Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

Massy Hold­ings Ltd’s prof­it af­ter tax (PAT) has fall­en from $286.8 mil­lion to $262.7 mil­lion or by 8.4 per cent for the six-month pe­ri­od end­ed March 31.

In its half-year fi­nan­cial state­ments, Massy chair­man Robert Bermudez ex­pressed that the com­pa­ny has still been for­tu­nate dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

He ob­served, “Our re­cent fo­cus on strength­en­ing the gov­er­nance in the port­fo­lios and giv­ing greater au­ton­o­my and de­ci­sion mak­ing to lead­ers through­out the ranks of all our busi­ness­es has al­lowed the Group to re­spond to the cri­sis with great agili­ty.”

Nev­er­the­less, Massy’s half-year (HY) prof­it be­fore tax (PBT) de­clined by 12 per cent or $56.1 mil­lion from $448.2 mil­lion in 2019 to $392.1 mil­lion in 2020. Bermudez said this de­cline in PBT is ful­ly ex­plained by some ex­tra­or­di­nary events.

He said that the trans­fer and pend­ing sale of Sea­well Air Ser­vices in­curred a $24 mil­lion loss aris­ing from sev­er­ance costs and an im­pair­ment on the val­ue of the as­sets trans­ferred.

Bermudez al­so not­ed that the US Stock Mar­ket share prices plum­met­ed in sec­ond quar­ter amidst the fears and eco­nom­ic slow­down cre­at­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed the in­vest­ment in­come earned by the Massy Unit­ed In­sur­ance Ltd and TIR­CL (cap­tive rein­sur­ance) in­vest­ment port­fo­lios.

He said that this com­bined mar­ket-to-mar­ket loss in val­ue in­curred was $34.9 mil­lion; and with­out these two im­pacts, the group’s PBT would have in­creased by $2.8 mil­lion or 0.6 per cent.

In spite of this, Massy chair­man said that the COVID-19 cri­sis has cre­at­ed en­er­gy and prospects for the com­pa­ny.

“This cri­sis has un­leashed in­no­va­tion and cre­ative strate­gies for growth. New ser­vices such as on­line or­der­ing, curb-side pick­up and de­liv­ery to homes have been launched in record time.”

Bermudez added that re­mote work­ing and dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies have be­come com­mon­place and em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment has al­so been en­hanced with in­creased com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­stant en­gage­ment of staff.

The chair­man al­so high­light­ed that three main port­fo­lios per­formed com­mend­ably for the first half of FY 2020. In­te­grat­ed re­tail third par­ty rev­enue grew by eight per cent and its PBT grew by nine per cent.

Mo­tors and ma­chines third par­ty rev­enue grew by sev­en per cent, de­spite los­ing a week or more in sales in March in T&T and Colom­bia.

While gas prod­ucts third par­ty rev­enue de­clined by six per cent, with loss of vol­umes from ho­tels and restau­rants due to COVID-19 re­stric­tions, its PBT in­creased by 14 per cent, dri­ven by in­creased de­mands for packed LPG, oxy­gen and ni­tro­gen, part­ly dri­ven by changes in con­sumer be­hav­iour and in­creased health­care ex­pen­di­ture in re­sponse to COVID-19.

How­ev­er, in these un­cer­tain times, Bermudez said that it is not pos­si­ble to pre­dict how the full year will turn out but the group can face the un­cer­tain­ties with con­fi­dence in its abil­i­ty to adapt as nec­es­sary.