One Caribbean Me­dia (OCM), the pub­licly list­ed, pre­dom­i­nant­ly me­dia house, has re­port­ed an af­ter-tax loss of $61.77 mil­lion for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, com­pared to a prof­it of $30.42 mil­lion in its 2023 fi­nan­cial year.

The com­pa­ny, whose largest sin­gle share­hold­er is Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, record­ed rev­enue of $301.17 mil­lion in 2024, which was a 5.29 per cent de­cline on the rev­enue of $317.99 mil­lion it earned in 2023.

OCM's gross prof­it was down by 12.19 per cent, drop­ping to $80.62 mil­lion in 2024, from $91.81 mil­lion in 2023 .

The com­pa­ny de­clared $17.14 mil­lion in prof­it be­fore tax and im­pair­ment in its 2024 fi­nan­cial year, which was 53.88 per cent less than the $37.17 mil­lion it earned in 2023.

OCM re­port­ed im­pair­ment loss­es on oth­er as­sets of $76.06 mil­lion, which re­sult­ed in the com­pa­ny re­port­ing a loss be­fore tax of $58.91 mil­lion in 2024, com­pared to the $37.17 mil­lion prof­it it record­ed in 2023.

In its 2014 fi­nan­cial year, OCM's to­tal as­sets fell by 11.52 per cent to $794.16 mil­lion in 2024, from $897.62 mil­lion in 2023.

In his state­ment ac­com­pa­ny­ing the con­sol­i­dat­ed au­dit­ed re­sults for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year, OCM chair­man Faa­rees Ho­sein said: "The board has tak­en a con­ser­v­a­tive de­ci­sion to im­pair its in­vest­ment in one of its as­so­ciates, which has a long-stand­ing re­ceiv­able due to it.

"Notwith­stand­ing this im­pair­ment, it is is an­tic­i­pat­ed that this mat­ter will ul­ti­mate­ly be favourable re­solved and will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of all par­ties."

In 2024, our news­pa­per seg­ment in­curred re­struc­tur­ing costs and oth­er one-off costs as man­age­ment sought to de­vel­op busi­ness mod­els bet­ter aligned to the cur­rent op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ments.

"In Bar­ba­dos, ca­pac­i­ty chal­lenges with the elec­tri­cal grid per­sist­ed and im­pact­ed the fi­nan­cial per­for­mance of our re­new­able en­er­gy com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, ac­tion has been tak­en to re­duce the op­er­at­ing cost of the com­pa­ny, while the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties seek a fi­nal so­lu­tion.

"In Trinidad, the forex short­gages se­ri­ous­ly af­fect­ed our dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness and put a strain on sup­pli­er re­la­tion­ships."

Ho­sein said Flex­i­pac (a pack­ag­ing com­pa­ny) and Green Dot (a ca­ble and in­ter­net ser­vices com­pa­ny) were both able to achieve healthy prof­itabil­i­ty growth.

The OCM chair­man said that hav­ing re­gard to the group's per­for­mance and cap­i­tal ex­pan­sion plans, a div­i­dend of $0.10 has been de­clared and will be paid on Ju­ly 31, 2025. The com­pa­ny's div­i­dend in 2024 was $0.21; in 2023 it was $0.20 and in 2022, it de­clared a div­i­dend of $0.17.