Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) record­ed an op­er­at­ing prof­it of $45.5 mil­lion for its first quar­ter end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, a de­cline of 16.93 per cent com­pared to $54.8 mil­lion for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in the pre­vi­ous year.

The per­for­mance was pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by div­i­dend in­come of $42.8 mil­lion, which ac­count­ed for 95 per cent of to­tal div­i­dend re­ceipts, re­flect­ing the con­tin­ued con­tri­bu­tion of the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny's strate­gic in­vest­ments.

This is ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny's con­densed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the three-month end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024.

It not­ed that while to­tal in­come de­clined rel­a­tive to the same pe­ri­od last year, this was large­ly at­trib­ut­able to low­er div­i­dend in­come from both the com­pa­ny's strate­gic and non-strate­gic port­fo­lios.

In­vest­ment in­come al­so saw a re­duc­tion of 10.57 per cent to $3.77 mil­lion from $4.22 mil­lion, due pri­mar­i­ly to ad­just­ments in the val­u­a­tion of NEL's short-term port­fo­lio, which is struc­tured to pro­vide liq­uid­i­ty and sup­port po­ten­tial share­hold­er dis­tri­b­u­tions.

Notwith­stand­ing these shifts, NEL's chair In­grid Lash­ley said to­tal as­sets in­creased by $45 mil­lion (1.6 per cent) over the year-end bal­ance as at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, re­flect­ing the re­silience of the com­pa­ny's in­vest­ment port­fo­lio and a re­turn to prof­itabil­i­ty.

"Our strate­gic port­fo­lio com­pa­nies con­tin­ue to demon­strate dis­ci­plined ex­e­cu­tion and op­er­a­tional re­silience, and we re­main fo­cused on nav­i­gat­ing the evolv­ing eco­nom­ic land­scape to up­hold sus­tain­able prof­itabil­i­ty and share­hold­er val­ue ap­pre­ci­a­tion," she said.

NEL's to­tal as­sets amount­ed to $2.74 bil­lion as at De­cem­ber 31, 2024, down by 17.66 per cent from the $3.33 bil­lion the com­pa­ny re­port­ed for the pe­ri­od end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she not­ed NEL's net cash po­si­tion im­proved sig­nif­i­cant­ly to $75 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing an in­crease of 156 per cent from the pri­or pe­ri­od.

"This strong liq­uid­i­ty po­si­tion un­der­scores our pru­dent fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and po­si­tions us well to pur­sue new strate­gic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties that align with our long-term growth ob­jec­tives. We re­main com­mit­ted to de­liv­er­ing con­sis­tent val­ue to our share­hold­ers, en­sur­ing time­ly dis­tri­b­u­tions while safe­guard­ing the in­tegri­ty and per­for­mance of our in­vest­ment port­fo­lio. On be­half of the Board, I ex­tend my ap­pre­ci­a­tion to our stake­hold­ers for their con­tin­ued trust and con­fi­dence as we ex­e­cute our strate­gic vi­sion with dis­ci­pline and fore­sight," Lash­ley added.

Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) is an in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny in­cor­po­rat­ed on Au­gust 27 1999 by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T as part of a re-or­gan­i­sa­tion ex­er­cise.

NEL cur­rent­ly owns 51 per cent of the shares of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT), Trinidad Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny (Trin­gen) and Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM). NEL owns 20 per cent of the shares of NGC NGL Com­pa­ny (NGC NGL), 37.84 per cent in NGC Trinidad and To­ba­go LNG (NGC LNG), 33.3 per cent of Pan West En­gi­neers and Con­struc­tors LLC and its whol­ly owned sub­sidiary, NEL Pow­er Hold­ings.

NEL's largest share­hold­er of the Gov­ern­ment, via Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, with 66.05 per cent, with Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T own­ing 16.67 per cent.