Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) post­ed a net prof­it of TT$237 mil­lion for the six-month pe­ri­od end­ed March 31, 2026, and an­nounced an ex­pand­ed po­si­tion in At­lantic LNG, sig­nalling con­fi­dence in the long-term val­ue of its port­fo­lio.

Speak­ing at NEL’s quar­ter­ly in­vestors meet­ing at The Brix in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, NEL gen­er­al man­ag­er Charles May­nard reaf­firmed the com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing its div­i­dend pol­i­cy while pur­su­ing strate­gic growth op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The com­pa­ny con­firmed that through its share­hold­ing in NGC T&T LNG, it now holds, along­side The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), a 5.7 per cent in­ter­est in the uni­fied At­lantic LNG struc­ture. That stake is ex­pect­ed to in­crease to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 per cent as ad­di­tion­al trains are brought in­to the uni­fied arrange­ment.

The de­vel­op­ment places NEL in a stronger po­si­tion to ben­e­fit from any fu­ture re­cov­ery and ex­pan­sion of T&T’s LNG in­dus­try.
May­nard told in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors, bro­kers, as­set man­agers and gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives that NEL re­mains fo­cused on de­liv­er­ing val­ue to share­hold­ers while pre­serv­ing cap­i­tal and iden­ti­fy­ing new in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“We are com­mit­ted to pay­ing out 90 per cent of our net div­i­dends re­ceived,” he said.

NEL’s half-year per­for­mance was boost­ed by an un­re­alised fair val­ue ap­pre­ci­a­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $186 mil­lion across its strate­gic port­fo­lio. The com­pa­ny at­trib­uted the in­crease pri­mar­i­ly to pre­vail­ing con­di­tions in the en­er­gy sec­tor and con­tin­ued pos­i­tive re­sults from Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT).

May­nard said pe­ri­ods of stronger mar­ket per­for­mance cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties to bal­ance share­hold­er dis­tri­b­u­tions with fu­ture growth ini­tia­tives.

“We are com­mit­ted to pay­ing out 90 per cent of our net div­i­dends re­ceived, while look­ing at op­por­tu­ni­ties for new in­vest­ment,” he re­marked.

NEL’s man­ag­er of in­vest­ment and ac­count­ing, Veni­ta Ram­lal, said the in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny’s in­vest­ment strat­e­gy re­mains cen­tred on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion while main­tain­ing the flex­i­bil­i­ty to gen­er­ate re­turns and sup­port fu­ture div­i­dend pay­ments.
“While we talk the game of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, we en­sure that what­ev­er we di­ver­si­fy in­to is an in­vest­ment that can quick­ly turn a re­turn to our stake­hold­ers,” Ram­lal said.

She not­ed that the com­pa­ny’s port­fo­lio is struc­tured to cre­ate long-term val­ue while main­tain­ing suf­fi­cient liq­uid­i­ty for strate­gic ac­qui­si­tions when op­por­tu­ni­ties arise.

NEL al­so high­light­ed its gov­er­nance frame­work as a key con­trib­u­tor to de­ci­sion-mak­ing and port­fo­lio over­sight. Sab­ri­na Ram­gat­tie, NEL’s cor­po­rate sec­re­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Aegis Busi­ness So­lu­tions, said the com­pa­ny’s board rep­re­sen­ta­tion across its in­vestee com­pa­nies pro­vides man­age­ment with time­ly ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion and strength­ens over­sight.

“Be­cause of NEL’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion on these in­vestee com­pa­nies, man­age­ment and the board are able to make ef­fec­tive and time­ly de­ci­sions,” Ram­gat­tie stat­ed.

The com­pa­ny has al­so de­liv­ered sig­nif­i­cant gains for share­hold­ers through cap­i­tal ap­pre­ci­a­tion. NEL’s share price has risen from $3.70 in 2023 to a peak of $5.48 in May 2026, rep­re­sent­ing an in­crease of near­ly 100 per cent over the pe­ri­od.

The com­pa­ny now has a mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion ex­ceed­ing $3 bil­lion and a share­hold­er base of more than 5,633 in­vestors.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the floor about bal­anc­ing div­i­dend dis­tri­b­u­tions with share price growth, May­nard out­lined what he called NEL’s three-stage frame­work for man­ag­ing its in­vest­ment port­fo­lio.

“We are now look­ing for that stage to build and to bal­ance,” he said. “(To) build con­sis­tent with what the mar­ket is of­fer­ing, build con­sis­tent with what we can add val­ue to, build con­sis­tent with the preser­va­tion of cap­i­tal for our share­hold­ers ... pre­serve, hold and grow.”

May­nard main­tained that long-term val­ue cre­ation would de­pend on the per­for­mance and re­silience of the un­der­ly­ing port­fo­lio com­pa­nies.

“Once we can en­sure that the fo­cus on these as­sets, on their abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate val­ue when the op­por­tu­ni­ty aris­es and to max­imise that val­ue, I think we should see over a pe­ri­od of time a pro­gres­sion back to pre­vi­ous high­er lev­els of val­ue,” he said.

NEL’s port­fo­lio in­cludes 100 per cent own­er­ship of NEL Pow­er Hold­ings Ltd, which holds a 10 per cent in­ter­est in Pow­er­Gen, con­trol­ling stakes of 51 per cent in TSTT, Na­tion­al Flour Mills and Trin­gen, a 20 per cent in­ter­est in NGC NGL Com­pa­ny Ltd, which pro­vides in­di­rect ex­po­sure to Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd, a 33.3 per cent stake in Pan West En­gi­neers and Con­struc­tors LLC and its grow­ing in­ter­est in At­lantic LNG.