns af­ter a stut­ter­ing start in Q1.

“What I can say is that Bleachtech’s prof­itabil­i­ty has dou­bled be­tween March and Ju­ly, so every month in­cre­men­tal­ly it’s go­ing up,” said Andy Ma­hadeo, head of the group’s util­i­ties sec­tor.

An up­date was al­so giv­en con­cern­ing Carib Beer’s op­er­a­tions in In­dia, with those present be­ing in­formed that the beer had launched in the Del­hi sub­urbs and in the city of Luc­know, and oth­er north­ern parts of In­dia.

“From what I un­der­stand, the brand is fan­tas­ti­cal­ly well re­ceived, and we are slow­ly build­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion points and build­ing along­side that a mar­ket­ing plan will ac­com­pa­ny it,” said Sab­ga con­cern­ing the beer’s progress in the sub­con­ti­nent.

The group al­so saw the launch of the Pro­ton E Mas in May and au­to­mo­tive sec­tor head Jean-Marc Mout­tet con­firmed all units have been sold out.

“We ba­si­cal­ly sold out every­thing we have the sup­ply chain that we have com­ing in. All the cars for Au­gust have been sold. All the cars for Sep­tem­ber have al­ready been sold as well,” said Mout­tet.

Sag­ba added, “Just to add that Pro­ton is not ex­clu­sive­ly a Trinida­di­an agen­da. We are sup­ply­ing those cars suc­cess­ful­ly in­to Guyana and to Bar­ba­dos where we see a sim­i­lar very pos­i­tive re­cep­tion in the mar­ket.”

The ANSA McAL CEO al­so feels the group would be able to over­come chal­lenges, if any, pre­sent­ed by the re­cent tar­iff in­creas­es im­posed by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment.

“I do know that our gov­ern­ment and var­i­ous trade agen­cies are di­rect­ly en­gag­ing in di­a­logue around tar­iffs and op­ti­mis­ing for the var­i­ous sides of the equa­tion. So it is an area to be watched, but cer­tain­ly not an area to be ig­nored, but one for which we are not re­al­ly fraz­zled around. It is what it is. These are cli­mat­ic con­di­tions, and as we’re hang­ing in busi­ness, you al­ready ad­just­ed to it,” he said about that is­sue.